Today, Explained - Democrats find God

Episode Date: October 26, 2026

Kansas hasn’t elected a Democrat to the Senate in over 90 years, but moderate pastor Adam Hamilton might break the losing streak. And his approach to religion could help Democrats around the country. This episode was produced by Miles Bryan with help from Avishay Artsy, edited by Amina Al-Sadi, fact-checked by Gabriel Dunatov, engineered by David Tatasciore and Bridger Dunnagan, and hosted by Sean Rameswaram. Kansas Democratic Senate candidate Adam Hamilton addresses a crowd of supporters on Oct. 24, 2026 in Olathe, Kansas. Photo by Kyle Rivas/Getty Images. Listen to Today, Explained ad-free by becoming a Vox Member: vox.com/members. New Vox members get $20 off their membership right now. Transcript at vox.com/today-explained-podcast. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today explained, I'm Sean Ramosfer. I live in Washington, D.C., along with my colleague Christian Paws from Vox, but he went to Kansas. Christian, why Kansas? I was on a mission. Like a Mormon mission? Let's go with Christian mission. I was on a faith journey, actually. Okay, okay. I was hunting down a guy named Adam Hamilton. He's a megachurch pastor. He's a Methodist. He started the state's largest church in the Kansas City suburbs, and he's running for Senate now as a Democrat. President Trump won Kansas by more than 16 points.

in 2024. But in these midterms, the Sunflower State has become an unlikely battleground for a Senate seat. Incumbent Republican Senator Roger Marshall is running neck and neck with Democratic Challenger Adam Hamilton. It is now quite possible that the Democrats have a better chance of winning in Kansas than they do in Maine. It functions as a test case. Can Democrats win back religious voters? And if so, how do they do it? On today, explain from Vox. Support for the program today comes from Fetch Pet Insurance. Fetch is the most complete pet insurance for dogs and cats, according to consumer advocate. You get paid back up to 90% of vet bills at any vet in the United States and Canada,

with claims paid back in as little as two days. Go to fetchpet.com slash save right now for your free quote. That is fetchpet.com slash save. I'm Inagarten, and each week on Happy Hour, I invite new and old friends for a drink and a fun conversation at my kitchen table in New York City. On this week's episode, I'm joined by chef Paul Carmichael. We talk all about the incredible restaurants he's worked in, the best music to play in the restaurant bathrooms, and how he reacted when he found out his restaurant Cabawa, had been ranked number one. by the New York Times.

New episodes of Happy Hour are available every Wednesday. You can watch on YouTube or listen wherever you get your podcasts. Cheers. There's no place like... Today explained. There's no place like... Today explained. Okay, our colleague Christian Paz went to Kansas, and of course he spoke to some voters.

Yeah, so I spent a few days following Hamilton around, talking to people who came to his campaign event. Do you consider yourselves Democrats or independents or actually were registered Republicans? Voting blue. No way. I was in places like Salina in the middle of the state. Do you live in Slina or pardon? Do you live here in Salinas? Yes, yes.

We drove down to other towns in central Kansas. We drove out to MAGA red western parts of the states too. They all bowed to one person and that's Trump and they've forgotten us. All the places that we went to, I felt like one thing that united all of it was how easily they felt like they turned into worship spaces. Like, he would go to the front of the room, be at the center of the space. Obviously he could work the room. My superpower is just a carolip. And I'll see that, but I'm better than average probably.

What's your superpower? Jesus said this. So that was him talking to a crowd in Linsburg, Kansas, popular. of about 3,800, pretty small. And I was surprised with a range of ages in that room. It was old folks, you know, the kinds of people that you might see at a no-king's rally, for example, mixed in with college students. And yet everyone, I don't know, it looked like they were being, he was preaching to them at his church.

