28 Facts About James Pike

James Pike was an early proponent of the ordination of women and racial desegregation within mainline churches.

The chain smoking James 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.

James Pike's father died when he was two and he moved to California with his mother who married California attorney Claude McFadden.

James 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.

James Pike 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.

James Pike married Jane Alvies, a lapsed Christian Scientist agnostic, in Los Angeles on August 14,1938.

James Pike was ordained as a priest on November 1,1946.

James Pike then accepted an appointment as Rector of Christ Church, Poughkeepsie, where he served as chaplain to students at Vassar College.

James Pike accepted an invitation to receive an honorary doctorate from The University of the South in Tennessee, but then publicly declined after finding that the university did not admit African Americans.

Pike was now known as a spokesman for liberal Protestantism and, in 1955, was invited by the American Broadcasting Company to host his own weekly television program, The Dean Pike Show, which made celebrities of Pike and his wife, and soon eclipsed Bishop Fulton J Sheen's long-running Life Is Worth Living in popularity.

Between 1952 and 1958, James Pike wrote seven books, including quite orthodox and widely read titles like Doing the Truth and Beyond Anxiety.

James Pike was elected on the sixth ballot as bishop coadjutor of California on February 4,1958 and was consecrated bishop on May 15,1958.

James Pike then succeeded to the see on September 20,1958, following the death of his predecessor, Karl Morgan Block, to become the fifth Bishop of California.

James Pike's episcopate was marked by both professional and personal controversy.

James Pike was one of the leaders of the Protestants and Other Americans United for the Separation of Church and State movement, which advocated against John F Kennedy's presidential campaign because of Catholic teachings.

James Pike recognized a Methodist minister as having dual ordination and freedom to serve in the diocese.

James Pike's writings questioned a number of widely accepted tenets, including the virginity of Mary, the Mother of Jesus; the doctrine of Hell, and the Trinity.

James Pike led a public pursuit of various spiritualist and clairvoyant methods of contacting his deceased son to reconcile.

In September 1967, James Pike participated in a televised seance with his dead son through the medium Arthur Ford, an ordained minister in the Disciples of Christ church.

James Pike then had married Esther Yanovsky in 1942; they had four children, two boys and two girls.

Three days after the wedding, James Pike was barred from all priestly functions, including preaching, in Episcopal churches, presumably because he'd married without the approval of the Episcopal diocesan.

The news that Bishop James Pike was reported missing in the Judean Desert was immediately given front page coverage in the New York Times.

James Pike 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.

James Pike was apparently climbing a steep canyon wall in Wadi Mashash when he slipped and fell more than 60 feet to his death.

James Pike 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 James Pike were friends; James Pike had officiated at Dick's 1966 wedding to Nancy Hackett, Maren Hackett Bergrud's stepdaughter.

James Pike is likewise mentioned several times in Dick's alternate history novel Radio Free Albemuth as one victim of a series of assassinations of prominent citizens orchestrated to clear the way for the book's villain to assume the US Presidency.