by Retta Blaney
Contributor
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Sr. Carol Perry loved to read as a child growing up in Kingston, N.Y. One book she didn't crack, though, was the Bible.
Though she continued reading as a Sister of St. Ursula, she didn't read the Bible, despite teaching religion and English at John A. Coleman High School in Kingston, about 100 miles north of New York City.
It's an unlikely background for a woman who would one day break new ground as a resident Bible scholar in one of the most prominent Protestant churches in America.
"The Protestants had the Bible and the Catholics had the sacraments," she says. "I was raw material."
Sitting in her small 10th-floor office overlooking Fifth Avenue in midtown Manhattan, Perry reflected on the journey that brought her to Marble Collegiate Church, where her ongoing Sunday morning Bible class is standing-room-only.
