Adam Hamilton campaign responds to claims pastor believes non-Christians 'go to Heaven': 'Inclusivism, not universalism'
Adam Hamilton’s senatorial campaign has responded to a widely circulated video from 2022 in which the United Methodist Church pastor said non-Christians will go to Heaven.
The lead pastor of the Resurrection Church of Leawood, Kansas, Hamilton won the Aug. 4 Democratic Primary to become the challenger to Republican incumbent Sen. Roger Marshall.
Last week, Breitbart News posted an edited clip on X of Hamilton from 2022 in which the Kansas Democrat endorsed the idea that many non-Christians are saved. In the clip, Hamilton says, “When I began to look through the lens of Jesus, my ... spiritual eyesight, I felt, became the most clear it could be.”
He added, “A Muslim would say through Islam, they see the most clearly and a Hindu through Hinduism and a Jew through Judaism. Sometimes, we think ... depending on how we were raised and how we think, one lens is ... clearly a better lens.”
Hamilton also qualified this view elsewhere in the sermon, saying "not all religions are equally valid" and that some religions can "distort the image of God," leading to "oppression or harm or abuse," while others "lead us to love our neighbors," according to the Washington Stand.
“When it comes to other faiths, I believe as a Christian that they are going to, when they get to Heaven, they’re going to see Jesus,” he added.
After claiming that non-Christians will realize it was Jesus who they spent their whole lives “searching for,” Hamilton declared, “I don’t fear that those folks will spend eternity in Hell.”
In an emailed statement to The Christian Post over the weekend, a spokesman for the Hamilton campaign said, “Adam was not speaking of universalism” but rather “was discussing inclusivism.”
The campaign spokesperson provided CP with quotes from Hamilton from some of his past books, including a passage from Christianity and World Religions that says inclusivists “believe that God examines the hearts of people of other faiths; that God sees their true faith in him; and, as was the case with Abraham, that God credits this faith to them as righteousness.”
“Inclusivists are not saying that all religions are equally valid paths or that their teachings are all true,” wrote Hamilton. “In addition, inclusivists do not necessarily believe that all people will be saved; they are not universalists.”
In the book Seeing Gray, Hamilton explained that inclusivism “occupies the territory between universalism and exclusivism” and agrees that “some may reject the grace of God” and that “salvation is not by works but by faith.”
“It holds that in God’s mercy, God will save many who sought him although they did not understand to call upon the name of Christ,” Hamilton wrote in Seeing Gray. “This view seems, to me, to be more consistent with the justice, mercy, and love of God revealed in Jesus Christ than the exclusivist’s view.”
In an extended version of the 2022 clip, Hamilton tells his congregation that “many of us believe that God can give the saving work of Jesus, God can take that payment Jesus has made and apply it to anyone he chooses based upon what he sees of their own hearts.”
Hamilton spoke about "the people who don't know to accept" Jesus Christ, comparing them to children who die at too young an age to consciously accept the Gospel. "My hunch is there's going to be a whole lot of people you'd be surprised are going to be in Heaven because of the grace of God," Hamilton said in the 2022 message. He identified his beliefs as consistent with the "official position of the Catholic Church" as well as "most mainline Protestant theologians" and "many Evangelicals."
He also cited C.S. Lewis and John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist church, as historical Christian figures who held similar views, according to Breitbart News.
Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, was among the critics of Hamilton's sermon, calling it “heretical” while also referencing Democratic Senate nominee James Talarico of Texas, who has separately faced criticism over past comments on gender, Jesus and God.
“Why do Democrats keep nominating ‘preachers’ who reject the central tenets of Christianity?,” he asked in an X post. "This heretical ‘sermon’ directly contradicts the Bible.”
Cruz quoted John 14:6, which reads “Jesus answered, ‘I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.’”
