Adam Hamilton

Introduction

Adam Hamilton is the founding pastor of the Church of the Resurrection in Leawood, Kansas, the largest United Methodist Church in the United States, and the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate against incumbent Republican Roger Marshall. In October 2026, with polls showing the race within two points, Marshall’s campaign launched a $1.2 million statewide ad accusing Hamilton of failing to report a church volunteer, Scott Moore, who was accused of molesting teenage boys at the church’s retreats in 2005 and 2006 and was later convicted of sexual battery in an unrelated case. Hamilton denies any cover-up, and the underlying claims were first aired during the Democratic primary five months earlier.

Background Information

Hamilton co-founded the Church of the Resurrection in 1990 out of an old funeral home and built it over three decades into a megachurch with an $81 million campus in Leawood and satellite locations across the Kansas City metro. He announced his Senate candidacy in April 2026 and immediately became the prime target of both parties in the race, entering the Democratic primary as the fundraising frontrunner among eleven candidates. The abuse allegations against the church were first publicized in May 2026 by his primary opponent, state Sen. Patrick Schmidt of Topeka, who held a Statehouse press conference and circulated court records from Moore’s criminal cases; a website aggregating them, corcoverup.com, appeared the same week. Hamilton won the nomination anyway, and the story followed him into the general election.

The Controversy or Incident That Led to Their Cancellation

Allegations. The claims in this section are allegations from a Roger Marshall campaign ad and from reporting on court records in the criminal cases against Scott Moore, whose 2013 sexual-battery conviction is a matter of court record. The suggestions that Hamilton covered up the abuse were never admitted by Hamilton, never criminally charged, and never adjudicated in court — Hamilton himself has never been accused of a crime. Hamilton denies all of them and claims there was “no attempt at a cover-up”; his campaign says the church reported the incidents to law enforcement and that Hamilton later personally worked to help get Moore convicted.

According to trial testimony reviewed by the New York Post, two teenage boys — one 15, one 14 — were abused in a cabin at the church’s annual weekend sleep-away camp in November 2005. The older boy testified that Moore put a hand on his penis; the younger recalled Moore’s hand inside his sleeping bag near his groin before others in the cabin woke. The boys reported it to church leadership the next day and said a youth minister accused them of “slander.” Hamilton, who was not at the camp, met with one boy and his parents, then relied on two staff members, Randy Meyer and volunteer Nancy Brown, to run an internal investigation. It concluded inconclusively because the boys could not positively identify their abuser, and Moore returned as a camp counselor in November 2006. Prosecutors later wrote in a 2011 court filing that “the non-experienced church investigators decided that they were not to report the disclosures to social services or law enforcement.”

After a second accusation at the fall 2006 retreat, the church fired Moore and referred him to the Linn County Sheriff’s Office; the county attorney declined to pursue charges. Moore was convicted in 2013 of misdemeanor sexual battery for touching his son’s 16-year-old friend at a sleepover in 2010, with the church-camp victims among those who testified against him. In April 2010, a month before that assault, a fourth man had told police Moore abused him in 1979 — after speaking with Hamilton, who encouraged him to report it for documentation even though the statute of limitations had passed. Moore died by suicide in 2015 after police caught him half-naked in a car with a teenage boy.

Public Reaction and Consequences

The Marshall ad, narrated over court-record imagery, tells viewers: “Parents were ignored, and Hamilton never called the police… The next fall, Hamilton welcomed him back. Free to lurk for new victims — later convicted of more child sex crimes.” Hamilton’s campaign spokesman, Tyson Brody, called it “a desperate and shameful attack from a losing politician on his own state’s largest Church,” saying local reporters had already found the church reported the incidents to law enforcement. Hamilton has acknowledged he “absolutely” would handle the 2005 report differently today by going straight to law enforcement, which church leaders did in 2006. Former church staff are split: his longtime assistant Sue Thompson said neither 2005 investigator was qualified, while Jason Gant, who took over student ministries in 2006, told the Post that Hamilton “always made the safety of children his highest priority.” The candidates met in a Kansas State Fair debate on September 21, 2026.

Current Status

No charges, findings, or lawsuits against Hamilton exist; the record that adjudicated anything is Moore’s 2013 conviction, in which Hamilton has no part. The controversy is entirely political: whether the church’s 2005-2006 internal handling was a cover-up or a then-typical, if botched, institutional response that was corrected by the 2006 police referral and an overhaul of church policies. Hamilton remains his party’s nominee, and Marshall led by 1.5 percentage points in the RealClearPolitics average as the ad buy began ahead of the November 3, 2026 election. The church has not announced any action regarding its founding pastor, whose candidacy continues.

Impact on Their Career/Life

A Senate campaign built on Hamilton’s standing as Kansas’s most prominent pastor is now spending its closing stretch answering for events twenty years ago at his own church’s camp. The largest United Methodist congregation in the country faces renewed national scrutiny of its safeguarding history, and the case has become a test of whether “we wanted to get it right” satisfies voters weighing an institution’s 2005 instincts against its later corrections. With the race at 1.5 points, the ad’s framing — that Hamilton “protected a pedophile” — is the attack he must beat on November 3, fairly or not.

Sources

• New York Post, “Kansas Senate Dem nominee Adam Hamilton accused of shielding ‘child predator’ who worked for his church in mid-2000s,” October 2, 2026 — source
• Kansas Reflector, “At nation’s largest Methodist church, ex-employees split on Kansas pastor running for U.S. Senate,” July 22, 2026 — source