Bethine Church has served on The Wilderness Society governing council since 1993.

Bethine serves as chair of the Frank Church Institute at Boise State University in Idaho. The institute now includes the Endowed Frank and Bethine Church Chair of Public Affairs, which endows a professorship. The Institute also provides scholarships in Frank Church’s name.

Bethine recently retired as the president and founder of the Sawtooth Society. The society was formed to repair infrastructure and to protect the Sawtooth Valley and assure compatible development within central Idaho’s Sawtooth National Recreation Area. Bethine now serves as an emeritus member of the board.

Bethine is honorary co-chair of the Idaho Ann Frank Human Rights Memorial. Formerly, she served as a member of the Governor's Task Force on Home Care, on the Idaho State Democratic Party Finance Committee and was co-chair of the Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness Visions Management Seminar. Bethine is an emeritus member of the board of directors for the U.S. Capital Historical Society.

Bethine also is past director in the Boise Philharmonic Association and past president of the Center for Responsive Politics in Washington, D.C.

Bethine received a BA in Sociology from the University of Michigan.

Bethine is the author of “A Lifelong Affair: My Passion for People and Politics,” which deals with all the years of her life and her family’s life in politics.

Bethine has been a delegate to several national Democratic conventions. She served as the chair of the delegation in Los Angeles 40 years after her husband, the late Senator Frank Church, gave the keynote address there for John F. Kennedy.