PIKE, James Albert, Jr.

(b. 14 February 1913 in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma; d. 3 September 1969 in the Judaean desert, Israel), attorney, Episcopal dean and bishop, iconoclast, and searcher who to some became a martyr upon his unusual death in a desert in the Middle East.

Pike was the only child of James Albert Pike, a salesman, and Pearl Agatha (Wimsatt) Pike, a homemaker. His father died of tuberculosis in 1915 when Pike was just two years old. He moved with his mother to California in 1921. In 1924 she married Claude McFadden, an attorney. Even as a child, Pike's curiosity was insatiable; he had read both the dictionary and the phone book from cover to cover by the time he was five and a whole set of the Encyclopedia Britannica before he was ten. Pike attended Hollywood schools and graduated from high school in 1930.

As long as he lived, Pike continued his formal education. When he entered the Jesuit College, University of Santa Clara in California in 1930, he was a devout Roman Catholic headed for the priesthood. After two years he became an agnostic, dropped out of Santa Clara, and left the Catholic Church. For a year he attended the University of California, Los Angeles, finally transferring to the University of Southern California in Los Angeles where he got an A.B. in 1934 and a LL.B. in 1936. Pike received his J.S.D. from Yale (Sterling Fellow, 1936–1937) in New Haven, Connecticut, in 1938. He continued to earn degrees his entire life, including many honorary ones, ranging from a B.D. (magna cum laude, Union Theological Seminary, 1951) to an Honorary Fellow (University of Tel Aviv, 1956).

In 1938 Pike married his first wife, Jane Alvies, moved to Washington, D.C., as an attorney with the Securities and Exchange Commission, and established the law firm of Pike and Fischer. He divorced Alvies in 1940. Pike served from 1943 to 1945 in the U.S. Navy, first in naval intelligence and later as an attorney with the U.S. Maritime Commission. Just before entering the service, he married Esther Yanovsky on 29 January 1942; they had four children. During his time in Washington, Pike became involved in the Episcopal Church and studied for the ministry at the Virginia Theological Seminary in Alexandria. He was ordained as a deacon in the Episcopal Church in December 1944 and as a priest in November 1946.

Pike's career as a clergyman and scholar moved ahead rapidly. After two years as the curate of Saint John's Church and chaplain at George Washington University, he moved to Poughkeepsie, New York, as the rector of Christ Church and chaplain at Vassar College (1947–1949). Next he took a post at Columbia University in New York City, where he was the head of the religion department and chaplain. From 1952 to 1958 he was the dean of the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine in New York City, where his liberal sermons and television forum attracted much attention. In 1958, over conservative opposition, he was elected the bishop coadjutor of the Diocese of California in San Francisco, becoming the diocesan bishop (1958–1966) on the death of his predecessor a few months later.

Pike developed a controversial reputation through his passion, persistence, and public concern about political issues. He did this in an era when most ecclesiastics were devoting their energies to the problems and concerns of their own churches. He used his public image, including appearing on the cover of Time magazine, and public forum to bring his concerns for his church to the forefront. These issues included recovery of Christian origins, studies of the historical Jesus, the ordination of women, ecumenical renewal of the church, and the credibility of traditional dogmas. His call to "demythologize" the church was an expression of his view that the church was burdened by "theological baggage." He called for "more belief, fewer beliefs." A prolific author, Pike expounded his views in controversial books such as A Time for Christian Candor (1964) and If This Be Heresy (1967). He also wrote The Church, Politics, and Society (with H. W. Pyle, 1955), What Is This Treasure? (1966), The Other Side (1967), and You and the New Morality: Seventy-four Cases (1967).

Pike was an early advocate of women's ordination to the priesthood. In 1965 he recognized Phyllis Edwards as an ordained woman deacon, although it would be another two decades before the church's full acceptance of that concept. By 1966 Pike had become increasingly disenchanted with the Episcopal Church and institutional religion in general. In September of that year, the Episcopal House of Bishops called for a heresy trial that resulted in the formal censure of Pike's theological views as "offensive" and "irresponsible." He was vindicated at the 1967 General Convention, thus ending the heresy battle. These activities and his strong personal beliefs let him continue his favorite political sermon targets: abortion laws, capital punishment, apart-heid, anti-Semitism, farm worker exploitation, and civil rights. He also engaged in such activities as marching for civil rights in Selma, Alabama, and being expelled from Rhodesia.

In 1966 Pike resigned as the bishop of California and joined the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions, a liberal think tank in Santa Barbara. He soon left the center to continue his independent research and lectures. Personal problems caught up with Pike as the decade reached its turbulent end. After the suicide of his oldest son in 1966, and subsequent self-reported paranormal events, he started on a long and public search to reach and reconcile with his son. Noted psychics and mediums aided his quest. In July 1968 Pike divorced his second wife and on 20 December of that year he married his secretary, Diane Kennedy. He denounced the institutional church in April 1969. At this time he helped to form the Foundation for Religious Transition in Santa Barbara.

While Pike's brilliant and restless mind continued to lead him on a fast-paced search for truth and meaning, his Christian faith remained with him "in a radical and raw form," and he continued to explore its roots. On a visit to Israel's occupied West Bank in 1969 to research Christian origins, Pike and his wife apparently took a wrong turn in the desolate Judaean desert, southeast of Bethlehem. They left their car and became separated. Pike's wife managed to reach help at the Dead Sea shore. After an exhaustive four-day search by the Israeli army, Pike's body was found in the Wadi Duraja, a canyon amid rugged terrain. He is buried in the Protestant Cemetery in Jaffa, Israel.

Few American religious figures have matched Pike's lasting impact on modern theology and society. Pike always felt the search was more important than the discovery, the question more important than the answer. As he expressed in his sermons and writing throughout the 1960s, Pike envisioned a church free of divisions, open to deep conversation and theological exploration, and fearless in the pursuit of individual and social justice. He was most at home as an outsider, an iconoclast, and a rebel. To some Pike was a heretic, to others a man decades ahead of his time.

The James A. Pike papers are housed at the Special Collections, Syracuse University Library in New York. In addition, some of his papers are in the archives of the Episcopal Church in Austin, Texas. Books on his controversial life include William Stringfellow and Anthony Towne, The Bishop Pike Affair: Scandals of Conscience and Heresy, Relevance, and Solemnity in the Contemporary Church (1967), and The Death and Life of Bishop Pike (1976); Merrill Unger, The Mystery of Bishop Pike: A Christian View of the Other Side (1968); Hans Holzer, The Psychic World of Bishop Pike (1970); and Michael Lawrence Mickler, James A. Pike: Bishop and Iconoclast (1989). "Death in the wilderness," Time (1969); "Man of faith, child of doubt," by J. Cogley, Life (1969); "Wrong turn in Judea," Newsweek (1969); a series in the New York Times (3 Sep. 1969–15 Sep. 1969) that looks at the search for, recovery of remains, burial, and memorial services for Pike.

Joan Goodbody