A high-profile Democrat candidate for the U.S. Senate in Kansas, Adam Hamilton, is making waves not for his political platform but for his startling theological claims: this Methodist pastor believes the Bible is riddled with errors, despite the very texts he critiques often refuting his assertions.
Hamilton, the senior pastor at Resurrection, A United Methodist Church, is vying for the Democratic nomination to challenge Republican Sen. Roger Marshall. He casts himself as an "independent-minded" candidate, yet his stance on foundational Christian texts reveals a distinct alignment with the radical leftward drift seen in many mainline denominations.
While Hamilton's official campaign focuses on an "affordability" agenda, attempting to sidestep social issues, his public record as a pastor lays bare a controversial view of scripture. In a sermon titled, "Is The Bible True?", Hamilton appears to conclude that it is not, at least not in its entirety.
"If I could prove just one mistake in the Bible, will I have won the debate? He said, 'Absolutely.' I said, 'Ok,'" Hamilton recounted, detailing a conversation where he claimed he could identify "hundreds" of mistakes in God's Word.
He then offered what he presented as a clear contradiction: "I can think of hundreds, but let me just give you one. I said, 'Where did Jesus ascend to heaven from?' And he stopped for a second. I said, 'So you do remember, right? Let me just show you on the map here. In Luke's gospel, Jesus ascends to heaven from the Mount of Olives by Jerusalem. In Matthew's gospel, Jesus ascends to heaven from the Galilee,'" he claimed. Hamilton continued, "I said, 'Look, there's like 75, depending on the route, 75 to 90 miles difference between these two towns. Matthew says one, Luke says the other. They can't both be right, so one of them is wrong.'"
After delivering what he believed was a knockout blow to biblical inerrancy, Hamilton appeared to mock the very idea of building faith on the unshakeable truth of God's Word. "So let me just ask, you know, does that really — is your whole faith built on this? Because here's what happened for the fundamentalists. They said this because the Bible is inerrant. We believe all these things that the Bible teaches, and I said, seems to me like your whole faith has crumbled because I showed you one error. And I said that doesn't seem like a strong faith to me," he concluded.
The only problem for Hamilton, however, is that his supposed "error" is itself an error. Matthew's Gospel does not, in fact, provide a location for Jesus's ascension to heaven. It concludes with Jesus giving the Great Commission in Galilee, but makes no mention of the ascension. Only Luke's Gospel and the Book of Acts describe the ascension, specifically placing it from Bethany, on the slopes of the Mount of Olives. This means Hamilton's central proof of biblical error collapses under basic scriptural scrutiny. Apparently, common sense needed a permission slip.
Despite his own misreading of scripture, Hamilton brushes off the significance of such details, suggesting Christians should merely focus on the *fact* of the ascension, not the supposed "errors." He extends this approach to other biblical accounts like Noah's Ark and the story of Jonah, framing scripture as more of a "biography" with "humanity" and "authors squabbling," rather than divinely inspired text.
This interpretation flies in the face of Christ's own teachings. Jesus Himself stated: "Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. For truly, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished" (Matthew 5:17-18 English Standard Version).
Hamilton's approach, culminating in an analogy where he used a colander, urges his congregation to "toss away" anything in the Bible that doesn't align with their interpretation of Jesus's words. This selective reading undermines the entirety of Christian theology, which holds that Jesus is revealed throughout all of scripture and that the Old Testament points directly to Him.
Hamilton's theological views are unfortunately consistent with the radical trajectory of the United Methodist Church, which has seen over a million orthodox members depart to form the Global Methodist Church due to the UMC's embrace of LGBT clergy and marriages. This trend highlights a broader abandonment of traditional biblical authority within the denomination, even extending to a New York Methodist pastor declaring himself transgender before his congregation in 2024.
For a candidate seeking to represent Kansas in the U.S. Senate, Adam Hamilton's willingness to dismiss the integrity of sacred texts, while demonstrating a surprising lack of basic biblical understanding, raises serious questions about his judgment and the values he would bring to Washington. When a leader cannot be trusted to accurately interpret foundational spiritual truths, how can voters trust him to uphold the principles of common sense, accountability, and freedom that define our nation?
