The Right Reverend John Sheridan Smylie
Person of Prayer, Pastor, Pilgrim, Pilot. Your love of God has energized your ministry of forming disciples of Christ, supporting congregations, and strengthening the church to advance God’s mission to heal the world.
Having grown up in Summit, New Jersey, you graduated from Syracuse University in 1975 and completed your Master of Divinity at Episcopal Divinity School in 1981. Ordained in 1982, you served parishes in New Jersey: St. Luke’s, Hope; Christ Church, Ridgewood; and Calvary, Summit. For nine years you were Rector at Trinity Church in Hamburg, New York, then moved to Spokane, WA to be dean of the Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist. Your ministry took you throughout Wyoming, and then to St. Mark’s, Casper, where you were rector when you were elected the 9th Bishop of Wyoming in 2010.
In your eleven years as Bishop of Wyoming you exercised visionary, bold, and pastoral leadership. A founding member of the Iona Initiative, you brought the program to Wyoming to form ordained and lay leaders.
Imaginative, encouraging, and open to experimentation, you have pioneered creative strategies for the
recruitment, education, and ongoing sustenance of bivocational clergy. You have raised up lay ministry with equal vigor, recognizing and stewarding the gifts of all the baptized and establishing parity between lay and clergy benefits. Your presence and care are grounded in scripture and prayer.
Passionately curious and practiced in the mechanics of travel, you enriched the life of the diocese through pilgrimages to the Holy Land, Greece, England, Ireland and Scotland. Centered in prayer, expertly planned by you, and supported financially, the pilgrimages expanded the spiritual lives of participants and built robust community among diocesan leaders. Your capacity for friendship grew into the formation of the Companion Links Dioceses, building relationships across four continents.
Under your leadership the Foundation for the Episcopal Church in Wyoming inspired congregations to share in God’s work of ministry and supported Mental Health, Suicide Prevention, and COVID Relief throughout Wyoming.
A member of Seminary of the Southwest’s board of trustees from 2015 to 2020, you served on the Diocesan Division of the Campaign Executive Committee, traveled with the Dean and members of the staff to make visits, and facilitated a gift from the Foundation for Forming Leaders at the Frontier.
A lifelong singer and songwriter, your love of music connects people with one another and to God. Your colleagues know you as kind, gentle, and utterly genuine, one who sees people with clarity and with love.
Bishop Dena Harrison, an enthusiastic admirer of your work, says of you, “John is a wonderful leader and a really effective bishop. He is an extremely gracious person who welcomes everyone as part of his faith and vision of ministry. As a young man, he was a folk singer, and ministry is where his skills really bloomed.”
Still a folksinger, you are also writing a book of spiritual wisdom stories, and pursuing your instrument
rating as a pilot so you can transport people in need- in need of a pilot and of a person like you.
For your creative and faithful ministry, your fruitful partnership and friendship with this community,
Seminary of the Southwest is pleased to bestow on you the degree of Doctor of Divinity, honoris causa.
