Word: pikes
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...Pike went on to the Jesuits' University of Santa Clara with vague hopes of studying some day for the priesthood. Rather than stilling his first quiet doubts about Christian doctrine, the Jesuits increased them. Pike was jolted by the inconsistency between what he learned in the physics lab and what...
...taught in philosophy class, bothered still more by his inability to accept natural law-the concept that there are certain God-given laws of behavior known to man by reason alone rather than revela tion. By the end of his sophomore year, Pike had decided that he could not be a priest, and transferred first to U.C.L.A. and then to the University of Southern California to enter law school...
Spiritually speaking, Pike "went over the wall. I was a free guy. It was glorious. I was vaguely a humanist, caring about good causes and truth, but the religious question didn't concern me. I wasn't antichurch; I just dropped out." He went on from U.S.C. to gain a doctorate in jurisprudence at Yale, and then to Washington to work for the Securities and Exchange Commission in 1938. "I was a fervent humanist when I went to work for the New Deal," Pike says. "I had a real sense of cause, of saving the widows and orphans...
...Vatican Roulette." After World War II broke out, Pike got a commission in Naval Intelligence but stayed in Washington. War, that great upsetter of human routine, started him thinking again about what he calls "the big question," and he began occasionally going back to church. One Easter Sunday, at Washington's National Cathedral, Pike was overwhelmed by the beauty of the liturgy and its music, and pondered becoming an Episcopalian-mostly because "it looked like a church ought to look," and had "an intellectual sophistication and breadth." In 1944, the Pikes were remarried in church-"with our first daughter...
Ordained in 1946, Pike took over as rector of Christ Church in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., and rebuilt a moribund parish; on the side, he undertook some "whistlestop mission preaching" that honed his skills at improvising in the pulpit. In 1949, he took over as chaplain at Columbia University and head of its meager religion department. Pike brought in good new teachers, including Paul Tillich as an adjunct professor. To upgrade his own academic credentials, Pike submitted chapters of his book Faith of the Church (written with Norman Pittenger and still used in Episcopal lay teaching), plus some other writing...