The Rt. Rev. James Albert Pike shot like a meteor through the church of the 1950s and '60s, delighting some, confounding many, exhibiting a wondrous attraction to the institution that contrasted with becoming profoundly repelled, and ending with his death in the Judean desert that banished General Convention from the front pages.

A compactly built man with jet-black hair and horn-rimmed glasses, Bishop Pike was born in Oklahoma City in 1913. Reared as a Roman Catholic, he considered its priesthood while attending Santa Clara University. Instead, he finished at the University of California and went on to Yale for a doctorate in law.

As an attorney for the Federal Securities and Exchange Commission and in private practice, he was briefly married to a lapsed Christian Scientist agnostic, Jane Alvies. It was during that period that he visited more than 25 Episcopal parishes in the Washington D.C. area, searching for a church home and studying at Virginia Theological Seminary while serving in Naval Intelligence and as a lawyer with the U.S. Maritime Commission.

By the time World War II ended, Bishop Pike had married a Jewish woman, Esther Yanovsky, was ordained priest, and even before graduating from Union Seminary in New York, was elected rector of Christ Church, Poughkeepsie, N.Y. Within two years he became chaplain of Columbia University and built a strong religion department, then began a six-year stint as the outspoken dean of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. His ebullient preaching attracted thousands and spilled over into a weekly network television program that he moderated, frequently appearing with Esther and their four children.

Those were golden years as Bishop Pike made newsworthy pronouncements on legislation and international events, prepared prominent persons for confirmation, engaged in a running feud with Cardinal Spellman, and rejected an honorary doctorate from Sewanee as "a degree in white theology."

Many believe he should have remained a dean instead of accepting election in 1958 to be Bishop Coadjutor of California. Barely confirmed by the House of Bishops, a portent of future trouble, Bishop Pike reveled in his homecoming to California and a wider podium for controversy. He dived in, authoring books and national magazine articles and speaking widely. Meanwhile, he recovered from alcoholism, had a prolonged psychoanalysis, advocated merger with the Presbyterians, brought Grace Cathedral to completion, wrote off the Trinity as "excess baggage," and interpreted a vaguely worded canon as permission, a decade before Lambeth's decision, to advance the Rev. Phyllis Edwards from deaconess to deacon. When he appeared to deny the Virgin Birth and the Incarnation, a small group of bishops brought heresy charges against him. Always threatening to opponents because of his legal expertise, Bishop Pike turned the tables by insisting on the trial they threatened. It never got on its feet but he was censured by the House of Bishops, 103-36.

After his wife began making theological pronouncements of her own, Bishop Pike and Esther parted ways. He befriended a troubled parishioner, Maren Bergrud, who followed him and his son, Jim Jr., to sabbatical study at Cambridge University. In swift succession, 19-year-old Jim Jr. fatally shot himself, Maren Bergrud fatally overdosed in Bishop Pike's San Francisco apartment, and a daughter attempted suicide.

Plagued by personal loss, absorbed in occultism, bored with diocesan administration, and exhausted from hyperactivity, he resigned his office in 1966 and joined the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions.

Following his marriage to a young Methodist student, Diane Kennedy, he combined a honeymoon in the Holy Land with a search for more truth in the life of Jesus. During an afternoon drive, they became lost in the desert. His bride pressed on for help, then joined a search party for the bishop. Bizarre headlines of his death overshadowed a special session of General Convention at Notre Dame University for several days before his body was found Sept. 7, 1969. He was 56.

He was buried the following day. Nearly 30 years later, regretting the unrealized potential, a highly respected retired bishop quietly confides that "there are people in the church today because of Jim Pike." o

The Rev. James B. Simpson is TLC's Washington correspondent.