Джеймс Пайк: Америкалық епископ, ойшыл және даулы тұлға

American Episcopal bishop

James Albert Pike (February 14, 1913–c. September 3–7, 1969) was an American Episcopal bishop, accused heretic, writer, and one of the first mainline religious figures to appear regularly on television. Pike's outspoken, and to some of his fellow bishops, heretical, views on many theological and social issues made him one of the most controversial public figures of his time. He was an early proponent of the ordination of women and racial desegregation within mainline churches. The chain smoking Pike was the fifth Bishop of California and, a few years before he began to explore spiritualism and psychic phenomena in an effort to contact his deceased son, became a recovering alcoholic.

Pike was born in Oklahoma City on February 14, 1913 to James A. Pike and Pearl Agatha Wimsatt Pike. His father died when he was two and he moved to California with his mother who married California attorney Claude McFadden. Pike, who was Roman Catholic, graduated from Hollywood High School in 1930 and considered entering the priesthood; however, in the two years he attended Santa Clara University, a private Jesuit school, he came to consider himself an agnostic. Pike transferred to the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) for a year, then transferred again to the University of Southern California (USC), where he received his B. A. in 1934 and an LL. B. from the university's law school in 1936. That same year, he was admitted to the California bar. Pike received a Sterling Fellowship and earned a J. S. D. from Yale Law School in 1938. After leaving Yale, he served as a staff attorney for the New Deal era Securities and Exchange Commission in Washington, D. C. from 1938 to 1942, in addition to lecturing on federal procedure at Catholic University of America Law School (1938–1939) and on civil procedure at George Washington University Law School (1939–1942). He then established the law firm of Pike and Fischer with a fellow attorney, specializing in the publication of books on federal judicial and administrative procedure. in Los Angeles on August 14, 1938. They separated at the beginning of 1940 and were divorced in October 1941. On January 29, 1942, he married Esther Yanovsky whom he had met while she was attending his law class at George Washington. His first appointment in the Church was as a curate at St. John's Episcopal Church, Lafayette Square, in Washington, D. C. from 1944 to 1946, In 1956, he participated in a trip to Israel to study and report on Arab refugee problems and, in 1957, he was appointed to the seven person (Harold Lionel) Zellerbach Commission, created by the International Rescue Committee, to study the European Iron Curtain refugee issue. While at Grace Cathedral, he was involved with promoting a living wage for workers in San Francisco, the acceptance of LGBT people in the church, and civil rights. He also recognized a Methodist minister as having dual ordination and freedom to serve in the diocese. Later, he ordained a woman as a first order deacon, now known as a "transitional deacon," usually the first step in the process towards ordination in the priesthood in the Episcopal church. The ordination was not approved until after Pike's death. Among his notable accomplishments, Pike invited Martin Luther King Jr. to speak at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco in 1965 following his march to Selma, Alabama. Pike's theology involved the rejection of central Christian beliefs. His writings questioned a number of widely accepted tenets, including the virginity of Mary, the Mother of Jesus; He famously called for "fewer beliefs, more belief." Heresy procedures were begun by a small group of bishops headed by the Bishop of South Florida, Henry I. Louttit, in 1962, 1964, 1965, and 1966, each growing in intensity. The Episcopal House of Bishops, realizing the damage that a public trial of a prelate of Pike's standing would do to the image of the Church, on that action. The result was that the House of Bishops agreed to make the term "heresy" obsolete, with censure only being levied for "acts" and not for "opinion or teaching." The Convention also created an advisory committee on "theological freedom," which included Pike and other prominent theologians. Pike officiated at her funeral. In 1968, in defiance of C. Kilmer Myers, the Bishop who succeeded him, he married Diane Kennedy, a Methodist student twenty five years his junior, with whom he had collaborated on The Other Side. In August 1969, Pike and Diane traveled to Israel, to do research for a proposed book on the historical Jesus. Wanting to have a feeling for the landscape where Jesus went into the wilderness to fast and meditate for 40 days, on September 2 they drove into the Judean Desert outside of Jerusalem, planning to drive to Qumran, where the Dead Sea Scrolls had been discovered. Despite Pike having visited Israel before, they were unprepared for what they assumed would be a short drive, buying only two Cokes along the way and taking no water or a guide with them. Using an Avis map they'd been given at the airport with their rented Ford Cortina, they took several wrong turns before their vehicle became stuck in a deep rut on a tertiary dirt road. The Pikes vainly attempted to use the car's jack to free it, believing it was missing its base (it was a one piece European model they were unfamiliar with). After an hour of stressful efforts to get the car to move, they decided to walk what they thought was north toward Qumran, where they knew there would be water. What they did not know was that they were far south of Qumran, and heading farther south into Wadi Mashash (Hebrew names: Wadi Dargot or מצוקי דרגות Metsoke Dargot/Dragot, which translates to 'steep cliffs'). After two hours of walking in the tremendous heat, and with night approaching, a dehydrated and exhausted Pike could go no farther, and they found a relatively flat rock under a bit of an overhang that gave them some shade. Diane was concerned that if she lay down to die with him and their bodies were found together, it might be assumed their death was a suicide, whereas if her body were discovered partway to Qumran it would be obvious she had attempted to get help. After ten long hours of climbing on the walls of the canyon and stumbling upon a road under construction (now the road to Mitzpe Shalem), she came to a camp of Arab laborers. They gave her tea to drink until the foreman came and took her to the nearest army camp, but the search for Pike did not start until well into that day. The news that Bishop Pike was reported missing in the Judean Desert was immediately given front page coverage in the New York Times. Diane Pike, in spite of her exhaustion and injuries, participated in the rescue attempt. While their car was soon found, there was no sign of her husband. As the number of search efforts began to dwindle on the third day, she relied on many mediums and seers, including the one who had worked with Pike in trying to contact his son, who offered visions of where her husband's body might be. After five days, Pike's body was found on September 7, 1969, south of the route his wife had taken. He had found a large pool of water in a shaded area of the canyon bed, but instead of remaining there, continued to follow what he thought was his wife's route, leaving a trail of a map, undershorts, sunglasses, and her contact lens case, to indicate the path he had taken. Pike was apparently climbing a steep canyon wall in Wadi Mashash when he slipped and fell more than 60 feet to his death. The date of death on the burial certificate is "(?) September 2, 1969"; some sources cite it as between September 3 and 7. He was buried in the Protestant cemetery in Jaffa, Israel, on September 8, 1969.

Bishop Pike was an inspiration for the character of Timothy Archer in Philip K. Dick's book The Transmigration of Timothy Archer. Dick and Pike were friends; Pike had officiated at Dick's 1966 wedding to Nancy Hackett, Maren Hackett Bergrud's stepdaughter. Joan Didion wrote about Pike and the building of the Grace Cathedral in her collection of essays The White Album (1979). E. L. Doctorow incorporated Pike as a mentor for his fictionalized character, Reverend Dr. Thomas Pemberton, in his novel City of God (2000). In a prayer, Pemberton reveals the story of his search to escape ritualization and find illumination in the wilds of Africa, in the same way that Pike ventured into the wilderness around Jerusalem in an attempt to connect to the historical Jesus.