Kansas Democrat Senate Frontrunner and Methodist Pastor: Bible Is Full of Errors

A pastor running for Senate who thinks the Bible is riddled with errors is not exactly a shocking data point about modern mainline Protestantism. Plenty of clergy in that tradition have made peace with historical-critical readings of scripture for decades. What's interesting is that Adam Hamilton is running as a frontrunner in a Kansas Democrat primary, which tells you something about who the party thinks can win statewide in a place like that. The pastor credential is the whole pitch. It's supposed to soften the rest of the platform for voters who'd otherwise run the other way.

That's the part worth sitting with. Democrats have spent years struggling to talk to religious voters in red and purple states, and the fix they keep reaching for isn't rethinking the substance, it's finding a messenger with a collar. Hamilton gives them a guy who can stand in a Kansas church basement and sound fluent in faith while still landing on the same policy positions as any coastal Democrat. Whether his actual theology, that the Bible contains errors, bothers the voters he needs is a separate question from whether it bothers the party. It doesn't. It's a feature of the strategy, not a bug.

None of this makes Hamilton a bad person or even necessarily a bad pastor. Mainline theology has room for that view, and he's entitled to hold it. But voters deserve to know that "pastor" on a campaign flyer isn't shorthand for shared values anymore. It can just as easily mean someone using the pulpit as a resume line for a Senate run.