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4. Mark Hatfield and Electoral Politics
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CHAPTER 4 Mark Hatfield and Electoral Politics We must be prepared to hear God’s word of judgment upon our nation, for hope comes only when we acknowledge our fallenness and repent. But then, we must also offer a word, and an example, of hope and renewal. —Mark Hatfield On a Monday morning in 1971 soon after the first issue of the Post-American was released, Jim Wallis took a telephone call from Senator Mark Hatfield, a Republican from Oregon. “Is it true,” asked the senator, who over the weekend had perused the provocative tabloid, “that there are other evangelical Christians against the war?” This brief exchange sparked a long and unlikely friendship between the long-haired radical and the silver-haired politician voted the best-dressed man in government. Wallis would go on to draft pieces of legislation for Hatfield’s staff and offer spiritual support to Hatfield himself. The Senator in turn would invite Wallis to Washington and then introduce the Post-Americans to the corridors of power when they moved to the nation’s capital four years later. On one memorable occasion, Hatfield, with a glint in his eye, led Wallis and a ragtag group of Post-Americans into the Senate Dining Room for a meal. Hatfield became a patron and critical ally who offered the Post-Americans and other young members of the evangelical left a measure of credibility. “They are among the finest young people I have ever met,” wrote Hatfield to a prospective landlord for the PostAmericans , “and I can assure you of their unquestioned integrity, high character , and responsibility.” Wallis’s father, returning the compliment in a letter Mark Hatfield and Electoral Politics 69 to a critic of his son, wrote, “Is not Mark Hatfield, for instance, who is a U.S. Senator, an authority in this land? He, as you know, is a real Evangelical.” Even conservative critics could not deny Hatfield’s evangelical credentials . He could pray with the passion of a Southern Baptist, ruminate about the integration of faith and learning with a starched Wheaton evangelical, and rail against civil religion with an evangelical radical like Wallis. In fact, Hatfield’s ability to bridge divides in the evangelical world—between old and young, radical and conservative—suggested the broader promise of the evangelical left as it emerged in the early 1970s. Hatfield, who showed the way for many evangelicals into the world of organized mainstream politics, stood as an exemplar of progressive politics and evangelical piety. He was regularly cited as a model politician and man of God during his meteoric rise from Oregon state legislator to two-term governor to U.S. senator to vicepresidential contender. His popularity and influence in evangelical circles, even as he pushed for civil rights legislation and against the Vietnam War and capital punishment, underscored the flexibility of evangelical politics and the fluidity of political parties before both hardened in the late 1970s. I The hard work but relative security of the lower middle class marked Hatfield ’s early years. Born on July 12, 1922, to a schoolteacher mother and a blacksmith father who worked for the Southern Pacific Railroad, Hatfield grew up in the logging town of Dallas, Oregon. The texture and rhythm of his days revolved around lumber. He played amid the rugged beauty of the mountains and lush forests of the Pacific Coast Range between the ocean and the Willamette Valley. A whistle in the town’s fire station blew at noon and five o’clock to signal that it was quitting time—and that the women had better have a meal ready soon. Insulated by a small family size and two secure jobs, Hatfield’s family weathered the Great Depression with relative ease. There was always plenty to eat, and they had enough money to send young Mark off to Willamette University in the state capital of Salem. The Hatfields were also politically active as faithful Republicans. At ten years old Hatfield pulled wagons full of Herbert Hoover campaign literature door to door. As a teenager he devoured Hoover’s The Challenge to Liberty (1934), an attack on Franklin Roosevelt’s “imperial presidency.” He mourned the end of Prohibition and denounced federal consolidation of power in the New [18.209.66.87] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 14:55 GMT) 70 Chapter 4 Deal. As a college student at Willamette, he worked for the Oregon Secretary of State and as a tour guide at the Oregon State...