You have to let people see your good deeds, your kindness, and your compassion. He can refer to church history and debates when he talks about why his views have evolved on things like gay and lesbian people, on abortion rights, on how to take care of the environment. And, like, in Linsburg, he literally broke into song. He's not a terrible singer, so forgiving. But if you know what sing with them, all creatures of a god and king, lift up your voice and with us sing. And I had to stop myself for a minute there because this obviously reminds me of my own faith upbringing. I'm Catholic. And I think it's that kind of throwback, that kind of reminding people of the way that maybe they were raised religious if they're not practicing right now. Or if they are religious now, you know, it was a common bond.

And everyone in that room joined in. It was actually really shocking to me. But, okay, so he's got a decent singing voice and, you know, the people joined in. But you mentioned gay and lesbian rights and abortion. This is a Democrat. Like, these are issues that matter to conservative Christians. How is he faring with them? And what are his positions?

It really helps that he's a genuine moderate. And even Methodism itself, the tradition that he comes from, is all about trying to find the middle path between various faith traditions. I wrote a book a number of years ago called Seeing Gray and a World of Black and White. And not everything is great. There's a lot. that are clearly black and white, but there's a lot of things where there's room for us to see. I may not ever get to where you are, but I can see where you're coming from, and I can respect you for that.

He calls himself a radical centrist, and abortion is actually a really good way into that, because he was asked about this at that chapel, at that event in Lindsborg. He was asked how he would wrestle with this, and he said he supports legal access to abortion, though he says he's pro-life with a, quote, heavy heart. And it's interesting. He said he knows that Kansans have already voted to protect reproductive rights in the state multiple times. But he also shares a story of his mother. She got pregnant at 17 in the mid-60s.

Her dad was a TWA airline pilot. And he offered to fly her to Switzerland to have an abortion. She wouldn't do it. And she had the baby, baby Adam Hamilton. You know, the far left, they don't want me telling a story about, my mom. Please don't tell that story. On the far right, you are still supporting the right for women to choose. I can never vote for you. But I think in the broad center, the folks who are on the left say, you know what, that's real. Your story is real. And it spoke to me even though I, you know,

and I know that you're going to solidly make sure that there's abortion rights. And on the right, people say, I appreciate the fact that you understand the moral attention. I feel like you hear me and you understand me and you understand what motivates me. And I can vote for you even if you're not exactly the candidate I don't want you to be. Okay, so there's a lot of nuance here. Hamilton, you know, he's a Democrat, but he doesn't really like abortion, but he respects your decision to have one and is grateful that his mom didn't. Is his complicated religiosity enough to win in Kansas,

which is, as you said, this deeply, deeply red state that hasn't elected a Democrat to this position in decades? No, I think that's a fundamental question in all of this. He needs to win a lot of Republicans and independents in order to have a chance at winning this election. He's made that a really big part of basically every part of his campaign. He says it in ads. He says it at the debates.

He says it in speeches and interviews. Even if you're a former Trump voter, you have a place in this camp. Everywhere I go, 30% of the people come to my events are Republicans, and most often they're saying, I've never voted for a Democrat, but I'm voted for you. I've been a Republican since I could register to vote. And I served as governor of Kansas.

I'm proud to co-chair Republicans for Hamilton. I was in Hutchinson, actually, at one of these Republicans for Hamilton events. And I met a bunch of these folks there. Hi, I'm one of the reporters that's covering the campaign. Yes. I'd love to hear what we were just chatting about with... Well, what I was telling Adam is I've been a Republican my whole life. and we have one of his signs in our front yard

that I heard him say tonight, and I've heard him say during the campaign, things that I've been feeling, things that I've been saying, that things are not right. So that was David Rankin. I met him in Ellsworth, Kansas. It's a town of just over 3,000 people,

and we were talking at a senior center. He told me that he and his wife have felt that in the Trump years, it's been hard to preserve a sense of community in that small town. We know who's Democrat. We know who's Republican. That friendships have been tested and you can only really keep relationships alive if you don't talk about politics at all. I think for the most part, no one's talking to each other about it. People in that town have also backed Donald Trump in each of those last three contests by gigantic margins, like 50 plus points. But things are different now. Trump is quite unpopular here.

the tariffs, the Iran war that's all hit the farming and rural communities, especially hard over the last two years. And on top of that, the incumbent Republican Senate candidate, Roger Marshall, has been dealing with a lot of scandals. So when the Rankins heard that Adam Hamilton was considering running for office earlier this year, their ears perked up. David and his wife, Dina, are active in the Presbyterian church locally, and they have friends that used to go to Hamilton's church.

