James Pike
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- For the 19th century American journalist, see James Shepherd Pike.
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| Denomination | Episcopal Church in the United States of America |
| Senior posting | |
| See | California |
| Title | Bishop of California |
| Period in office | 1958— 1966 |
| Consecration | 1958 |
| Predecessor | Bishop Karl Morgan Block |
| Successor | Bishop Kilmer Meyers |
| Religious career | |
| Priestly ordination | 1946 |
| Personal | |
| Date of birth | February 14, 1913 |
| Place of birth | Oklahoma City, OK |
| Date of death | September 9, 1969 |
| Place of death | Wadi Duraja, Israel |
James Albert Pike (February 14, 1913 - September 1969) was an American Episcopal bishop, prolific writer, and one of the first mainline religious figures to appear regularly on television. He was the fifth Bishop of California.
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[edit] Early life
Pike was born in Oklahoma City on February 14, 1913. His father died when he was two, and his mother married California attorney Claude McFadden. The young Pike was a Roman Catholic and considered the priesthood, but while attending the [University of Santa Clara], he came to consider himself an agnostic. Pike earned a PhD from Yale Law School, and married Jane Alvies. He served as a attorney in Washington D.C. for the Securities and Exchange Commission during Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal era, and also taught law at George Washington University. After his fist marriage ended in divorce (later to be annulled), Pike married Esther Yanovsky. In World War II, he served with naval intelligence.
[edit] Conversion and early church life
At the war's end, Pike and his wife joined the Episcopal Church and Pike entered first the Virginia Theological Seminary and then the Union Theological seminary and began to prepare for the priesthood. He was ordained in 1946, first serving at a small New York state parish before becoming head of the Department of Religion and chaplain at Columbia University. He left Columbia in 1952 to become the Dean of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, New York where he reached a large audience with liberal sermons and weekly television programs. Common topics included birth control, abortion laws, racism, capital punishment, apartheid, antisemitism, and farm worker exploitation.[1]
[edit] Election as bishop
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After his election as bishop coadjutor in 1958 and his ascension to the See a few months later (following the death of his predecessor, Karl Morgan Block), he served until his abdication/resignation in 1966. At that point, he began to work for the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions, a private-sector think tank.
His episcopate was marked by both professional and personal controversy. He was involved with introducing the ordained ministry of women into the Episcopal Church, a living wage for workers in San Francisco, the acceptance of LBGT people in the church, and civil rights. Among his notable accomplishments, Pike met with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. during his march to Selma, Alabama. His theology was profoundly challenging to the Church, as Pike wrote questioning a number of widely regarded theological stances, including the virginity of Mary, the Mother of Jesus, and the doctrine of the Trinity. He famously called for “fewer beliefs, more belief.”[2] He was censured by his brother bishops in 1966 for this and resigned his position shortly thereafter.
In his personal life, Pike was a chain-smoker, an alcoholic, craved attention, and was likely addicted in some way to romance and relationships.[3] His charismatic personality drew many people to him, including his secretary, with whom he developed a romantic relationship that cost him his marriage to his second wife in 1969.
[edit] The Other Side
In 1966, Pike's son Jim took his life in a New York city hotel room following a period of experimentation with drugs. Shortly after his son's death Pike began to experience poltergeist phenomena. Books seemed to vanish and reappear, and safety pins were found open and placed to indicate the hour of 8:19, the approximate hour of his son's death. Half of the clothes in a closet were found disarranged and heaped up while the remainder were still in perfect order. [4] Pike led a public (and for the church, embarrassing) pursuit of various spiritualist and clairvoyant methods of contacting his deceased son in order to reconcile. In September 1967, Pike participated in a televised séance with his dead son through the medium, Arthur Ford, who served at the time as a Disciples of Christ minister. Pike detailed these experiences in his book The Other Side.
