Roger Marshall Lies Controversy Kansas

Roger Marshall Attacked a Pastor's Ministry Until 120 Kansas Ministers Wrote and Asked Him to Stop. He Told a Reporter He Hadn't Read the Letter.

One hundred twenty Kansas clergy told Marshall his attacks on the United Methodist Church 'tear at the fabric that is the body of Christ.' His answer: 'I've not read the letter' — and he repeated the beef-sermon claim, which the AP reports was stitched together from two parts of one 2020 sermon.

MAGA Report Cards · Sep 20, 2026

On September 17, 2026, 120 United Methodist ministers in Kansas put their names on a letter to their own senator.

They were not writing about taxes, or spending, or immigration. They were writing to ask Roger Marshall to stop attacking their church.

What the clergy wrote

The letter is addressed directly to Marshall and opens by establishing common ground — the signers write "as fellow disciples of Jesus," as Kansans, and as United Methodist clergy. Then it gets to the point.

They describe themselves as "alarmed and dismayed at the recent rhetoric employed by your campaign," naming attacks by Marshall and by Vice President Vance on the United Methodist Church, on the Church of the Resurrection congregation, and on the pastoral ministry of Rev. Adam Hamilton — the Methodist pastor who is Marshall's Democratic opponent.

The ministers are explicit that they are not asking him to go easy on the race:

"Political campaigns should highlight the differences between candidates to help voters decide who will best represent their interests. We encourage robust and vigorous debate about taxes, spending, regulation, foreign policy, military intervention, social welfare, immigration, human rights, the judicial system and countless other issues... There are so many things to talk about in this campaign Senator, we see no need for you to spend time insulting, demeaning, or dismissing the faith of other Christians."

They point out that their congregations contain people who will vote for Marshall and people who will vote for Hamilton, and that all of them come back to the same sanctuaries afterward — "perhaps even your home congregation in Great Bend."

Then the sharpest line in the letter:

"When you attack Adam's pastoral ministry, his home congregation, and our denomination as a whole, you sow seeds of division and dissent. You tear at the fabric that is the body of Christ."

The letter also invokes the First Amendment, arguing that a sitting senator who "base[s] your attacks on differences in faith and question[s] other's belief in God" is failing to protect religious freedom.

KWCH reports that 120 United Methodist clergy in Kansas signed it, and that 315 additional clergy from around the country signed in solidarity.

What he said that prompted it

The letter followed the Kansas State Fair debate in Hutchinson on Saturday, September 12, 2026.

Amy Lippoldt, senior pastor at Wichita First United Methodist Church, organized the letter and told KWCH she was in the audience: "I was at the state fair debate last Saturday and heard some of the comments Marshall said, trying to attack Adam's pastoral ministry."

At the debate, Marshall attacked Hamilton for "preaching from the pulpit to eat less beef," and said, per the Kansas News Service account: "He's too woke and he's too weak for Kansas." Lippoldt told KWCH the comments she objected to include "things like calling him a 'woke megachurch pastor.'"

Her concern was that the attack does not stop at one man. "It goes beyond just attacking Adam. It spreads to United Methodism in general. Christians attacking other Christians for their faith doesn't get us anywhere," she said.

The beef claim has a problem

The line Marshall keeps using is that Hamilton preached that Kansans should repent for eating beef. It is the centerpiece of the attack, and it is the thing he repeated when asked about the ministers' letter.

Zach Boblitt, covering the debate for the Kansas News Service — the story KCUR and High Plains Public Radio both carried — wrote that Marshall's attack "mirrors advertisements," and that he "continued this theme despite the ads splicing two different sermons together."

The Associated Press had already set out how the beef line was assembled. Republican PACs, it reported on September 2, base the claim "on a misleading stitching together of two parts of a 2020 sermon, with one clip showing Hamilton calling Christians 'to repentance' for not protecting God's creation and a second, earlier clip of him saying that 'maybe changing your diet' is among personal actions that could reduce greenhouse gas emissions."

That is the part a voter needs to know. On the AP's account, neither clip says what the ad says: one is a call to repentance for failing to protect creation, the other is a passing line about diet from earlier in the same sermon. Put them together and you get a sentence Hamilton never spoke — and a sitting United States senator repeated it from a debate stage in his home state.

His answer to the ministers

KWCH asked Marshall about the letter. His reply:

"I've not read the letter, but do you notice how they don't deny the truth here? This is a pastor who has a climate agenda, and because of that he said that Kansans should repent from eating beef."

Read that in order. He has not read the letter. He then says the people who wrote it are not denying "the truth." Then he restates the spliced claim as the truth they are not denying.

One hundred and twenty ministers wrote to tell him the attacks were hurting their churches. He responded by delivering the attack again, to the reporter asking about it, without having read what they said.

This is the same senator who will not meet them

Not reading a constituent letter is consistent with his record on constituent contact generally. We have already documented that Marshall went more than 500 days without holding a town hall open to the public — the basic setting in which Kansans could raise something like this with him face to face.

The clergy did the thing a senator's constituents are supposed to do. They wrote it down, signed it, published it, and asked for a change in conduct. The answer was that he had not read it.

What the record shows

One hundred and twenty United Methodist ministers in Kansas, joined by 315 clergy elsewhere in the country, signed a September 17, 2026 letter telling Roger Marshall that his campaign's attacks on their denomination, on the Church of the Resurrection, and on Rev. Adam Hamilton's ministry "tear at the fabric that is the body of Christ." Marshall told KWCH he had not read the letter, and then repeated the claim that prompted it — that Hamilton preached Kansans should repent for eating beef — a line the Associated Press reports was assembled by stitching together two parts of one 2020 sermon, one about protecting creation and an earlier one about diet.