After receiving his BS in agriculture studies, Hathaway attended Officer Candidate School and commissioned as an ensign in the US Navy, where he served on board the destroyer escort, USS McGinty, stationed in Pearl Harbor.
In the midst of controversy surrounding the Vietnam War, he was challenged to heal the divisive wounds of a church in Springfield, Virginia.
In the mid-1970s, Hathaway became involved with a group of conservative evangelical clergy and lay leaders in the establishment of Trinity Episcopal School for Ministry in Ambridge, Pennsylvania.
During his time as Bishop of Pittsburgh, from 1983 to 1997, he preached, taught and challenged a commitment to evangelical renewal of the congregations and a dedication by the diocese to the priority of new church planting.
He encouraged the broad vision of a world embracing faith in ecumenical fellowship with other Christian bodies and vigorous working relationships with churches in lands beyond U.S. shores.
He always remained an orthodox Anglican, upholding the sanctity of human life, from conception to death, and rejecting homosexual relationships as unnatural.
[2] In 1997, Hathaway founded Solar Light for Africa, Ltd. (SLA) and helped spawn a program that has provided electricity for over 2400 rural facilities in eight sub-Saharan countries.
He was a member of Communion Partners, an Episcopalian group which opposed the 77th General Episcopal Convention's decision to authorize the blessing of same-sex marriages in 2012.