[edit] Death
In 1969, following an obsession with gnostic spirituality stemming from attempts to contact his dead son, Pike and his new wife drove into the Israeli desert. They were unprepared for the journey, and when their car broke down and became stuck, they separated in order to search for help. Accounts differ and an exact determination is impossible, though it is likely that Pike either fell into a wadi/oasis/creek bed to his death or else climbed in and subsequently died of exposure and thirst sometime between September 2nd and 9th. His body was recovered [1] and buried (following his wishes and those of his family) in the Protestant cemetery in Jaffa, Israel. [5]
[edit] In popular culture
James Pike was a loose inspiration for the character Timothy Archer in Philip K. Dick's book, The Transmigration of Timothy Archer. Pike and Philip K.Dick were friends and Pike officiated at Dick's wedding to Nancy Hackett in 1966. [6]
Joan Didion wrote about Pike and the building of the Grace Cathedral in her collection of essays, The White Album, The Noonday Press/Farrar, Straus and Giroux, NY, 1979.
[edit] Major works
- Beyond Anxiety Charles Scribner’s Sons, NY, 1953
- Beyond the Law Doubleday and Co. Inc., Garden City, NY, 1963
- The Church, Politics and Society (with John W. Pyle) Morehouse-Gorham Co., NY, 1955
- The Holy Scriptures- The Churches Teaching (V. 1) (assistant author to Robert C, Dentan) National Council, Protestant Episcopal Church, NY, 1949
- Doing the Truth Doubleday and Co. Inc., Garden City, NY, 1955
- Facing the Next Day see The Next Day below
- The Faith of the Church (with Norman Pittenger) Seabury Press, Greenwich, CT, 1951 (second copy Crossroads/Seabury Press, 1961)
- If This Be Heresy Harper and Rowe Publishers, NY, 1967 (also paperback- Delta Book/Dell Publishing, NY, 1969)
- If You Marry Outside Your Faith Harper and Bros., NY, 1954
- Man in the Middle (with Howard A. Johnson) The Seabury Press, Greenwich, CT, 1956
- Modern Canterbury Pilgrims (editor and essay) Morehouse-Gorham Co., NY, 1956 (also second, abridged edition, 1959)
- A New Look at Preaching Charles Scribner’s Sons, NY, 1961
- The Next Day Dolphin Books/ Doubleday and Co. Inc., Garden City, NY, 1957 also MacMillan Co. NY paperback Facing the Next Day, 1968)
- The Other Side (with Diane Kennedy) Doubleday and Co. Inc., Garden City, NY, 1968 (also paperback, Dell Publishing, NY, 1969)
- Our Christmas Challenge Sterling Publishing Co., Inc., NY, 1961
- Roadblocks to Faith (with John McG. Krumm) Morehouse-Gorham Co., NY, 1954
- A Roman Catholic in the White House (with Richard Byfield)- Doubleday and Co. Inc., Garden City, NY, 1960
- Teen-Agers and Sex Prentice-Hall Inc., Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1965
- A Time for Christian Candor Harper and Rowe Publishers, NY, 1964
- What is This Treasure Harper and Rowe Publishers, NY, 1966
- You and the New Morality Harper and Rowe Publishers, NY, 1967
[edit] Biographies
- Robertson, David M. [2004]. A Passionate Pilgrim: A Biography of Bishop James A. Pike. New York: Knopf. ISBN 0375411879. OCLC 53360781.
- Unger, Merrill Frederick [1971]. The Haunting of Bishop Pike: A Christian View of the Other Side. Wheaton, IL: Tyndale House Publishers. ISBN 0842313400. OCLC 141366.
- Stearn, Jess. "Bishop Pike's Strange Séances", This Week, The Baltimore Sun, 1968-01-28.
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- ^ Lampen, Michael. Bishop James Pike: Visionary or Heretic?. Tales from the Crypt. Grace Cathedral. Retrieved on 2007-03-20.
- ^ Pike, James [1967]. If This Be Heresy. New York: Harper and Rowe Publishers.
- ^ Lampen, Michael. Bishop James Pike: Visionary or Heretic?. Tales from the Crypt. Grace Cathedral. Retrieved on 2007-03-20.
- ^ Christopher, Milbourne [1970]. ESP, Seers & Psychics: What the Occult Really Is. New York: Crowell. ISBN 0690268157. OCLC 97063.
- ^ Yudkin, Gila. Whatever Happened to Bishop Pike. Pilgrimage Panorama with Gila, Your Holy Land Guide. Gila Yudkin. Retrieved on 2007-03-20.
- ^ The author with Bishop Pike. Philip K. Dick. Philip K. Dick Trust. Retrieved on 2007-03-20.
