The Rev. Adam Hamilton is running against Christian nationalism. Will he win?

The pastor of the huge, nine-campus Church of the Resurrection in the Kansas City area, Hamilton was recently attacked on X by Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas. Reposting a clip from a sermon in which Hamilton called for inclusivity, Cruz wrote, “Why do Democrats keep nominating ‘preachers’ who reject the central tenets of Christianity? This heretical ‘sermon’ directly contradicts the Bible…”

Cruz is right to feel threatened by Hamilton, a popular pastor whose religious views are sharply different from Cruz’s own. Before becoming a U.S. Senate candidate, Hamilton directly assailed Christian nationalism in his sermons. He argues that faith should not be used in the service of power and that the most important biblical teaching is to love one another. Hamilton explicitly ties Christian nationalism to Nazism and the Ku Klux Klan. A United Methodist minister, Hamilton’s view of Christianity rests heavily on one’s personal journey to becoming a better, and (in his telling) more Christ-like person. He encourages kindness, community, and patience, and calls upon his congregants to love their enemies — or better yet, not to have enemies at all, only those with whom they disagree. He says he is not against patriotism, but strongly opposes the use of faith to create groups of “us” and “them,” and divide in the name of power — or worse yet — some sort of imagined ethnic, national, political or religious purity. He accuses both liberals and conservatives of sowing divisions in the pursuit of power.

Hamilton returns again and again to this theme of disagreements instead of enemies. He praises public figures like author David Brooks, a one-time Republican who grew disenchanted with his former party during the rise of Donald Trump and MAGA. Hamilton lauds former U.S. Sen. and Ambassador Daniel Patrick Moynihan, whose voting record was liberal but who often spoke about the limits of liberalism. Moynihan believed that the key variable in shaping who we are is not policy, but culture, and that liberals place too much faith in the government’s ability to solve problems. For his part, Hamilton agrees and argues that because of their faith, Christians have special responsibilities today, healing a broken culture.

Hamilton has his hands full with the Christian nationalists, but his message may also be a hard sell with the political left. Younger, mostly liberal, college educated Americans today have become so secular that psychology professor Jean Twenge refers to them as “Europe, but with bigger cars.” Sick of being judged and tired of contending with Christian nationalists, the fastest-growing major religious affiliation among younger Americans is “none.” Indeed, they have embraced the label, proudly self-identifying as “Nones.” Hamilton’s message may contrast sharply with the exclusivity of Christian nationalism, but it still rests on a faith that many younger Americans do not profess. As commentator Stanley Crouch observed, such individualistic secularism does not purport to make us all atheists; what it actually does is “make God a hobby.”

Can the Rev. Hamilton take on the Christian nationalists and the nones at the same time, staying true to his stated value of disagreements, not enemies? Can he bring his different approach to faith to more people, reasserting its value in the public square?

Stay tuned.

Godspeed, Reverend.

— Michael Smith is a professor of political science at Emporia State University.