In our church, we've used several of his series. And I believe in him as a person. I believe in him as a pastor. But I also now believe in him as our future senator. Did you run into any, you know, Kansas moderates, Kansas Republicans who, I don't know, liked the appeal of this Adam Hamilton but said, know what, I can't budge on X issue and this guy will never get my vote?

Yeah. I think one thing that especially folks who are tuning into this race now need to remember, again, is he's still a Democrat. It's an uphill battle for him. There are still a lot of very conservative Republican and just conservative voters in general might not be religious who that's just not going to work for them. He can do things like say that he's not a socialist or that there are only two genders or that one other thing that he said, for example, was that we need strong border security.

But then you run into voters like some folks in Ellsworth, too, an older lady who asked him a question about immigration policy. Are you for illegals in this country? I am not for illegals in this country in terms of policy. I believe we need to have strong borders. We need to have strong policies. But I also think I'm for treating people humanely. You don't care about them raping, or rape.

I absolutely do not want evil people doing horrible things. So if they're evil people who should arrest them and throw them out of the country, or they should be in prison. So I totally agree that people who commit crimes should not be free on the streets. They should be in the law and enforced. Yes, that's not the same as raping and murdering somebody, though. So let's make a difference between somebody who came here. That's a Democrat.

Yeah, yeah, it is. She says that's a Democrat. Mm-hmm. as in like you just confirmed all my biases about Democrats or all my beliefs about Democrats? Right. There's just some issues that you're not going to convince me on and this is where I'm going to draw the line on. And he acknowledges this, right? It doesn't matter how much he talks about immigration reform and border security,

how much he talks about the complicated politics of abortion. For some people, there are just issues that he's not going to be able to win them over in. Like, he's probably not going to win over the sole lady no matter how much he talks about. about Jesus. So tell me, Christian, zooming out of the great state of Kansas and looking at the country more broadly, does what you saw in Kansas tell us anything about where Democrats stand with religious voters across the country and whether they can win them back, or was it all kind of an Adam Hamilton, Kansas thing? Hamilton is a bit of a unicorn. I kept thinking about this, like the perfect combination of symptoms, of ingredients, of whatever term you want to say,

Trump disapproval down, Marshall not being very good, the issues all working in Hamilton's favor, Hamilton having all these skills and just history and the community across the state because of his church, that's going to be really hard to replicate. But the thing that is important for Democrats to see here, getting back to this question of, you know, can they win religious voters over, is they kind of don't have a choice. Because if you're just looking at the raw numbers, one of the biggest stories in religion and American politics over the last 50 to 60 years has been that if you're religious, you're probably a Republican. We're still a very religious country. And those religious voters are especially concentrated in the states that Democrats need to get competitive in if they want to have a chance at winning back the Senate, at having a chance at winning the electoral college in a future presidential election.

So it's not something that can work. everywhere, but it is something that can work in enough states going forward. And it's also something that Democrats don't really have a choice in ignoring. You can read Christian Paws at Vox.com, and you can hear how Democrats lost religious voters in the first place in a minute when we're back on today explained. Support for the show today comes from built, like, man, that football player is built, except they got rid of the U. Housing payments are probably a huge chunk of your income,

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Found does not provide legal or tax advice. My name is Dr. Ryan Byrd. I'm a professor of practice, the John C. Danforth Center on Religion and Politics at Washington University in St. Louis. Let's take a step back for a moment because what we're talking about here is whether Democrats, religious Democrats, can win religious voters. But when exactly did it become like a foregone conclusion that they couldn't? When did Democrats lose religious people? I certainly can't believe this has always been the case. No, it's really, we call it the God Gap, and it really started emerging in the early 1990s.

