The Haunting of Bishop Pike: A Christian View of the Other Side, by Merrill Unger (PB, 1971, $1.50)
Episcopal Bishop Pike was a strange one. He was radical, both in his theology and his politics. I find myself both admiring his politics and horrified by some of his beliefs.
What ever you think of him, he got even stranger once his son died. That is when his contacts with the paranormal started. Objects started moving around. Even his secretary's bangs were burned off, in stages! All these things could be construed as the bishop's son trying to communicate with him, so psychic mediums were consulted. Add on to all this Pike's alcoholism, his womanizing, and especially his strange death lost in a desert near the Dead Sea, and you have, if not a very strange man, at least a man with a very strange life.
Unger takes a conservative stance. "The bishop abandoned Spirit-oriented Christianity in favor of spiritistically oriented religion which retained a Christian aura. He had such little spiritual insight that he criticised Christians for not welcoming mediumistic communications with the dead as exciting evidence of life beyond the grave."
You may or may not relate all this to the devil, but something is definitely off here. Look for this book on the new non-fiction table. (Avail. 6/24)
