Meet the Rt. Rev. Dr. Bonnie A. Perry, the 11th bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Michigan (EDOMI).
Originally born in San Diego, California, as the daughter of a career Marine officer, +Bonnie got to experience living across the US where she became integrated within communities in Hawaii, Virginia, Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, and Illinois. These experiences in diverse communities left a positive impression on +Bonnie’s approach to her faith. After graduating from the College of the Holy Cross, Massachusetts, with a bachelor’s degree in biology, +Bonnie served in the Jesuit Volunteer Corps in West Oakland and Skid Row, Los Angeles.
Following her calling to ministry, she matriculated at Union Theological Seminary in New York City. It was here where +Bonnie met her spouse Susan Harlow and then in her final year, she was accepted into the Episcopal Church. In addition to her Master of Divinity from Union Theological Seminary, +Bonnie also has a Doctor of Ministry specialising in Congregational Development from Seabury Western Theological Seminary in Evanston, Illinois.
Serving with a passion for congregational vitality within the diocese, +Bonnie believes that all communities of faith should be relevant and engaged with their neighbourhoods – a belief supported by her early life experiences across America.
+Bonnie’s incredible journey has led her to locations and communities worldwide, including her home away from home, Orkney, where she recently visited. During her visit, +Bonnie met with +Anne Dyer to discuss bringing her faith with her across the pond, what she got up to on her visit, and her hopes for the future.
What has brought you to Orkney?
I’m here because I’m one of the guest coaches at the Paddle Orkney Sea Kayak Symposium. I’m a sea kayaker, and I adore the waters of the British Isles. I’m kind of fixated on it! Iin the world of sea kayaking, I have American coaching and guiding credentials, and I also have British coaching and guiding credentials – and fairly advanced ones. So, I have been coming to Scotland, and actually England, since 2009 regularly to sea kayak.
I know folks, and I have had the opportunity to get to make lasting friendships with folks, and I love that I get to be connected to people in a culture that is not mine. And so, I’m here for that. I’m here for the paddling and for the people, and it nurtures my soul to be here.
Sea kayaking is part of my spirituality. It’s super fun and sometimes scares the hell out of me!
What’s so special for you about the Northern Islands – Orkney and Shetland?
For ages I was in Cornwall, and then I was in Oban and Skye, and I’ve been to the outer Islands and St. Kilda. Lewis and Harris. And in about 2017/2018, I was invited to coach at the Shetland Symposium. Shetland and Orkney have Kayak Symposiums that alternate each year – one year is in Shetland, one year is in Orkney – and, so I went to the Shetland symposium.
Shetland has the most amazing waters in the world and stunning people, gracious hospitality, and caves! An inordinate amount of caves, which we as paddlers just love. And for me, I can go down the coast of Shetland, go around St Ninians Isle and then go to an ancient Christian place marking where St Ninian has been. So, it incorporates both my paddling and my faith. And it’s gorgeous – land and sea. Gorgeous.
You’re here with your wife, Susan. What do you like doing together while you’re here?
Susan paddles, but what she says is she’s not obsessed with it like some of us…that would be me. So, we have friends that come up with us from Glasgow – sometimes I bring American friends with me as well, just to introduce them to this amazing area – and we hang out with the people we know here.
I love to connect people. I love to create community, and I love to create community with people who might not necessarily know each other. That’s why when I was starting to paddle regularly in Shetland and Orkney, I reached out to +Anne. When I saw that +Anne is supportive of same-sex marriage, I felt secure knowing she would be nice to me and would like me and Susan.
Additionally, we visit some distilleries – because you know, you should do that – we go tromping along the hills, and we drive, and we go on the ferry – Susan adores the ferries. You can be on the ferry and suddenly an impromptu fiddle concert breaks out, and I don’t get to see impromptu fiddle concerts in Michigan, or in America.
We just enjoy being with each other, exploring a different place, and then getting to know people so that we might get past the veneer of what a tourist would see. To actually get to know people better – that’s just a gracious gift to me.
You came to Orkney via Dublin – what took you there?