Now, it was a lot smaller in those days than it is today. Now it's humongous. But that's when we really saw the non-religious share of Americans rise exponentially. So between like 1972 and 1991, the share of Americans who were non-religious was basically the same, around 5, 6% of America. But then after that, the line just started going up into the right. And where it really started rising was among liberals, Democrats and liberals. That's people who started to lead. religion, primarily Christianity, during that period of time. And that's when I think we saw that sort of like cycle of, I can't be a Democrat and be a Christian, sort of really lock in as an idea that people began to embrace. And then over time, really what's happened is the Republican Party has leaned more into its Christian identity. It's sort of values, voters, family values, cultural Christianity kind of argument. And the Democrats have sort of walked away from that. You know, they talk more about pluralism. I did the data analysis of the tweets of the 2020 presidential candidates on the Democratic side. So, you know, you had Buttigieg and

Klobuchar and Jellibran and Biden and Bernie. And I was looking for religious language in their tweets to kind of like see how they discussed religious ideas. They actually discussed Islam seven times more than they discussed Christianity. Huh. In those tweets. As someone who is Jewish, it gives me a special pleasure to be able to work with the Muslim community. Together, we're going to build a nation based on love and justice, not hatred and bigotry. Hashtaghtag Iftars with Bernie. Bernie Sanders. Eid Mubarak to everyone celebrating hashtag Eid al-Arha across the country and around the world. Kamala Harris.

Adith from the prophet Muhammad instructs, whomever among you sees the wrong, let him change it with his hand. So I think in some ways, like the Democratic Party basically said, yeah, we're not going to talk about Christianity because that's like the de-the-the-hegemonic power in America, and that's the Republicans' field to play in. and we're going to talk about. And what's funny is, for every one Muslim in America, they're 63 Christians. So I just think it's an interesting messaging strategy.

The Democrats have sort of like forgotten that most Americans are Christians, and you need a ton of Christian votes to win an election day. And they stop doing that. And guess what? That's why you don't win in a state like Texas or Kansas when you ignore the huge part of the electorate that's got to vote for you to win the office. I mean, strategically, how did they justify that? How did that make sense in some back room? meeting that they could dismiss that much of the country. Democrats have always been obsessed with being like the big tent and being inclusive and always looking for like the, I don't want to say

fringe, but like the smaller parts of their coalition and elevating. We see that with a trans debate too. Like let's be very close. Share of Americans are transgender is less than 1%. But it seems like it takes up a massive part of the conversation. And so I think the same thing happens with religion is they want to be this big tent party. And by doing it, they want to always look at the fringes and the edges of their party and say and elevate them and say, we see you, you matter. The problem with that, though, is it turns off a lot of Christians. It's like, why aren't you talking at least a little bit about us? So it's that Democratic consultant bubble. Like, how many people in that bubble are actually like church-going Catholics or evangelicals or Episcopalians? The answer is not very many.

You know, the Democratic Coalition is a really weird mix, by the way, religiously speaking. It's like 45% non-religious voters. So atheists, agnostics, nothing in particular. But then you've got black Protestants, you've got Hispanic Catholics, you've got Jews, you've got Muslims. Like that's a hard thing to message for because if like you say like, yeah, I think churches should be able to fire someone for being gay, the atheists are going to like run you out of the building. But the black Protestants and the Catherine are going to go, of course we should have the right to fire someone for being gay. They're our pastor or they're one of our Sunday school teachers. So I think that's why Democrats have sort of avoided it largely is because they can't, no matter what they say. they can't please all these disparate coalitions. Meanwhile, the Republicans, all I have to say is

Christianity is good. White people are great. White Christianity is great. And you've won like 75% of their voters are under that umbrella. So I think a lot of it's just strategic. The Democrats have a really hard time holding together this sort of disparate coalition of people. If you're a Democrat running for office and you are a religious person, you have to make that part of your identity from the beginning of your campaign. You can't like cosplay as religious if a consultant you that religion matters, I think you have to make it a central part of your identity as a candidate from literally the first day you announce, as opposed to like putting it on later. Republicans have the luxury of not having to do that because you just assume they're Christians,

you assume their values, voters, you assume they're culturally conservative for whatever reason. And it's, you know, it's so funny. And I don't want to make this about the president of the United States because I'm having such a nice time not talking to you about him right now. Me too. But like, here's a guy who is the antithesis. of Christian values. The Bible means a lot to me, but I don't want to get into specifics. Even to cite a verse that you like. No, I don't want to do that.

