After being ordained, he was Protestant chaplain at Drexel University in Philadelphia and served simultaneously as pastor at the United Methodist Church in Lansdowne, Pa. He ran for Congress in 1974 and won as part of the wave of Democrats elected after the Watergate scandal. He told The Washington Post in 1980 that he had never attended a political meeting until he ran for office.

He did not endorse Jimmy Carter, the 1976 Democratic presidential nominee, in deference to his overwhelmingly Republican constituents. He was re-elected. But he joined President Carter in his campaign to curb the giant public works spending bills Congress was accustomed to passing every election year. These included appropriations for dams, harbor dredging and marinas, and were scattered like gold dust to districts throughout the United States.

His colleagues in the House were appalled. M. Gene Snyder, a Kentucky Republican, said Mr. Edgar lacked “an ounce of the milk of human kindness in his soul.” Mr. Edgar responded by threatening to offer 184 amendments, each aimed at some member’s favored project.

Mr. Edgar also led efforts to increase benefits for veterans, improve public transportation and increase the transparency of Superfund legislation to clean up toxic dumping sites. He served on the committee that investigated the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

After losing his Senate race, Mr. Edgar worked briefly helping political campaigns, teaching and working on arms control issues with a research group. In 1990, he began a 10-year tenure as president of the Claremont School of Theology in Claremont, Calif. He quintupled the college’s endowment to $22 million, increased minority enrollment by 40 percent and made Claremont a pre-eminent United Methodist seminary.

In 2000, he was named general secretary of the National Council of Churches, which consists of more than 100,000 local congregations and some 45 million congregants. One of his first actions was to become a leading advocate for the return of 6-year-old Elián González to his father in Cuba against the opposition of his relatives in Florida and many critics of Fidel Castro.