Kansas is what people in New York and California call flyover country, states they only see from the air. The state is known for huge cattle ranches, devastating tornadoes and smoky barbecue sauces. This is the geographic center of the United States.
Kansas residents are also known to be conservative and religious. There are small and large churches everywhere you turn.
On the southern outskirts of Kansas City is the largest of them: Resurrection Church, the largest United States Methodist church with 23,000 parishioners.
It looks a bit like a metal spaceship that has just landed between the highways in the suburban landscape. Now if it weren't for the big sign that greets us.
This church has been in the spotlight because its founder, the Reverend Adam Hamilton, 62, has just been elected a senator for Kansas.
He is a Democrat, as is the more prominent Presbyterian James Talarico of Texas who will be his colleague in the Senate after a convincing victory on Tuesday. But Hamilton's victory was perhaps even more sensational given that Kansas had not elected a Democratic senator since 1932.
In the enormous church room, 3,600 believers take their seats in the stands on a typical Sunday. But when we get here it's empty, almost like an orchestra rehearsing for the Advent concerts in December.
Sarah Didio, 73, has come here with her old teaching colleague Maureen Bailey, 62, to show off her church. Maureen has traveled here from Maine, and they are both thrilled that Democrats won Senate seats in both their states.
- It was Adam Hamilton who made me choose this church when I moved back after many years elsewhere, says Sarah Didio.
- I am very proud that he has entered politics. He is a brilliant speaker. And I think he feels called, just as he did when he chose to become a pastor.
As recently as February of this year, Hamilton was registered as a Republican. The fact that he changed sides, and then immediately stood for election, came as a surprise to many.
He is considered a moderate Democrat and has gone to the polls with the message that he should not be seen as either left or right. It was probably a prerequisite for being elected here.
The megachurch in Leawood, Kansas, is still seen by many in Kansas as a "liberal" church. It welcomes LGBTQ people, does not condemn abortion and has aid projects in Africa.
Hamilton does not preach a literal interpretation of the Bible. He has also asked parishioners to reduce their carbon dioxide emissions - which does not prevent the church's parking lot from holding thousands of cars.
We speak with Max Franks, one of the church's young pastors. He believes Hamilton can be a bridge builder in Congress. A senator trying to find common ground with Republicans.
- We need such politicians now. There have been far too many attacks and insults thrown around. We all know who has been driving it.
Hamilton has told Max Franks that he and Talarico usually talk on the phone. He thinks they can work together in the Senate, that they can form a small bloc of religious Democrats there.
When the young pastor summarizes the church's message, he mentions Jesus' love commandment: love thy neighbor, love your neighbor as yourself. It is a message about tolerance and exactly what James Talarico usually emphasizes - that and "turning the other cheek".
The USA is far more religious than Sweden and most European countries. Here, one generally does not ask if a person is a Christian, rather which Christian church he or she belongs to.
In Kansas, around 70 percent of all adults see themselves as Christians. Most of them belong to some Protestant Free Church.
On a cattle ranch an hour south of Kansas City, we meet the Kitchen family, whose family came here as early as the 1870s. Dad Randy says he grew up in a Baptist church nearby, but doesn't go to church very often these days.
- I don't have time, it's too much work. But sometimes I listen to church services when I drive around in the tractor on Sundays.
We get a tour around the ranch, among the approximately 1,000 beef cows that the family owns. Underground there are oil deposits and here and there there are wobbling little oil pumps. They provide an important extra income.
Adam Hamilton has apparently succeeded in persuading some conservative voters in Kansas to switch parties and vote Democratic. In all counties in the conservative state, the Republican vote share decreased in the mid-term elections.
Many farmers here have also been unhappy with Donald Trump, because of the war in Iran and increased prices of diesel and fertilizer.
- I would still vote for him again. Nobody wants Iran to get nuclear weapons, and the fact that fuel prices keep going up isn't just his fault, says Randy Kitchen.
Everyone in the Kitchen family seems skeptical of politicians in general, both Republican and Democrat. Including Roger Marshall, Adam Hamilton's Republican opponent.
- But I don't really think pastors should get involved in politics, says Randy's 29-year-old daughter Harleigh.
She says that she was "pretty far to the left" when she was in college, but that she now votes Republican again. And she thinks she notices that the churches in Kansas are becoming more and more left-wing.
Still, the churches that are further to the right politically seem to live and thrive in many places here.
A month before the election, Kyle Lammott, a pastor in Wichita, wrote an open letter to Adam Hamilton urging him to withdraw his candidacy for the Senate and to do penance.
The criticism was that Hamilton "denies the gospel", among other things, because he blesses gay couples and is in favor of the right to abortion. Over 200 pastors and church officials signed the letter.
We meet one of them, Baptist pastor Wayne Ova, in his small church in the town of Osawatomie.
- What I think is that the Democrats have centrally brought forward Hamilton. There is a lot of money behind this, he says.
Pastor Ova is a literalist Christian and believes that man and the earth were created in seven days about 6,000 years ago. He and his congregation are people who almost always vote Republican.
- But I am not for either Republicans or Democrats, I am for Jesus Christ, he says.
The pastor's criticism is reminiscent of that which has come from Republican politicians against both James Talarico and Adam Hamilton. During the election campaign, Republicans paid for television ads claiming that the Texas Democrat is "a Christian who hates Christianity."
When Vice President JD Vance, himself a Catholic, visited Kansas recently, he told the audience that Hamilton "spits on your religion to collect donations."
In the midterm elections, two Democratic candidates from free churches also won in Iowa. There are also three African-American pastors in Congress, among them Senator Raphael Warnock of Georgia, all Democrats.
Add to that another religious power factor: the American Pope Leo XIV, who voted in the midterm elections - and who is considered to be close to the Democrats.
Two different interpretations of the Christian message live side by side in religious America. The battle for souls is also a political battle. And right now the left-wing Christians have the upper hand.
