This book - Centro de Estudos Anglicanos

274PIKE, JAMES ALBERTis so wonderfully rich and so infinitely great that no single human expression canexhaust all its truth and splendor.”Pike became the dean of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New YorkCity in 1952. He began to be known as a highly controversial figure who waspassionately concerned about the church’s stance on public issues. In the winterof 1953, he was chosen by the trustees of the University of the South at Sewanee,Tennessee, to receive an honorary degree. Because those same trustees were thenembroiled in a bitter dispute over their refusal to desegregate Sewanee’s Schoolof Theology, Pike declined their offer and immediately issued a press releasearticulating his reasons for refusing the school’s “doctorate in . . . white divinity.”In the late 1950s, he also hosted “The Dean Pike Show,” a weekly religiousprogram on the ABC television network. Having risen to prominence in the EpiscopalChurch, Pike was elected bishop of the diocese of California in 1958. Oneof his most constructive acts as bishop was to join Eugene Carson Blake, thestated clerk of the United Presbyterian Church, in proposing the unification ofthe major Protestant denominations in the United States. Although no new denominationwas actually formed, this proposal resulted in the creation of an ecumenicalorganization, the Consultation on Church Union, in 1962.Pike was a prolific writer who published numerous books and magazine articles.While a bishop, he began to be not only more outspoken in his politicalopinions but also increasingly heterodox in his theological views. He supporteda wide assortment of liberal and radical causes: civil rights, peace, birth control,abortion, the ordination of women, and gay rights. In addition, he questioned theveracity of the Bible itself, dismissing it for being filled with “superstition, sheerevil, and flat contradiction.” He also rejected traditional church doctrines such asthe Trinity, the Virgin Birth, and the divinity of Jesus, all of which he labeled as“excess baggage” that modern Christians had no reason to believe. These radicalideas quickly caused an uproar within the Episcopal Church, and in 1966 a groupof his fellow bishops brought formal charges of heresy against him. A few monthslater, the House of Bishops censured him for offering religious interpretationsthat were “marred by caricatures of treasured symbols and . . . by cheap vulgarizationsof great expressions of the faith.”When Pike’s oldest son committed suicide in 1966, his search for religiousmeaning turned in another direction, and he became obsessed with forms of parapsychology,especially communication with the dead. He resigned as bishop thatyear in order to devote more time to this new interest. His attempts to contact thespirit of his son were recorded in The Other Side (1968), which he wrote withDiane Kennedy, the woman who in December 1968 became his second wife. Afew months after they were married, the Pikes traveled to Israel to study the DeadSea scrolls. Inadequately equipped, they drove into the Judean wilderness onSeptember 3, 1969. When their car broke down in the desert, they went searchingfor help. Although Diane was eventually rescued, Pike died of thirst and exposureduring the time they were separated.Even in death, Pike attained a certain notoriety. As the essayist Joan Didion