This was really fun. Susan and I were invited to Christ Church Cathedral in Dublin to preach their Pride celebration. One of my former parishioners from Chicago is now at the Cathedral there and they thought it would be interesting and fun for me to come over for Pride. They then connected with Changing Attitudes Ireland, and I’m now their patron!
So, in connection with Changing Attitudes Ireland, Christ Church Cathedral, Dean Dunne and a couple of other NGOs that are supportive of gay, lesbian, bisexual, trans folks, I preached the Pride service.
The next day, I did a community organising workshop, talking about how people in the LGBTQ+ community can connect with folks, listen and learn from folks who may have a different perspective, connect around Scripture, do Bible study, and to tell the story of how we progressed on this issue in the in the Episcopal Church.
Part of that was a group I started called The Chicago Consultation. The Chicago Consultation put on the first ever conversations on sexuality in the Anglican Communion in the continent of Africa – we did that in 2011 in South Africa, in Durban in 2013, in Kenya at Saint Paul’s Limuru, and in 2015 in Ghana at Cape Coast.
While you were in Scotland, the peace of the world has been further disrupted by the conflict between Israel and Iran. What were you thinking, feeling, and praying about that as a senior Christian leader in the US?
I’m a daughter of a Marine Lieutenant Colonel. I said goodbye to my dad, and he went off to Vietnam when I was six years old. I am super patriotic – I stand in attention for the national anthem, and I know all the words to the Marine Corps hymn, and I also stand in attention. So, I worry about the women and men in our armed forces, in harm’s way, but I’m so sad.
In my sense, a pre-emptive strike is not what the gospel ever calls us to do. A pre-emptive strike implies that force is the way that we end things, change things, and I do not believe that is ever the way.
What I worry about in my country, is that I fear that the current President of the United States of America is a person who is neither rooted in faith or democracy. I believe he is a man who does not have a sense of how to be a grounded leader, and that instead he is mercurial and narcissistic – I think he jumped in.
I will never claim to understand the Middle East; it is rife with tension and there is animosity, animus and bad actions on all parts. I believe that Israel has a right to exist – I want Israel to exist. I do believe that the Israeli Government has gone too far in Gaza around sanctioning and helping Hamas and Hezbollah. Yeah, absolutely. Do I want them to do that? No, no, stop it. Stop it all. Should we be bombing people? No.
When will you be back in this Diocese?
Well, God willing and the creek don’t rise, and the world doesn’t become even more unsettled, I have an invitation to be a guest coach in the Shetland Symposium next year. I’ve got a sabbatical coming up, and I am planning on being in residence in Shetland for all of August and a good portion of July. The people of Orkney and Shetland are so gracious, so welcoming, I can hardly wait to return, and we’re already plotting and planning new kayaking adventures.
A sermon quote from the Rt. Rev. Bonnie Perry:
“For decades, society and the church, the institutional church has told us, we are not good enough, that our lives are wrong and our love is less than, for centuries the church has said, that we who are Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Intersex, Asexual, non-binary and categories still evolving, much like the universe, for decades the structures of power have said, “No,” to us. They have said, “Stop speaking. Be silent. Don’t tell us. Do not speak your truth.”
But I say to you, what you know. I say to you, what you have heard from this pulpit before, I say to you as a beloved child of God, as someone made in God’s image and likeness, as a bishop in the Christian church as an out, proud, partnered lesbian, I say to you,
Speak your truth. We are made in God’s image and likeness and fully embraced by Christ just as we are. We of the Queer community are good enough. We are called to tell the stories of who and how we are, and how God lives and moves and has God’s being in our lives. For as we tell our stories, others will see God in our lives and know that they too are beloved of God.
About +Bonnie:
The Rt. Rev. Dr. Bonnie A. Perry is the 11th bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Michigan (EDOMI). She was consecrated as bishop on February 8, 2020. Her position oversees a diverse diocese of 76 worshipping communities and more than 14,000 baptized members. The diocese encompasses the Detroit metropolitan area and adjacent regions that stretch as far west as Lansing, Jackson, and Hillsdale. Prior to her election as bishop, Perry spent 27 years as rector of All Saints’ Episcopal Church in Chicago, one of the largest and most active congregations in the Diocese of Chicago.
