For Americans of a certain vintage (meaning old people like me), Mark O. Hatfield, who died Sunday, will be remembered as the kind of politician who used to give us hope. Hatfield, a lifelong Republican, was elected Governor of Oregon in 1958 and US Senator from Oregon in 1966. He served the next thirty years in the Senate, carving out a reputation for independence, bipartisanship, and political courage. A Baptist, Hatfield’s political model was William Wilberforce, the British Evangelical and Member of Parliament whose fierce opposition to slavery led to the Slave Trade Act of 1807 and the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833. Like Wilberforce, Hatfield’s politics were nearly impossible to place on the conventional conservative-liberal spectrum. Hatfield was against abortion and the death penalty. He supported civil rights for racial and ethnic minorities, women, and homosexuals. And above all, he was a voice for peace.
As a young naval officer in 1945, Hatfield was one of the first Americans to view the man-made wasteland that was Hiroshima. Later, he served as an American naval attache in Indochina, where he witnessed the exploitation and oppression of the Vietnamese people by their French colonial masters. These experiences scarred him, and for the remainder of his life, Hatfield was a voice for peace, standing in stark contrast to the growing bipartisan enthusiasm for war. Although he was the keynote speaker at the 1964 Republican Convention that nominated Barry Goldwater, upon joining the Senate, Hatfield refused to support President’s Johnson’s war strategy, and in 1970 co-sponsored legislation that called for an immediate and unconditional withdrawal of American troops from Vietnam. Later, Hatfield co-sponsored or authored legislation on a nuclear freeze and nuclear testing, and on several occasions he voted against American foreign intervention.
Behind it all was a vibrant, deeply personal, yet socially conscious Christian faith that stands in stark contrast to the divisive, slash and burn religiosity of contemporary Republican figures like Rick Perry and Michelle Bachmann. In his introduction to a 2003 reissue of Wilberforce’s classic “Real Christianity,” Hatfield wrote: “It has become increasingly obvious to me that Christians reaching out in deed as well as word to touch the lives of the poor, the oppressed, the lonely, and the frightened, are the only expression in the flesh of the living Christ that many people are going to know. Wilberforce was certain, as I am, that social progress, if it is to be true, needs a biblical base.”
Oh, for a Congress full of people like Mark O. Hatfield, who will be sorely missed by the Republic he served so well.
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In