We have a hunch that James Pike, the late bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of San Francisco — wherever he might be at the moment — is watching with interest the latest controversy facing the Anglican Communion. A little more than a week ago, the church’s spiritual leader, the archbishop of Canterbury, called for aspects of Islamic Shariah law to be incorporated into British law.

The archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, has shocked politicians, theologians, and world leaders with his latest round of outlandish and provocative comments. But Episcopalians — the American members of the worldwide Anglican Communion — have grown painfully accustomed to such ridiculous behavior and posturing on the part of their church’s leaders.

Bishop Pike, who led the Diocese of San Francisco in the 1960s, is generally regarded as the godfather of the social-activist, fringe left-wing crowd that has come to dominate the leadership of the Episcopal Church today. When he wasn’t attempting to communicate with apparitions and dabbling in the occult, Bishop Pike was openly questioning heavy-duty church doctrine such as the virgin birth and the Trinity.

By most accounts, Bishop Pike died while stumbling around the Israeli desert in a far-from-sober state. Talk about a tour of the Holy Land gone wrong. That was in 1969, but sadly the goofball views of this trendy San Francisco bishop didn’t die with him. In fact, Bishop Pike’s legacy continues to be felt to this day in an Episcopal Church that is unraveling at the seams.

In the late 1950s and early1960s, before Bishop Pike and his progeny rose to prominence, the Episcopal Church was at its zenith, with around 3.5 million members. This mainline Protestant denomination has traditionally claimed a large percentage of the America elite; about half the presidents of the United States, for example, were Episcopalians. Today there’s less than half the number of Episcopalians in America as there were in 1960. Its once-magnificent Book of Common Prayer, largely unchanged since the days of Thomas Cranmer, was watered down in the mid-1970s to appease, among other special interest groups, radical feminists intent on omitting male references to God.

The Episcopal Church’s hymnal suffered much the same fate in the early 1980s; hymns with lyrics that were deemed politically incorrect by the church’s liberal elite were either rewritten or deleted entirely.

Then there was the clandestine church service at Philadelphia’s Church of the Advocate on July 29, 1974, at which a handful of bishops — New York’s left-wing Paul Moore, Jr. among them — ordained seven women to the priesthood.

Rank and file Episcopalians weren’t as upset with the prospect of women clergy as much as they were with the in-your-face tactics of those who had taken up Bishop Pike’s radical agenda: Ordain first, arrogantly dismiss challenges to such an action second.

As the number of traditional Episcopalians across America continues to dwindle, Bishop Pike’s legions grow evermore powerful. Just four year ago, a group of bishops consecrated Gene Robinson — a non-celibate gay man — as bishop of New Hampshire.

Some Episcopalians pointed out that Bishop Robinson should have been excommunicated, much less promoted. One year later, as membership in the Episcopal Church continued to decline amidst this turmoil, the heirs to Bishop Pike’s radical agenda succeeded in electing a liberal woman, Katharine Jefferts Schori, as the church’s presiding bishop. “Before taking holy orders, Mrs. Schori was a marine biologist, specializing in squids and octopuses,” an American columnist wrote at the time. “Looking down the ranks of the [Episcopal] bishops who elected her, one cannot help reflecting that Bishop Schori’s early experience of dealing with invertebrates will prove very useful to her in her new post.”

Many Episcopalians have since attempted to ally themselves with more traditional Anglican provinces in places like Africa.

In December, when six congregations in Connecticut decided to join a convocation led by a traditional African bishop, Connecticut’s liberal bishop, Andrew Smith, had little use for pondering the merits of forgiveness and reconciliation: He ordered the church properties seized and the congregants booted out. Undeterred, the rebelling traditionalists now happily worship in local high school gymnasiums.

With the 2008 Lambeth Conference approaching, the Shariah-loving Dr. Williams has decided not to invite either Bishop Robinson of New Hampshire or any of the bishops who led the movement of traditional Episcopalians to align themselves with provinces in Africa.

Rather than dealing with the growing — and increasingly irreversible — schism in the Episcopal Church and the American personalities that are causing it, the archbishop of Canterbury is ignoring it, instead choosing to make sweeping calls for the institution of Islamic law in Britain. Bishop Pike would be proud.

Mr. Akasie, a lifelong Episcopalian, is a contributor to The New York Sun.