A Voice in the Wilderness: The Principled Politics of Mark Hatfield (Library of Religious Biography (LRB))

Meet the evangelical statesman who chose principles over partisanship. What does it look like when faith gives a politician the independence to follow his conscience rather than march in lockstep with his party? In A Voice in the Wilderness, award-winning historian and New York Times bestselling author Randall Balmer tells the remarkable story of Mark O. Hatfield―a Baptist, an evangelical, and arguably the last liberal Republican in America. Drawing on archival research and oral histories, Balmer offers more than a biography. He offers a counternarrative to the alignment of evangelicalism with right-wing politics―and a portrait of the principled public servant our moment so badly needs. Throughout his thirty years representing Oregon in the United States Senate, Hatfield never lost an election and never stopped following his conscience. He was the first prominent Republican to oppose the Vietnam War and the first prominent evangelical to oppose legalized abortion after Roe v. Wade.