Adam Hamilton, the Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate in Kansas, looked into a camera and told Christians that believing in the virgin birth of Jesus Christ is optional. "That's okay," he said of people who reject the doctrine. "I just want you to follow Jesus."
He's running against Republican Senator Roger Marshall in a state where that sentence could end a campaign.
Hamilton isn't some fringe activist who wandered into politics. He's the senior pastor of the Church of the Resurrection, the largest United Methodist congregation in the country. On his podcast, Making Sense of Faith with Adam Hamilton, he walked listeners through his personal theology on the virgin birth — a doctrine affirmed in both the Apostles' Creed and the Nicene Creed, the two foundational statements of Christian belief that have held for nearly two thousand years.
"I believe in the virgin birth because these stories tell it, and it's one of those places where, in a sense, I suspend my logic," Hamilton said. Then the pivot: "I don't know exactly what happened, so I'm going with this story."
Going with this story. Like it's a restaurant recommendation he's not fully committed to.
Hamilton framed the virgin birth as a stumbling block that shouldn't keep people out of the faith. "I choose to believe that, but I understand how that's a struggling point for some people," he said. His argument was that Jesus never brought it up himself: "He didn't come to his disciples and say, 'Hey, let me tell you the story about how I was conceived.'" Instead, Hamilton said, the message was simpler: "Come follow me."
The passages in Matthew and Luke that describe the virgin birth — and the prophecy in Isaiah 7:14, written 600 to 700 years before Christ's birth — apparently don't carry enough weight to be non-negotiable. Hamilton's position treats a core tenet of Christian orthodoxy the way a focus group treats a campaign slogan: keep it if it polls well, soften it if it doesn't.
This isn't Hamilton's first trip down this road. Back in 2015, he publicly questioned traditional interpretations of Scripture. In 2022, a sermon raised similar themes. His church has sponsored Kansas City PrideFest. None of this is disqualifying on its own in certain denominations — but Hamilton isn't just pastoring anymore. He's asking Kansas voters to send him to the United States Senate.
The theological term for Mary in the early church was theotokos — God-bearer. The Nicene Creed states Christ was "incarnate of the Virgin Mary." The Apostles' Creed says "born of the Virgin Mary." These aren't footnotes. They're the load-bearing walls of Christian doctrine, affirmed across Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant traditions for centuries.
Hamilton's pitch to Kansas is that you can strip out a pillar of the faith, call it optional, and still claim to be leading Christians. Senator Marshall leads him by an average of 0.7 points in the polls.
A politician telling believers what parts of their own creed they're allowed to take seriously — in Kansas, weeks before an election. The Apostles' Creed has survived seventeen centuries. It'll survive Adam Hamilton.
