Born and raised in Boise, Idaho, he enrolled at Stanford University in 1942 but left to enlist in the Army, where he served as a military intelligence officer in the China Burma India Theater of World War II.

Considered a strong progressive and environmental legislator, he played a major role in the creation of a system of protected wilderness areas.

He traced his ancestry from the East Coast of the United States, with his grandfather, Frank Forrester Church I, moving to Idaho during the height of the gold rush that followed the end of the Civil War.

[2] As a junior in 1941, he won the American Legion National Oratorical Contest, which resulted in him receiving sufficient funds to provide for his four-year enrollment at Stanford University in California, where he joined the Theta Xi fraternity.

[4] In 1956, Church ran for the Class-3 Senate seat held by Herman Welker, who had alienated many Republicans for his opposition to President Dwight D. Eisenhower's programs and his alleged affiliation with McCarthyism.

He faced a number of opponents, including Ricks College professor Claude Burtenshaw, bureaucrat Alvin McCormack, and former senator Glen H.

Though Church won the nomination, Taylor refused to concede, and claimed a number of voting irregularities in the canvassing of the primary.

Church also campaigned on an internationalist plank, in favor of a publicly owned Hells Canyon Dam[21] and was conservative on money matters.

[23] This was despite a number of factors that might have inhibited Church's campaign, including the Republican's fundraising advantage and Eisenhower's large victory in the presidential election.

[22] Upon entering the Senate in January 1957, Church voted against a procedural motion on the Civil Rights Act of 1957 against the wishes of Democratic Majority Leader Lyndon B. Johnson.

[25] Johnson was so grateful he made the young Idahoan a veritable protégé, rewarding him with plum assignments, such as a seat on the prestigious Senate Foreign Relations Committee, a position which allowed Church to follow in the footsteps of his idol, William Borah.

Following the instinct that led him to ask questions early on (see above), Church was one of the first senators to publicly oppose the Vietnam War in the 1960s, although he had supported the conflict earlier.

Author David F. Schmitz states that Church based his assertion on the fact that two key propositions of the anti-war movement, "A negotiated peace and the withdrawal of American troops," were now official policy.

Church concluded: So the last service the doves can perform for their country, is to insist that President Nixon's withdrawal program truly leads to a "Vietnamization" of the war.

The gathering crisis in our own land, the deepening divisions among our people, the festering, unattended problems here at home, bear far more importantly on the future of our Republic than anything we ever had at stake in Indochina.Church argued that the opponents of the Vietnam War needed to prevent the corruption of the nation and its institutions.

"[34] Church gained national prominence during his service in the Senate through his chairmanship of the U.S. Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities from 1975 through 1976, more commonly known as the Church Committee, which conducted extensive hearings investigating extra-legal FBI and CIA intelligence-gathering and covert operations.

[40][41][42][43]In a secret operation code-named "Project Minaret," the National Security Agency (NSA) monitored the communications of leading Americans, including Senators Church and Howard Baker, Rev.

"[44] Church is also remembered for his voting record as a strong progressive and environmental legislator, and he played a major role in the creation of the nation's system of protected wilderness areas in the 1960s.

In 1968, he sponsored the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act and gained passage of a ten-year moratorium on federal plans to transfer water from the Pacific Northwest to California.

Working with other members of Congress from northwestern states, Church helped establish the Hells Canyon National Recreation Area along the Oregon-Idaho border, which protected the gorge from dam building.

According to the Christian Science Monitor, this stance somewhat disarmed his opponent's charge in the 1980 campaign that Church's performance on the Foreign Relations Committee had helped to weaken the US militarily.

[48] In 1974, Church joined Senator Frank Moss, D-Utah, to sponsor the first legislation to provide federal funding for hospice care programs.

In 1976, it was publicly revealed that Lockheed had paid $22 million in bribes to foreign officials[51] in the process of negotiating the sale of aircraft including the F-104 Starfighter, the so-called "Deal of the Century."

Church also sponsored, along with Pennsylvania Republican John Heinz, the "conscience clause," which prohibited the government from requiring church-affiliated hospitals to perform abortions.

[6] In 1976, Church belatedly sought the Democratic nomination for president and announced his candidacy on March 18 from rustic Idaho City, his father's birthplace.

[52] Although he won primaries in Nebraska, Idaho, Oregon, and Montana, he withdrew in favor of the eventual nominee, former Georgia governor Jimmy Carter.

The scheme proved to be widely unpopular in Idaho, and led to the formation of the "Anybody But Church" (ABC) committee, created by the National Conservative Political Action Committee (NCPAC), based in Washington, D.C. ABC and NCPAC had no formal connection with the 1980 Senate campaign of conservative Republican congressman Steve Symms, which permitted them, under former Federal election law, to spend as much as they could raise to defeat Church.

His defeat was blamed on the activities of the Anybody But Church Committee and the national media's early announcement in Idaho of Republican presidential candidate Ronald Reagan's overwhelming win.

Following his 24 years in the Senate, Church practiced international law with the Washington, D.C., firm of Whitman and Ransom, specializing in Asian issues.

[61][62][63] Church received an honorary doctorate from Pennsylvania's Elizabethtown College in 1983 to honor his work for the American people during his career in public office.