Book excerpt: Introducing two Stringfellow/Towne reprints about Bishop Pike: The Bishop Pike Affair The Death and Life of Bishop Pike The Death and Life of Bishop Pike is an in-depth, documented portrait of James A. Pike--the most controversial American clergyman of modern times. Based on prodigious research into private letters and unpublished documents, as well as exhaustive interviews, it is a biography so candid that the book itself is bound to be controversial. The authors are utterly frank about the bishop's turbulent personal life--his three marriages, his sexuality, his alcoholism, the suicides of his oldest son and of an intimate associate, the temptation of his celebrity, his complex relationship with his mother, and his terrible death in the wilderness. They have thoroughly investigated his notorious experiences with "psychic phenomena"--arriving at their own startling and provocative conclusions. Nevertheless, this book is neither an expose nor an apologia. It is an honest, dramatic, and compelling testament to an extraordinary and vital personality--to the colorful and courageous Christian witness of Bishop James A. Pike, whose advocacy of social justice and whose search for faith--restless and unorthodox as it was--had an astonishing impact on the contemporary church.