Lawyer into Dean

At 30, James A. Pike was a rising young attorney for the Securities & Exchange Commission. That was eight years ago. Last week he was appointed Dean of Manhattan's Episcopal Cathedral of St. John the Divine.

Jim Pike was born a Roman Catholic. But after two years at the Jesuit University of Santa Clara in California, he left both his faith and his college and set out to be a good agnostic lawyer. He graduated from the University of Southern California Law School, and in 1938 earned a J.S.D. at Yale, then went to Washington. About that time, he found his agnosticism wearing a bit thin and he joined the Episcopal Church.

Soon he decided that a legal career had its limitations, too. Under the canons of Washington Cathedral, Pike began studying for the ministry. He was ordained a deacon in 1944; two years later he became a priest. For the last two years, he has been Episcopal chaplain at Columbia University. Pike's main job there: building up the almost nonexistent religion department. In two years, he and Religion Professor Ursula (Mrs. Reinhold) Niebuhr of Barnard College have established a joint Columbia-Barnard religion curriculum of 38 courses and 500 students.

As Dean of St. John's, busy Dr. Pike explains that his job will be "to help the cathedral be what cathedrals were in the days of their foundation, a central missionary enterprise of the diocese--the growing edge of the church--speaking to the contemporary mind outside the church, to the fringe of doubters and seekers." Dean Pike will preach most Sunday sermons. Says he: "I'm a little overwhelmed by the job."

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