Hatfield, a prominent Baptist layman, frequently spoke before church groups, and his liberal positions were often criticized by the religious right… He said he was not concerned about that movement’s influence on the Republican Party, calling it an “embarrassment.” Instead, he said, “What I’m really concerned about is the impact it’s having on the cause of Christ — that somehow I’m going to come into a relationship with Christ by agreeing to their political agenda. That is not the key to salvation from the biblical teaching.”

Mark O. Hatfield, a liberal Republican who challenged his party’s positions on the Vietnam War and on a balanced-budget amendment to the Constitution during his 30 years as a Senator from Oregon, died on Sunday in Portland, Ore. He was 89.

His death was confirmed by Gerry Frank, a longtime aide.

Mr. Hatfield served in the Senate from 1967 to 1997, spending eight years as chairman of the Appropriations Committee. But he came out against the war even earlier, while serving his second term as governor of Oregon.

At a meeting of the National Governors Association on July 28, 1965, as his colleagues rallied behind President Lyndon B. Johnson, Mr. Hatfield said, “I cannot support the president on what he has done so far.” He complained that Mr. Johnson’s escalation of the war had American troops taking over South Vietnam’s responsibility “to win or lose.”

Citing “the deaths of noncombatant men, women and children,” he said the American bombing campaign “merits the general condemnation of mankind.”

At the time, a few prominent Democrats, including Senator Wayne Morse, a fellow Oregonian, were opposing the war. But Mr. Hatfield was the first prominent Republican to come out against it.

By the time he reached the Senate, opposition to the war was growing. In 1970 and 1971, he worked with Senator George S. McGovern of South Dakota on unsuccessful efforts to set a deadline for withdrawing American troops.

Mr. Hatfield said at a Washington prayer breakfast in 1973 that it was time for repentance for the “sin that scarred the national soul.” President Richard M. Nixon, who was in attendance, had just signed a cease-fire that ended the combat role for American forces.

Mr. Hatfield was a strong advocate of federal spending on medical research, motivated in part by his father’s suffering from Alzheimer’s disease and cancer among other relatives. For his home state he pushed for appropriations for the Oregon Science and Health University in Portland, and he backed bigger budgets for the National Institutes of Health and the creation of the institutes’ Office for Rare Diseases Research.

Medical research, he wrote in 2001, is one of the very few things “the government does extremely well.”

In March 1996, he told the Senate that with the end of the cold war, “the Russians are not coming,” alluding to the 1960s film comedy “The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming.” Instead, he said: “The greatest enemy we face today, externally, is the viruses that are coming, the viruses are coming.” Money being spent on defense should be shifted to human needs, he argued.

After he retired from the Senate, he remained a vocal advocate of spending at the health institutes, which named a facility for him, the Mark O. Hatfield Clinical Research Center.

Mr. Hatfield was one of the most liberal Republicans in the Senate. Over his career, he averaged a 65 percent favorable rating from the liberal advocacy group Americans for Democratic Action.

Those stands often put him at odds with fellow Republicans. His most serious breach with the party’s senators came in 1995, when he cast the only Republican vote against a constitutional amendment to require a balanced federal budget. His vote meant defeat for the measure, which had 66 votes — one short of the required two-thirds majority.

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