James Pike: Spiritual Wanderer Is Laid to Rest

James Albert Pike, 56, died in the Judean wilderness in search of the “historical Jesus,” the figure who seemed to elude the controversial Episcopal churchman most of his life.

After Pike’s body was found on a rocky ledge two miles from the Dead Sea, his 31-year-old wife, Diane, looking pale from her ordeal, declared: “There could have been no more appropriate place for Jim to die, if he had to die.” She survived a ten-hour trek through the same rough terrain a week earlier.

It was Jim’s (he preferred to be called “just plain Jim” since his complete break with the institutional church last April) sixth trip to the Holy Land.

He planned his itinerary for the August 24-October 2 trip to include places of biblical importance, partly to do research on a book about Jesus (he reportedly told friends it would be the most sensational yet, that it would debunk the New Testament story of Jesus), and partly to make arrangements for a tour the Pikes were to lead next January.

Prepared for the scorching desert with only a couple of bottles of Coca Cola and a map, the Pikes set off shortly after noon September 1 in a rented car to “get the feel” of the wilderness where the Gospels say Jesus went to pray and where he was tempted by Satan. Their car became stuck on some rocks, and, after failing to free it, the pair struck off on foot. Several hours later, Pike, exhausted, lay down, and his wife left him in search of help. She staggered into the outskirts of Bethlehem, where Bedouin road-construction workers helped her to safety.

Pike was buried in a service read from the Anglican prayer book by Episcopal priest John Downing, who heads Pike’s Foundation for Religious Transition in Santa Barbara, California—a half-way house formed last spring for clerical dropouts and “church alumni.”

Pike’s body was lowered into lonely St. Peter’s Cemetery at Jaffa, a suburb of Tel Aviv. Several days later a high requiem mass was said for him in Grace Cathedral, San Francisco, the church where he and then United Presbyterian Stated Clerk Eugene Carson Blake in 1960 proposed the plan that subsequently became the Consultation on Church Union.

The statements of several high-ranking Episcopal colleagues set in focus the controversy that swirled around the quick-witted and unpredictable Pike most of his life. Said Presiding Bishop John E. Hines: “The geographical location in which his death occurred symbolized his intense desire to get at the source of developments and events for the evidence of truth in them.”

Bishop C. Kilmer Myers, who succeeded Pike in the Diocese of California in 1966 when Pike resigned as bishop to become a fellow at the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions in Santa Barbara, noted: “He was not a theologian in my opinion, but he goaded people into thinking theologically.… I think he did the church harm because he had a tendency to readily express opinions about any and all subjects. But at least unlike many bishops, he did have opinions.…”

Raised a Roman Catholic, the man who jestingly called himself “God’s maverick” prepared for the priesthood at Jesuit-run Santa Clara University. But there, because of the conflict in his mind between science and religion, he became an agnostic.

Another milestone was a doctorate in jurisprudence from the Yale Law School in 1938, and his first marriage—annulled two years later—to Jane Alvies. Six years later, Jim and Esther Yanovsky solemnized their earlier civil vows in church services after they both embraced Christianity and became Episcopalians. They had four children, including James, Jr., who committed suicide in 1966. Bishop Pike divorced his second wife in 1967.

What was perhaps the high point of Pike’s ecclesiastical career came when, after ordination in 1946, a post in Poughkeepsie, New York, and a chaplaincy at Columbia University, he was named dean of St. John’s Cathedral in New York in 1952. His reputation as a theological nonconformist was heightened over the years through sermons, books, and debates.

In 1958 he was elected bishop coadjutor of California, and he was consecrated a full bishop the same year. Before he left the church, troubles and controversy led to wide notoriety for the somewhat paunchy, loquacious clergyman. They included a drinking problem (he joined Alcoholics Anonymous), heresy charges that never matured into an actual trial (he denied the Virgin Birth, the Incarnation, and the concept of the Trinity), and, since 1967, a consuming interest in psychic phenomena.

This excursion into the occult—including his well-reported seance in which he claimed to have made contact with his dead son—led to the writing of The Other Side, a book coauthored by Diane Kennedy, whom he married in December, 1968.

The marriage itself further strained ties with the Episcopal Church. Pike said Bishop Myers had given clearance to the marriage; Myers denied it and admonished Episcopal clergy not to allow Pike to speak in their churches.

During the search for her missing husband, Diane Pike relied heavily on the messages of seers and mediums reporting visions of her husband unconscious but alive—usually in a wilderness cave in the Judean countryside. But the information was spurious.

Although authorities differed as to the exact cause of death, pathologists’ reports indicated he died within hours after his wife left him to seek help. And there was no cave near the ledge where his dehydrated body was found in a kneeling position.

“There is no way of telling how the wilderness can drive a man to death,” an Israeli police inspector said.

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