James Pike - Conversion and Early Church Life

Conversion and Early Church Life

After WWII, Pike and his wife joined the Episcopal Church. He entered, first, the Virginia Theological Seminary and, then, the Union Theological seminary and began to prepare for the priesthood. He was ordained in 1946, first serving as an assistant at St. John's, Lafayette Square in Washington, D.C., and then as Rector of Christ Church in Poughkeepsie, New York. He next became head of the Department of Religion and chaplain at Columbia University. He left Columbia in 1952 to become the Dean of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, New York. Using his new position and media savvy, he picked a fight with local Catholic bishops over their attacks on Planned Parenthood and their opposition to birth control. He accepted an invitation to receive an honorary doctorate from Sewanee: The University of the South in Tennessee but then publicly declined after finding that the university did not admit African Americans. An example of Pike's use of the media is that he released his letter to the New York Times before it was delivered to Sewanee's trustees: they heard the news when reporters called for reactions. It was also at this time that he publicly challenged Senator Joseph McCarthy's allegation that 7,000 U.S. pastors were part of a Kremlin conspiracy; and, when the newly elected President Dwight D. Eisenhower backed up Pike, McCarthy and his movement began to lose their influence.

In New York, Pike reached a large audience with liberal sermons and weekly television programs. Common topics included birth control, abortion laws, racism, capital punishment, apartheid, antisemitism, and farm worker exploitation.