LEAWOOD, Kansas — It’s an unmistakable reminder of election season: grassy medians and front lawns turn red, white and blue with political ads hoping to grab the attention of passersby.
But discerning motorists in Kansas City may have spotted signs of a different shade — purple. And where a politician’s name would usually be, these signs sport abstract slogans like “Love your neighbor,” “Do Unto Others” or simply “Kindness.”
It’s the third installment of a project by the Leawood-based United Methodist Church of the Resurrection. Since 2020, their Campaign for Kindness has distributed thousands of signs in their community — and congregations around the country are joining.
The program is one way for churches to get politically active at a time when congregations are trying to discuss contentious issues without alienating members.
“We’re trying to blanket Kansas City in love, compassion, understanding,” said Doug Wyckoff, a volunteer helping coordinate the effort.
On a “Serve Saturday" event in September, 82-year-old Wyckoff greeted small groups of volunteers. The sounds of children and clanging metal stakes echoing against the atrium ceiling were a welcome replacement for the political noise he’s grown tired of hearing in retirement.
“My wife would comment, she said, ‘you’re getting to be a grumpy old man,” he said. “And I think I was.”
That started to change a few years ago after he heard a sermon by Adam Hamilton, the church’s founder and senior pastor, that inspired Wyckoff to turn that frustration into goodwill. Now the retired marketing executive is helping distribute posters designed to spread that message beyond the congregation.
“I don’t think I’m a grumpy old man anymore,” Wyckoff said.
Faith in politics
Resurrection is the nation’s largest United Methodist congregation. It boasts 24,000 regular members. Spread out across six — and counting — branches around Kansas City, the church has become a role model for how other religious institutions can navigate the evolving politics of suburban America.
And nowhere is that transformation starker than in Leawood, Kansas, where Resurrection is headquartered. It’s in an area that has turned rapidly from a Republican stronghold a decade ago to a blue enclave of the state. Northeast Kansas has been pivotal in electing Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly and voting to preserve abortion rights in a 2022 statewide referendum.
Key Statehouse races in that area could decide whether Republicans keep two-thirds majorities in the Statehouse, which allows them to pass laws over the Democratic governor’s veto.
Resurrection’s willingness to talk politics fits with a national trend. Nearly two-thirds of Mainline Protestant churches discussed elections in sermons in 2020, according to Pew Research.
Nonetheless, Resurrection stands out for how it’s managed to avoid major losses despite the headwinds facing churches across the country.
Church participation is on the decline in America. Though the trend is decades in the making, the COVID-19 pandemic had an accelerating effect, driving people out of public spaces and increasing the expectation for churches to adapt to online modes of worship.
But that’s only one factor. Another is polarization: over 40 percent of pastors who responded to a 2022 survey had considered quitting within the past year and many cited political division as a reason why. Plus, research suggests that younger generations, who skew liberal, are less drawn to Christianity because they associate it with right-wing politics.
Churches have found diverse ways of dealing with the polarization problem. At Abundant Life Church in Lee’s Summit, Missouri, Lead Pastor Phil Hopper recently chose to make his views clear.
“There’s a chance to bring two more godly people on the board of education,” he said before April municipal elections, seemingly endorsing candidates in the race.
Churches can technically lose their tax-exempt status for backing specific candidates, though the rule is rarely enforced.
Examples like this contrast with Resurrection’s unassuming signs preaching to “Love Your Neighbor.” But since its founding in 1990, the church has weathered its share of political storms.
Resurrection’s founding father
The office of Pastor Hamilton (or “Pastor Adam” as congregants call him) contains a boardroom-length table surrounded on three sides by jam-packed floor-to-ceiling bookshelves.
One title stood out: a thick volume on the works of French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre.
Hamilton would undoubtedly differ with the 20th century existentialist thinker on basic questions like “What role should organized religion play in society?” or “What does in mean to ‘be?’” But a book about a famed atheist is at home in the library of a pastor who’s made a national name for himself by tackling differences of opinion head-on.
"We try to listen to people on both sides and we try to find places where we can learn from each other, grow from each other and hold to this 'radical center' if you will," Hamilton said.
Through sermons, books and even yard signs, Hamilton strives to preach the value in both conservative and liberal worldviews.
In 2022, ahead of a statewide referendum on whether to preserve the Kansas Constitution’s guarantee of the right to an abortion, Resurrection organized a town hall. Health care providers, a former state legislator and a federal judge — all women — discussed different views on the amendment and its possible implications.
Hamilton spoke openly about his position as "pro-life with a heavy heart," but said he would not tell anyone how to vote. Northeast Kansas ended up being instrumental in voting to uphold abortion rights in the state.
On other issues, Hamilton has been more conclusive. For decades, he criticized rules in the Methodist Church barring LGBTQ people from serving in the clergy.
“As a congregation that's been one issue about which we have been clear. This is a church that's going to be inclusive of everyone,” he said. “And that was hard. We had people leave the church.”
In 2004, Hamilton said 800 congregants left after he preached that gay and lesbian people belong in the church. But 1200 more members joined that same year.
Hamilton’s more liberal view on that issue ultimately won out on a larger scale. In April of this year, the United Methodist General Conference ended a half-century-long conflict by voting to lift some anti-LGBT provisions from its rule book.
The issue drove at least 20% of United Methodist Churches to disaffiliate, straining resources for those that remain. But Resurrection continues to grow.
“I think if we never talked about these things we'd be two or three times larger than we are today. But I think I would not be proud of the church that we had started,” Hamilton said.
Critics have sent scathing emails calling Hamilton a “woke pastor.” More congregants left when he supported Black Lives Matter protests in 2020 and a vandal spray painted the words “Church of the Vaccination” outside one branch after it served as a clinic for COVID-19 vaccines.
For all of Hamilton’s efforts at bipartisanship, he’s steered Resurrection in a progressive direction overall. At this point, he said, most of those who would leave due to political differences — an outcome he still fights to prevent – probably already have.
The United Methodist DNA
To Margeaux Seymour, having some members leave is not necessarily a bad thing. Seymour is a member of church leadership who identifies as lesbian and genderqueer.
“If we're doing something right, if we're making the conscious effort to do the better thing, it's okay if we have natural attrition,” Seymour said.
Seymour rekindled their faith at Resurrection after feeling unwelcome elsewhere because of their sexuality and gender identity. One of their many roles as Lay Leader at Resurrection is to research and propose strategies for creating an LGBTQ-inclusive environment at the church. That could include rooting out antiquated language in sermons or training church staff to be sensitive to the unique needs of queer youth.
“That's my religion — love and redemption,” Seymour said.
Methodists have been involved in progressive politics since before the United States became its own country, according to official church historian Ashley Boggan.
Movements for abolition, women's’ suffrage and civil rights saw Methodists mobilize externally and divide internally. In the lead-up to the Civil War, the question of whether to accept slavery in the church caused a major schism.
Yet Boggan said Methodism has always had a progressive slant. She called John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist movement, a “rabble-rouser” who was willing to bend rules to bring more people into his faith.
Given that reputation, Boggan said the church’s Campaign for Kindness and its neutral-seeming yard signs might still carry some political baggage.
“It’s just absurd to me that we have politicized love and kindness. But that is where I think we are,” she said.
Zane Irwin reports on politics, campaigns and elections for the Kansas News Service. You can email him at zaneirwin@kcur.org.
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