California Schism

The Right Rev. James Albert Pike, Protestant Episcopal Bishop of California, is an eminent churchman who does not try to hide his doubts about such Christian doctrines as the Virgin Birth and the Trinity. A year and a half ago, Pike's unorthodoxy led a group of High Church ministers from Georgia to demand that the House of Bishops try him for heresy (they didn't). Now Dissenter Pike is faced with a schism of dissenters right in his own diocese.

Center of the schism is the Church of the Redeemer in Palo Alto, whose parishioners are all former members of the nearby Episcopal Church of St. Mark's.

Fortnight ago, the Redeemer Church's vestrymen placed ads in four Bay Area newspapers charging that Pike's radical theological views "are unacceptable to us, and contrary to the credal beliefs as set forth in the Nicene and Apostles' Creeds --the fundamental beliefs of the Protestant Episcopal Church." Although they thus claimed to be authentically Episcopalian, the vestrymen admitted that in conscience they could not return to the jurisdiction of the church until Pike changed his views or the Episcopalian House of Bishops denounced his theology.

In the meantime, they describe themselves as "Orthodox Anglicans." Rummage Sales. The principal dissenter is the rector of the Church of the Redeemer, the Rev. Edwin West. Canadian-born Schismatic West, a self-styled "eighth generation Anglican," was ordained to the ministry in 1945, became rector of St. Mark's in Palo Alto seven years later. High Churchman West has usually disagreed with the theological opinions of his bishop. Last winter, as part of a long-standing effort to get his parish to adopt tithing instead of rummage sales as a means of raising capital, West attacked some of his churchwomen from the pulpit. When the issue threatened to divide the parish, West resigned, to accept a calling as an assistant rector in Houston.

But a group of pro-West parishioners at St. Mark's refused to accept his resignation as final. They asked Pike for permission to leave St. Mark's and set up a new parish with West as rector. When the bishop refused, more than 100 members of the Parish--most of them Episcopalian conservatives who had little use for Pike's doctrinal views--organized a new congregation outside Episcopal jurisdiction and asked West to come back as rector. West announced his intention of giving up Episcopal orders, and accepted the call.

"Vacuum of Action." At the Church of the Redeemer, West and his followers observe orthodox Episcopalian teaching and worship practices, genuinely hope to return to the church some day. Their major complaint now is with the Episcopalian House of Bishops for laxly permitting Pike too great a latitude in belief. "Pike should come right out and call himself a Unitarian," says one parishioner. To West, "the tragedy of all this is not so much in Bishop Pike's attitude as it is in the apparent vacuum of action within the House of Bishops. I feel that the Prot estant Episcopal Church is in a demoral ized condition." Pike regards the schism as a problem of personalities rather than doctrine, and has expressed hope that "in due time" the schismatics will return to the flock. But he will not interfere with West's parish and says that once the rector's renunciation of orders goes through, "the cause of my complaint will be removed."

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