Heroes: Senator Mark Hatfield

Sen. Mark O. Hatfield

I have never been a person to be very involved in the world of politics- unless you count complaining as being involved.  There was a time however, in which I was very outspoken about a particular political hot button.  In the last 1970s and early 1980s the threat of global thermonuclear was was very real.  Our government and that of the former Soviet Union had spent years building and stockpiling nuclear weapons, and the possibility of their use led many Christian pacifists to take up a "sword of peace" in the name of Jesus.  Many of those (like myself) who did this were wild-eyed young radicals with little to lose.  One who took a stand that could have cost him everything was Senator Mark Hatfield of Oregon.  He passed away Sunday, and so today I want to remember the only political hero I have ever had.


As early as 1966, Senator Hatfield was working in the U.S. senate to end the war in Vietnam.  Later, he was a republican senator at a time when what we now know as the conservative movement was just beginning.  He was an evangelical Christian at a time when evangelicals were first finding their political clout.  As Jerry Falwell's Moral Majority ( I had a button on my office bulletin board for years that said, "The Moral Majority is neither!") began to organize and campaign for Ronald Reagan in the late 1970s, Senator Hatfield found himself at odds with both his republican and evangelical friends.  For those of you old enough to remember those years, imagine being an evangelical republican opposed to Ronald Reagan. It was not an easy path.  He was a tireless worker for peace because he believed that the way of peace was the way of Jesus.  Over the following years he pushed for things like nuclear disarmament, a Nuclear Freeze and the Law of the Sea Treaty.  He did all of those things not because there was political gain got be made (quite the opposite), but because he believed they were issues that Jesus would be concerned about.  He took the words of Christ about peacemaking very seriously. And this willingness to follow Jesus often put him at odds with his contemporaries in evangelical politics.  I first became a fan when he began to champion the concept of a World Peace Tax Fund.  I had friends and colleagues who had begun to refuse to pay, or to attempt to designate for other things, the portion of their taxes that were being spent on the military, which was well over 60 cents on the dollar at the time.  Some went to jail for this protest. Senator Hatfield helped to promote the idea that if a special tax fund were set up for those who didn't want their money spent on war, then a compromise could be found.  This never came to pass, and the good Senator found himself enemy #1 of groups like the Reagan republicans and the Moral Majority.  At one point, he was #1 on their hit list of people that they wanted to defeat in the next election.  I remember my total disbelief as a Christian group tried to defeat the most outspoken follower of Jesus in the senate.  Such things no longer shock me...


So today I celebrate the life of Mark Hatfield as he goes to be with his God by remembering that his life is a reminder of what the Jesus Revolution should look like.  His life was driven by his belief in the teachings of Jesus.  He was not perfect, nor always right- but he stood up for his beliefs in a very public forum even when most of the rest of the world stood against them.  He is a reminder that no one political party or perspective holds the truth- only Jesus does.  And for me, Senator Hatfield's life is a beacon to us all.  The Jesus Revolution is about standing for what is right- even if you are standing alone.  


Because of Jesus,