A Passionate Pilgrim: A Biography of Bishop James A. Pike [Hardcover]

David M. Robertson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 7, 2004 | ISBN-10: 0375411879 | ISBN-13: 978-0375411878

James A. Pike, the fifth bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of California, was a man of many faces. To some he was an iconoclast, a man decades ahead of his time who modernized the Church and rendered it more progressive and open to inquiry. To others he was a heretic, who polarized and desecrated the Church. Always controversial and charismatic, he took America by storm in the 1960s with his best-selling books, and his weekly television talk show, Dean Pike, which won him a cover story in Time. A Passionate Pilgrim is an illuminating biography of Pike, and an examination of the tragedies, triumphs, and difficulties that shaped his spectacular rise to fame and his mysterious death in the Israeli desert.

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Back in the 1960s when James Pike was Episcopal bishop of California, nearly everyone had an opinion about the attention-seeking clergyman whose unconventional opinions and actions often made headlines. To some he was a prophet, opposing the Vietnam conflict and advocating liberal social issues such as racial equality, women's ordination, the acceptance of homosexuals in church life and legalized abortion. To others he was a heretic, dismissing as "excess baggage" classic Christian dogmas such as the virgin birth and the Trinity. Robertson, author of two other biographies and a historical novel, portrays a brilliant but troubled man whose personal life disintegrated as he poured his energies into his work. An adult convert to the Episcopal Church, Pike was ordained at 31, became dean of New York's Episcopal cathedral before turning 40 and was elected bishop of California at 45. As he rose to national prominence, however, he was divorced twice, his elder son and one of his mistresses committed suicide and his drinking veered out of control. Repeatedly accused—but never convicted—of heresy, Bishop Pike announced his departure from the Episcopal Church several months before his accidental death in the wilderness near the Dead Sea. Robertson's account, at once sympathetic and probing, provides a fascinating and timely backdrop to many of the struggles faced by mainline Protestant churches today.
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From Booklist

Very much a man of his time--the mid-twentieth century--Bishop James A. Pike was a controversial figure who was called spiritualist, heretic, pariah, and other names. If nothing else, he was definitely an iconoclast. Raised Catholic, he later converted to Episcopalianism and in 1952 was appointed dean of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York. His liberal sermons and unconventional opinions raised many eyebrows, and by the late 1950s, his views had turned considerably more radical. He publicly rejected the Virgin Birth and the Incarnation; questioned basic church doctrine; and, consequently, was accused of heresy. Unconventional regarding social mores, too, he spoke out for civil rights and against antiabortion laws, capital punishment, and the Vietnam War. Meanwhile, his personal life was messy, including three marriages and struggles with alcoholism. He resigned his bishopric in 1966 and died in rather mysterious circumstances in the Israeli desert, while on a trip there with his young, new wife. Robertson brings Pike to life in a complex, sympathetic, ultimately moving biography. June Sawyers
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: Knopf (September 7, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0375411879
• ISBN-13: 978-0375411878
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.6 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,624,456 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Sobering, Revisionist Look at the 1960s, March 19, 2005

By 

Kevin Killian (San Francisco, CA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: A Passionate Pilgrim: A Biography of Bishop James A. Pike (Hardcover)

Robertson, a writer new to me but apparently one of some renown whose other books I will be sure to look out for, has written a sobering account of the 196os through a particular prism, the charismatic Episcopal bishop Jim Pike. Pike was a radical theologian and a moving speaker, whose positioning of himself as an effective force for change took him to what were pretty much the limits of free expression within the church through the 1950s and exploded, as did so much else, in the 1960s.

Here in San Francisco he is still remembered, if vaguely, as the man who held press conferences (some of which were televised) at Grace Cathedral at the top of Nob Hill to discuss his latest activities, boycotts, rebellions, hirings and opinions on national and international affairs, not only on matters of religion, for he cast a wider net. He wrote an article, "How My Mind Has Changed," which made public his doubts about the Virgin Birth of Christ and about the three-personed nature of the Trinity. He called for a stop to the practice of "speaking in tongues." More traditional Christians grew skeptical, then became resolutely opposed to his liberal ways. His heavy drinking and his affairs with women caused his wife, Esther, to seek a divorce, and their four children suffered the most.

