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Bishop James Pike: Visionary or Heretic?
Archival pieces from Michael Lampen, Attorney, dean, bishop, iconoclast, searcher--James Albert Pike, Fifth Bishop of the Diocese of California, was a restless and radical visionary. Grace Cathedral was completed during his nine-year bishopric, and several of its features reflect his modern spirit. To some he was a heretic, to others a man decades ahead of his time. His legacy is a more progressive and inclusive church, not afraid of difficult questions, and open to free inquiry.
Born in Oklahoma City in 1913, James Pike's father died when he was two, and his mother married California attorney Claude McFadden. A devout young Roman Catholic headed for the priesthood, he abandoned his background and became an agnostic while attending the University of Santa Clara. He became interested in law, earned a doctorate at Yale Law School, and married Jane Alvies. Pike served as a Washington D.C. attorney for the Securities and Exchange Commission during Roosevelt's New Deal era, and taught law at George Washington University. Following a divorce and second marriage to Esther Yanovsky, he served with naval intelligence during World War II.
After the war, Pike and his wife joined the Episcopal Church and he began studies for the priesthood at Virginia and Union Theological Seminaries. Ordained in 1946, he served a New York state parish and as Episcopal chaplain at Vassar College before becoming chaplain and head of the Department of Religion at Columbia University. In 1952 Pike was appointed Dean of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, New York, where his liberal sermons and television forum attracted much attention. In 1958, over conservative opposition, he was elected Bishop Coadjutor of the Diocese of California, becoming Bishop on the death of his predecessor, Bishop Karl Morgan Block, a few months later.
During his episcopate, Bishop Pike's increasingly iconoclastic views became front page news, and he was featured on the cover of Time magazine. His radical theology rejected dogmatic interpretations of the Virgin Birth and the Incarnation, questioned the basis of theological concepts such as Original Sin and the Trinity, and challenged the infallibility of scripture. 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 call for a heresy trial by the Episcopal House of Bishops in 1966 resulted in the formal censure of his theological views as "offensive" and "irresponsible." He was in the forefront of civil rights, marching in Selma and being expelled from Rhodesia. Favorite sermon targets were abortion laws, capital punishment, apartheid, anti-Semitism, and farm worker exploitation. A prolific author, he expounded his views in controversial books such as A Time for Christian Candor and If This be Heresy. Bishop Pike was also an early advocate of women's ordination. In 1965 he recognized Deaconess Phyllis Edwards as an ordained woman deacon, but it would be another two decades before full acceptance of the concept. Bishop Pike became increasingly disenchanted with the Episcopal Church, and institutional religion in general, and resigned as Bishop of California in 1966--although, under church law, such an act was not possible for an ordained bishop. He joined the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions, a liberal think-tank in Santa Barbara, but soon left it also, continuing his personal research and lectures. More guru than scholar, Pike was most at home as an outsider, an iconoclast, and a rebel. He was in some ways a latter-day ecclesiastical counterpart of the famed 19th century iconoclastic writer Ambrose Bierce, although lacking Bierce's acidic pessimism. 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.
The completed Grace Cathedral is to some extent a monument to Bishop Pike's ability to inspire those who shared his vision. His cutting-edge social awareness and liberal theology closely matched those of Dean Bartlett and Canon David Forbes, whose idea to feature modern figures such as Thurgood Marshall (Law window) and Paul Tillich (Theological Reform window) he welcomed. As early as 1953 Pike had designed a Massachusetts church with a central altar, so he enthusiastically backed their vision of a central High Altar, accessible and visible to all worshippers. Similarly, he welcomed their idea of a centrally-placed Baptismal Font near the cathedral entrance. Bishop Pike is depicted in the Cathedral Completion mural (fifth bay, north aisle) and is named on the Golden Anniversary Plaque in the adjacent AIDS Interfaith Chapel. He consecrated the completed Cathedral in 1964, dedicating the building by tracing the nave Chi Rho (floor brass monogram for Christ) and celebrated the first Eucharist at the new High Altar. Outside, the Bishop Pike Steps (1995) lead from the top stairway landing to the cathedral courtyard.
Personal problems caught up with Bishop Pike as the 1960s reached their turbulent climax. A chain smoker with an active attention-seeking personality, he had overcome a drinking problem in 1964. The suicide of his oldest son in 1966, and subsequent paranormal events, led him on a long and highly public search, aided by noted psychics and mediums, to reach and reconcile with his son. In 1967 he divorced Esther Pike, and the following year married his secretary, Dianne Kennedy. On a visit to Israel to research Christian origins, Pike and his new wife decided to drive from Bethlehem to Masada. The desert road, supposedly leading to the Dead Sea and Masada, petered out, and the car got stuck as they tried to turn around. Mrs. Pike unwisely started down to the Dead Sea on foot, while he waited at the car. She stumbled down a rugged canyon in the searing heat and eventually managed to find help. Meanwhile, Pike had decided to follow her, but entered a different canyon, apparently slipped and fell to his death. After an extensive four-day search by the Israeli Army in the rugged and barren terrain, his body was found in the deep Wadi Duraja. At his family's request, and as he had someday wished, James Albert Pike was buried in the Protestant Cemetery at Jaffa, the old seaport south of Tel Aviv.
Few other American religious figures have matched Bishop Pike's lasting influence on contemporary theology and society. For him, the search was more important than the discovery--the question more important than the answer. He envisioned a church free of any divisions, open to deep conversation and theological exploration, and fearless in the pursuit of individual and social justice. Spiritual iconoclast and theological pioneer, he helped to prepare the way for the church in the new millennium.
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