A recently surfaced sermon clip from United Methodist pastor Adam Hamilton is drawing renewed discussion about how the Bible's account of Sodom should be read. According to Protestia, which reported on the clip on October 30, Hamilton told listeners that many of the men of Sodom who surrounded Lot's house in Genesis 19 were, in his view, heterosexual men.

Hamilton is the senior pastor of Church of the Resurrection, a multi-site United Methodist congregation with nine locations and more than 24,000 active members, making it the largest United Methodist church in the country, according to Protestia. He is also running as a Democratic candidate for the United States Senate in Kansas.

The passage at the center of the discussion is Genesis 19:4-5, which says that before Lot's visitors had gone to bed, the men of Sodom, both young and old, from every part of the city, surrounded the house and demanded that Lot bring his guests out to them. The visitors were angels, though the men of the city believed them to be ordinary men. In the sermon clip highlighted by Protestia, Hamilton argues that many of those attackers were heterosexual, a claim that reframes the familiar reading of the passage.

Protestia, which has covered Hamilton before, presented the clip critically, noting his earlier statements questioning parts of Scripture and his progressive positions on sexuality and abortion. The outlet's report does not include a fuller transcript of the sermon, so the clip as circulated shows Hamilton's conclusion without the full argument he built around it.

The discussion matters because Genesis 19 has long been a key text in debates about what the Bible teaches on sexual morality. Readers who hold a traditional view point to the passage, along with later Scripture, as a clear condemnation of the sin of Sodom. Others, including Hamilton in this sermon, argue that the passage is better understood as a story about violence, inhospitality, and attempted assault rather than about same-sex attraction itself.

What the text itself does say is plain on one point: the whole city rose up against Lot's household, and the men demanded his guests for wicked purposes. Whatever conclusions readers draw about the attackers, the Bible leaves no doubt that their conduct was evil. The Apostle Peter later describes Lot as a righteous man tormented by the lawless deeds he saw and heard, and says God made Sodom an example of what will happen to the ungodly.

For believers, the episode is a reminder to handle contested passages with care — reading what the text actually says, refusing to soften what it condemns, and refusing to claim more for a passage than it states. When a teacher's reading of Scripture surprises the church, the right response is to open the Bible, test the claim against the whole counsel of God, and hold fast to what is clearly written.