One of them, Jim Junior, in fact killed himself in New York City, and this put the Bishop into a real tailspin. Like Conan Doyle before him, he took to seances to raise the spirit of his boy. And then he came to believe that he would find redemption out in the desert, and the whole world was shocked when his body was found in the wilderness. Robertson recites all these numbing facts ably and with deep understanding. The spectacle of a man's search for meaning is a brutal one, as he goes, punchdrunk, into one cul-de-sac of faith after another, but Robertson persuades us that, underneath it all, we are all human and we all make mistakes sometimes. He has sympathy for even Pike's most outlandish choices, and his book is all the better for it.

9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars As clear as day, March 31, 2005

By 

J. Anderson (Monterey, CA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: A Passionate Pilgrim: A Biography of Bishop James A. Pike (Hardcover)

This is the biography of Pike that we've been waiting for. Robertson's achievment is awesome and this book is marvelous. Pike's many difficulties -alcoholism, ambition, theological posturing, difficulties in his family, with his women- are finally choreographed into the submissive background where they belong, as the three-dimensional Pike emerges broken and whole - a man addicted to action. Believing, warring, loving, campaigning, preaching, living and dying - Pike sat astride the rhythm of unrelenting action, for good or ill. Those who look to the inconsistencies in James Pike to find the living parts are looking too far. His great personal truth was in his every action- wild and true, beautiful, violent. Passionate Pilgrim brings it all before us. David Robertson's intelligence arrives with a stash of new ideas and insights, a scathing sympathy for his subject, and the ear of a real writer. Anyone interested in Pike's story will be mesmerized by this book that demonstrates better than any other I can think of the ecstatic dimensions of biography that can be achieved by perfect prose.

0 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars What motived Bishop Pike?, August 28, 2008

By 

Diogenes (Charleston SC, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: A Passionate Pilgrim: A Biography of Bishop James A. Pike (Kindle Edition)

Bishop James A. Pike of the Episcopal Church was one of the 1960s' first iconoclastic clergymen to become widely known in radical circles. "Jesus was a revolutionary like the Viet Cong!" and "The God of law and order is dead!" are typical statements quoted in David Robertson's biography, these on page 196. Bishop Pike had his share of supporters and plenty of enemies. He was an early marcher in the Civil Rights Movement.
It is no simple task to define the motives of a complex, driven man who has such volatile appetites. Robertson accomplishes as much as an author can. The biography should be read anyway for its parallel history of the growing disunity in the Episcopal Church, which is still a factor nearly forty years after Pike's demise.
Lord Acton's dictum, "Power corrupts," should be amended to read "A lust for majesty corrupts." From >A Passionate Pilgrim<:
1) p. 71: Joseph L. Blau, professor of philosphy at Columbia University, complained of Pike's "expansionist, imperial policy."
2) p. 149: The Theological Committee censured Pike for past actions it characterized at "self-aggrandizement" and "publicity-seeking." Pike balked and threatened to gather support among his political allies.
3) p. 108: "When we elect a President of the United States . . , we do not ask him what he does with his genitals. We want him to do what he was hired to do well. We tacitly agree that his sex life is his own affair." The committee's report was kept at its request from most laity on a "need-to-know" basis.
4) Darby Betts accepted the offer to be Pike's archdeacon but discovered soon after his arrival at the California diocesan offices that his unspecified duties included acting as "majordomo" to Pike, attempting to prevent the bishop from publicly embarrassing himself with women or alcohol.
5) p. 176: The same month that the >Time< article appeared, Pike and Diane Kennedy had become physical lovers. Pike was supporting three households--his own with Bergrud (his other lover) in Santa Barbara, the apartment he maintained in her name and used as an office, and Esther Pike's household (the Bishop's soon-to-be ex-wife), including their two children in San Francisco.
In John Osborne's play >Luther<, the great reformer railed against such behavior by the clergy:
Tetzel: (Luther) said, "I've been to Rome once, and they didn't look very subtle to me. They were lifting their legs at street corners like dogs."
Cajetan: I hope he didn't see any cardinals at it. Knowing some of them as I do, it's not impossible.
The clergy's wrestling for the soul of the Church continues as always.