Should Kansas megachurch pastor and Democratic U.S. Senate nominee Adam Hamilton score an unexpected win, he would enter a notably rare category in American politics. Over the last century, Georgia Sen. Raphael Warnock is the only sitting senator to have done what Hamilton hopes to do: hold a seat in the U.S. Senate while still serving as the spiritual leader of a church.
Warnock, elected in 2021 as Georgia’s first Black senator, has remained active in the pulpit, continuing to preach regularly as senior pastor of Atlanta’s historic Ebenezer Baptist Church.
Hamilton has said that, if elected, he also hopes to keep his role as senior pastor at the Church of the Resurrection, where he would preach an estimated 12 to 18 times a year. The Kansas City-area congregation, with about 25,000 members, is the largest United Methodist church in the United States.
Warnock has spoken publicly about balancing those two callings, including in a video shared on the U.S. Senate Democrats’ Facebook page, where he reflected on the overlap between pastoral work and public service.
“They are both about working for people even as you walk alongside them,” Warnock said. “I have always been engaged in a kind of ministry that takes you far beyond the sanctuary to the streets, far beyond preaching to the public square.”
Only a few other ordained clergy have served in the Senate
Aside from Warnock, only a few other ordained ministers have been in the Senate in recent decades, but none who strived to simultaneously lead a church of their own.
John Danforth, who served from 1976 to 1995 as a Republican senator from Missouri, is an Episcopal priest who also worked as an attorney and diplomat. In 2004, he presided over Ronald Reagan’s funeral at Washington National Cathedral.
Hamilton said in an interview that Danforth has been an inspiration and mentor for him.
“I talked to Jack before I got into this. I actually phoned him up and just said, ‘Hey, help me understand, how does this fit together?’” Hamilton said. “He and I share a lot about trying to bring people together, as opposed to dividing people, trying to lead from the center.”
Tim Hutchinson, an Arkansas Republican, was a Baptist pastor before entering politics in 1985. After serving in the state legislature and the U.S. House, he served one term in the Senate from 1997 to 2003.
Still serving in the Senate is James Lankford, an ordained Southern Baptist minister who has represented Oklahoma in the chamber since 2015. Before entering politics, he was president of a Baptist-run conference center and youth camp.
Many more clergy have served in the House
Throughout U.S. history, it’s been far more common to have still-active pastors serving in the House. Adam Clayton Powell Jr., for example, served 13 terms representing the New York City neighborhood of Harlem while he was pastor of Abyssinian Baptist Church.
Other Black civil rights leaders who combined pastoring with congressional careers included Walter E. Fauntroy, who was Washington, D.C.’s delegate to the House, and William Gray, a pastor in Philadelphia before serving in the House from 1979 to 1991.
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Democrat Emanuel Cleaver, who has represented Kansas City, Missouri, in the House since 2005, was pastor of St. James United Methodist Church from 1972 to 2009. His district, just across the Kansas-Missouri state line from Hamilton’s home base, has been reconfigured by GOP state legislators to jeopardize his chances of reelection.
On the Republican side of the U.S. House, conservative white Baptist pastors who have served in recent decades include Mark Harris of North Carolina, Jody Hice of Georgia and Ron Lewis of Kentucky.
One of the most prominent clerics in Congress was a Catholic — Jesuit priest Robert Drinan. A Massachusetts Democrat, he served in the House from 1971 to 1981 before stepping down. He dropped his reelection bid in 1980 after Pope John Paul II said Catholic priests would no longer be allowed to hold political office.
Drinan was elected on a platform opposing the Vietnam War, and had moderate views on abortion and birth control that differed from official Catholic teaching. He was the first member of Congress to call for Richard Nixon’s impeachment — not due to the Watergate scandal, but rather what Drinan viewed as the administration’s undeclared war against Cambodia.
There is no official count of all the clergy who ever served in Congress, but overwhelmingly they have been Protestants. Drinan is one of only two Catholic priests elected to Congress; no rabbi or imam has served there.
The first speaker of the House, Frederick Muhlenberg of Pennsylvania, was a Lutheran minister. He served in Congress from 1789-1797.
The first African American to serve in Congress, the Rev. Hiram Rhodes Revels, was a minister in the African Methodist Episcopal Church. He was elected in 1870 by the Mississippi Legislature to fill a vacant Senate seat as a Republican.
Other pastors are running for Congress this year
This year, several members of the clergy from each major party have been nominated to run for the U.S. House. The Democrats include the Rev. Frederick Haynes III, a prominent Baptist pastor in Dallas, and two women currently serving in Iowa’s legislature — the Revs. Lindsay James, a Presbyterian chaplain, and Sarah Trone Garriott, a Lutheran pastor.
On the Republican side, at least three current or former pastors – all evangelicals – have been nominated: pastors John Elleson, running in a Democratic stronghold in Illinois; Mark Harris, seeking reelection in North Carolina; and former pastor Tim Walberg, seeking reelection in Michigan.
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AP reporter John Hanna in Topeka, Kansas, contributed.
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