A Democrat challenging Sen. Roger Marshall once called on his Kansas congregation to repent for eating beef, a message the Republican says proves he’d govern like any other liberal.
Adam Hamilton spent 44 minutes in January 2020 walking his church through climate change, carbon footprints, and cattle. The Democratic nominee now trying to unseat Sen. Roger Marshall, R-Kan., mixed scripture with a PowerPoint on greenhouse gases and told his people their habits needed to change.
In a state with more cattle than people, that old sermon is new political fuel. Marshall says the message runs against Kansas values. Hamilton’s campaign says the senator has fretted about cattle methane himself.
Hamilton for years led the largest United Methodist church in the nation. The talk was titled “What would Jesus say about climate change?” He did not hide the ask.
“That’s what repentance means, I saw things differently, it changed my heart, and it changed my behavior,” Hamilton said.
"So what I’m calling you to today, and I’m calling myself to it, because I’ve been wasteful, I’ve done things that wasn’t, you know, I didn’t think about it, how it wasn’t really good stewardship of the earth around me."
He pressed further. Small choices, he argued, still land on the next generation.
"I’m calling us to repentance to say, ‘I realize that this has impact, even if it seems small, it has an impact on the world and future generations. And I feel badly about that, and I’m going to do something different from this time forward.’"
Hamilton did not leave the food system out of it. He tied what people grow and eat to the gases warming the planet.
"Some of the things that we grow, because we like to eat them, like cattle, end up producing more carbon dioxide than other crops that we could grow, other forms of food that we could have."
“And so, in all of these ways, we are creating or adding to the amount of greenhouse gases in our world,” he said.
Then came the practical turn: cut fossil fuels, and rethink the plate.
"Now, you got to do everything you can to reduce your own usage of fossil fuels, but maybe changing your diet so that the things that you eat require less production that creates methane and carbon dioxide and everything else."
That line lands differently in Kansas than it might on a coastal campus. The Sunflower State runs on herds, feed yards, and packing work. A report reviewing the sermon put the old remarks back at the center of the Senate fight.
Kansas holds just over 5.8 million head of cattle. The state’s population sits near 2.9 million. It ranks as the nation’s third-largest beef producer, per the Kansas Livestock Association.
Cattle farming and ranching generate tens of billions of dollars and employ tens of thousands of Kansans. This is not a side hobby. It is core industry in a state that has sent Republicans to the Senate for 94 years.
Matt Teagarden, chief executive of the Kansas Livestock Association, did not soft-pedal his reaction.
"It is disappointing that a candidate for the U.S. Senate in Kansas, one of the nation’s top beef-producing states, would make a statement like this to his parishioners about beef’s impact on the climate."
Teagarden added that beef is a nutritious part of the American diet. Cattle, he said, help keep grasslands healthy and account for only 2% of total U.S. greenhouse gas emissions.
Marshall charged that Hamilton’s sermons were “woke” and out of step with Kansas. He tied the beef repentance theme to a broader claim that Hamilton has flipped on the Farm Bill and would caucus with the left if he wins.
"In a state with more cattle than people, Hamilton saying that Kansans need to repent for eating too much beef and flip-flopping on the Farm Bill proves he’d be just like every other liberal Democrat in the Senate."
That is the heart of the Republican case. Kansas did not ask for a lecture on steak. Voters here live with the cattle economy every day, payrolls, land use, export markets, and main-street business that rises and falls with the herd.
The race has tightened in recent months. Kansas slipped from “Likely R” to “Lean R” in Fox News Power Rankings. The Cook Political Report marked the same shift. Republicans still hold the advantage in a longtime red seat. They no longer get to treat it as automatic.
Hamilton’s team did not apologize for the 2020 sermon. Spokesperson Tyson Brody went straight at Marshall’s own record and rhetoric on cattle emissions.
Brody said Marshall has repeatedly introduced legislation aimed at cutting emissions from cattle. He also said Marshall claimed “everyone’s concerned about the methane production in the cattle industry.”
"Marshall even bragged that the decline of the herd ‘eliminated half of the methane gas produced from cattle already.'"
Brody then flipped the repentance language back on the incumbent, pointing to tariffs, imports, and diesel costs that hit producers.
"As Adam said at the debate, Roger should repent for failing to stand up for Kansas cattle producers on tariffs, imports, and skyrocketing diesel prices, and now he should repent for attacking Adam for something Roger Marshall said himself in the Senate. Kansas producers don’t need lectures from someone who voted to put warning labels on hot dogs and bacon."
Those countercharges matter in a farm state. Producers care about input costs, trade, and whether Washington treats beef as food or as a climate problem. Still, Brody’s rebuttal does not erase Hamilton’s own words to his congregation. The pastor called for changed hearts, changed diets, and less production tied to methane and carbon dioxide. He said it plainly, on the record, in church.
Hamilton is not a fringe activist who wandered into politics. He built influence from a major pulpit, then carried a climate-repentance frame into a Senate bid in cattle country. Marshall is betting Kansas voters hear that frame as coastal politics with a cross on top.
The timing is hard to ignore. Six years after the sermon, the same man is asking for a statewide promotion. The race is closer than Republicans prefer. Every old clip and every industry nerve ending is fair game.
Teagarden’s point sits underneath the spin from both campaigns: beef is food, cattle shape the land, and the emissions share is a small slice of the national total. Hamilton’s sermon treated diet change and herd-related gases as a moral duty. In Kansas, that reads less like stewardship and more like a warning label on the state’s livelihood.
Marshall wants the race to be about whether Hamilton would vote like the rest of the Democratic Senate conference. Hamilton’s campaign wants it to be about Marshall’s own methane comments, trade posture, and food-label votes. Voters can hold both records up to the light. Only one candidate told a room full of churchgoers to repent for the burger.
Kansas built its wealth on cattle, grass, and hard work, not on guilt trips from the pulpit about dinner. A Senate hopeful who preached repentance for beef should not act surprised when a beef state writes him off.
