Religion: Death in the Wilderness

Christ was tempted by Satan in the wilderness of Judah, so the Bible says, and James Pike was determined to go there too—"to meditate," as his wife wistfully recalled later, "and get a firsthand feeling of it." For the onetime Episcopal Bishop of California, it was just one more unusual adventure in a remarkably strange career (see following story). As always, he was anxious to get on with it. No matter that it was 1 o'clock on a hot Monday afternoon, hardly the time to set out into the blistering, arid desert. James Pike, 56, and his wife Diane, 31,...