Kansas Republican Party attacks a church, contradicts Trump | Opinion
If you want to see what an attack on religious liberty looks like, look no further than the Kansas Republican Party.
In an effort to blunt the momentum of the recently announced U.S. Senate campaign of the Rev. Adam Hamilton, the state GOP has filed a federal election complaint against his church, the largest in Kansas and the largest United Methodist church in the country.
In an ironic twist, the Republican action runs directly counter to the expressed opinions of one Donald Trump, who is a huge fan of churches being involved in politics and has issued two executive orders to facilitate it.
I direct your attention to this clipping from the Reuters News Service:
WASHINGTON, July 9 (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump on Wednesday welcomed the Internal Revenue Service’s decision that houses of worship could endorse political candidates to their congregations without risking losing their status as tax-exempt nonprofits.
“I love the fact that churches could endorse a political candidate,” Trump told reporters at the White House. “If somebody of faith wants to endorse, I think it’s something that I’d like to hear.”
That’s pretty much been the Republican position for the last 30 years or so, as the party and conservative churches have joined together into a formidable and mutually supporting political coalition collectively known as the Christian Right.
After initially considering running as an independent, Hamilton, a centrist by nature, announced last week that he’ll be running as an independent-minded Democrat.
He immediately emerged as the most prominent candidate in a crowded field for the Aug. 4 Democratic primary, which will nominate the party’s challenger in the November general election for the seat currently held by Republican Sen. Roger Marshall.
In public statements, the Kansas Republicans have couched their attack as an ethics complaint against Hamilton. But when you read the complaint in detail, particularly its “cause of action,” the actual target is the Church of the Resurrection, the 24,000-member Leawood-based congregation that Hamilton founded and leads as senior pastor.
The kerfuffle is over a video message, e-mail and web posting that Hamilton made in February to inform his congregation that he was considering launching an independent campaign for Senate.
I watched it, and I doubt the average viewer would characterize it as a campaign ad.
He mostly thanked his parishioners for their good works over the years in promoting education, health care and alleviation of poverty in Kansas City and abroad. The rest was mainly the nuts and bolts of how the church would continue to function if the senior pastor decided to enter the political arena.
“I’m not a candidate for Senate yet, I’m just thinking about it, continuing to pray about it,” Hamilton said in the video. “But I wanted to make sure you heard about this from me, that I’m seriously considering this, rather than reading about it in the newspaper or hearing about it from someone else.”
That seems like a reasonable thing for a pastor to say to his congregation when considering a major change in the operation of the church.
But according to the Kansas Republican Party, it’s a violation by the Church of the Resurrection, because the church relayed the pastor’s messages to the congregation.
“In short, the Church has violated the Federal Election Campaign Act by making corporate resources available to Hamilton to publicly promote his campaign for Federal office, thereby resulting in an illegal in-kind contribution to the campaign,” the GOP’s complaint says.
First off, campaign finance rules are much less strict for citizens who are considering a candidacy but haven’t declared for office.
And notice that the GOP allegation is leveled at the church itself, not Hamilton.
Funny, but I don’t remember the Kansas Republican Party filing any complaints against the First Baptist Church of Dodge City in June of 2019, when Marshall, then a Kansas representative considering a run for the Senate, was one of the keynote speakers at an overtly political anti-abortion rally held in the church sanctuary.
The hypocrisy is glaring and impossible to ignore.
The law in question is called the Johnson Amendment, after its sponsor, then-Senator and later President Lyndon Johnson. It allows the Internal Revenue Service to revoke the tax-exempt status of churches that get too political.
Last year, the IRS announced in a court filing that it had modified its interpretation of the Johnson Amendment based on a 2017 Trump executive order designed to allow churches and pastors to be more active in politics.
“When a house of worship in good faith speaks to its congregation, through its customary channels of communication on matters of faith in connection with religious services, concerning electoral politics viewed through the lens of religious faith, it neither ‘participate(s)’ nor “intervene(s)’ in a ‘political campaign,’ within the ordinary meaning of those words,” the IRS wrote in the filing.
Hamilton didn’t even go that far. He flat out said in the video he wasn’t asking his parishioners to vote for him or support his campaign. He asked for them to pray with him and for him to make the right decision on whether to run.
Since I started with Trump, let’s end with him, and this quote from a Sept. 8, 2025, speech to the Religious Liberty Commission that he created by executive order: “We got rid of a very sinister thing, the Johnson Amendment, so pastors can speak the truth that’s in their hearts.”
That’s what Adam Hamilton did.
Apparently, the Kansas Republican Party didn’t get the memo.