You're an Old Testament guy or a New Testament guy? Probably equal. And yet he's had this chokehold on the party for a decade. And so many evangelical Christians and Christians of many other denominations don't seem to care. And here we are talking about how Democrats got to, you know, walk to walk and not just talk to talk. So how do Democrats make inroads with Christians? voters when maybe they want to support a right to choose and they believe that gay people should be able to get married and have equal rights to straight people and all the rest. I think this is the difficult line that the Democrats have to walk.

This is how the Republicans can sort of say that your Christianity is really political Christianity, right? It's like you take the parts of the Bible that you like and then ignore the parts you don't like. And I think Republicans do this, by the way, just the opposite direction. Yeah. You know, like Republicans will elevate the abortion and gay marriage passes. Like they're the only thing that's in the Bible, then forget about the parts about income inequality and immigration. Meanwhile, Democrats will talk a lot about how the Bible talks about, you know, wealth and inequality and immigration. and then they go, oh, and the abortion stuff, oh, that was written at a different time or the gay marriage.

That was written in a different time or the women's stuff. So what we do is basically we use the Bible as a weapon to justify our own political beliefs. And the left and the right does that kind of equally, I think, in some ways. The problem is the left is really bad at criticizing the right for that. And the right is really good at battering the left when they see people say crazy stuff online like God has no gender or really, you know, the Bible doesn't talk about gay people when it does in some spots. You know what I mean? So I think it's an asymmetrical thing. thing. I think the Democrats have always been bad. It's sort of batting back the criticism

they receive while the Republicans are really good at batting back the criticism they received from the Democrats. Well, let's just say like a John Asaf, who I believe is Jewish, came to you and said, Ryan, you seem to know this stuff in and out. If I want to appeal to Christian voters in this country ahead of 2028 because I say I'm not running for president, but of course I am, course he is. What would you say to Mr. Asaf? I think you need to appeal to the shared morality we have around certain like hot button issues. And that is like on abortion, I don't think the response to the Dobbs decision was, you know, they had to shout your abortion campaign among the Democrats where he's supposed to go online and like be proud of having an abortion.

That's not where the average Christian is on the issue of abortion. Now, by the way, the average Christian is actually in favor of abortion in certain circumstances. They're actually not like hard line on the issue. They surely don't see it as a morally good thing, though. They see there's a very troubled, difficult, morally ambiguous thing. And don't portray it that way on the stump, right? Say, hey, listen, I think we can all admit that abortion is probably not what we, you know, like we shouldn't celebrate that.

That's not the thing we should try to elevate. But we do need to allow people to have the courage of their own conscience to make the decisions they see what are best for them in a safe, effective way. You know, like that kind of messaging says, I see you. I understand your morality on this issue, but I also understand that we are all kind of troubled about all these things. We're not clear left or right, black or white on these issues. So I think there's ways to talk about these issues that don't turn off Christians, but speak to the nuance of what these issues are. And the Democrats are so afraid of making the 1% really angry on their side that they won't say the thing that appeals to the big part of the distribution on these issues. And that's really what frustrates me is Democrats ask too much of their candidates.

and Republicans don't ask enough. Ryan Burge used to be a pastor, now he's a professor, Miles Bryan is a producer, Avi Shai Artsy is two, Amman al-Assadi is an editor, Gabriel Donatav is a fact-checker, David Tattershoor, and Bridger Dunigan, our audio engineers, and today explained is this.