Kansas Democrat Senate candidate Adam Hamilton says Christians do not have to believe Jesus was born of a virgin, telling listeners that the belief is optional and that only "fundamentalism" insists on it, Breitbart News reported Friday.
Hamilton, senior pastor of the Church of the Resurrection in Leawood — the largest United Methodist congregation in the country — made the remarks last year on his podcast, Making Sense of Faith with Adam Hamilton, according to Breitbart. The Republican Jewish Coalition posted a clip of the comments Friday, and the conservative X account @ezradulis circulated them with a pointed reminder: "The Virgin Birth is part of the Apostle's Creed and the Nicene Creed."
"So I say to people who tell me, 'I'm not really sure I can believe in the Virgin birth.' I'm like, 'That's okay. I just want you to follow Jesus,'" Hamilton said on the podcast, per Breitbart. "He didn't come to his disciples and say, 'Hey, let me tell you the story about how I was conceived. And now if you believe that, you can be one of my disciples.' He never said that. He just said, 'Come follow me.'"
Hamilton did not stop at calling the doctrine optional. He framed the insistence on it as a marker of a faith he treats as a problem. "I just want you to follow Jesus," he said, adding that he personally chooses to believe the Virgin Birth but that "what I really believe about it isn't a biology lesson; it's a theology lesson and who I think Jesus is."
The doctrine he is calling optional is not a fringe add-on. The Virgin Birth appears explicitly in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, is foretold in Isaiah, and is confessed in both the Apostles' Creed and the Nicene Creed — the creeds recited weekly in Catholic, Orthodox, Anglican and most Protestant churches, Methodism included.
It is not the first time Hamilton has drawn attention for departing from historic Christian teaching. According to Breitbart, he has said the Bible contains "hundreds" of errors, and in a 2022 sermon suggested that Muslims, Hindus and adherents of other faiths would reach Heaven and recognize Jesus after death. Under his leadership, the Church of the Resurrection partnered with Kansas City PrideFest to sponsor a "Drag Queen Story Time & Gay Pride Festival," Breitbart reported. He has also voiced support for legal abortion and for affirming same-sex marriage within the United Methodist Church while presenting himself as a moderate.
His personal finances have drawn scrutiny as well. A financial disclosure reviewed by Breitbart shows Hamilton earns $394,239 a year from the church he founded with his wife — more than twice a U.S. senator's salary and well above Kansas's median household income of $75,514 — plus $417,372.70 in royalties from United Methodist Publishing House. He owns a roughly $1 million vacation home at the Lake of the Ozarks and a Stilwell residence reported at about $1.4 million, even as his campaign website declares that billionaires and special interests need to be pushed out of politics. He donated to Kamala Harris's 2024 presidential campaign and served on an Obama-era council that recommended expanding eligibility for commutations and pardons.
The stakes are immediate. Hamilton is running against first-term Republican Sen. Roger Marshall in a race now rated among the tightest of the midterms. RealClearPolling shows Marshall ahead by an average of just 0.7 points; an Insider Advantage survey published October 15 put Marshall at 48 percent to Hamilton's 47. Trump is scheduled to rally for Marshall on Monday near Wichita. The New York Times reported Friday that the race has become one of the midterms' tightest, and The Guardian reported that at the Kansas rally Trump focused his closing midterm message on anti-Muslim racism — a signal of how sharply the faith question is cutting in both directions.
Hamilton's defenders cast him as part of a newer, more inclusive Christian politics. The Nation, in a profile published this week, described a rising crop of Democratic candidates who make "a compassionate, liberal Christianity" central to their campaigns — an effort, in that outlet's telling, to answer the perception that the right holds a stranglehold on faith-forward politics. Hamilton, in that framing, is a moderate pastor broadening the tent. The Virgin Birth comments, and the podcast catalog behind them, give Kansas voters a chance to decide for themselves how broad that tent gets.
Our Take
Hamilton is not being misquoted by a hostile account. He said it, on his own podcast, in his own voice, and his office has not disputed the words as reported. What he is selling Kansans is a version of Christianity with the miraculous taken out — a Jesus who is a wise teacher and a moral example, with the incarnation reduced to a metaphor and the creeds demoted to suggestions. That is his right to preach. It is also every Kansas churchgoer's right to notice that the man asking for their vote cannot affirm what their grandmothers confessed every Sunday without calling them fundamentalists.
Pray this man never gets near the Senate prayer breakfast. Democrats spent years insisting the religious right was weaponizing faith; here comes a pastor on the other side telling the faithful that the central miracle of the Christmas story is a biology lesson for simpletons. If Hamilton wants to run as a moderate, he should start by explaining why he treats the Apostles' Creed the way his campaign treats billionaires — as something to be managed, softened and ultimately sidelined.
Marshall leads by less than a point. The rally is Monday. If you live in Kansas, know what the man across the aisle from Marshall actually preaches before you pull the lever — and if you have family in the pews at Church of the Resurrection, forward this to them. The Virgin Birth is not a political issue. Until a politician made it one.
