The Revd Lucy Winkett writes:
WHENEVER John Moses was asked if he enjoyed being Dean of St Paul’s, he would reply, “I’m a London boy!”, going on to say that he couldn’t imagine a better or more fulfilling ministry.
Besides the privilege of public ministry in the nation’s parish church, he felt an emotional attachment to the iconic dome and its power as a symbol of resilience in wartime. And, despite being a shy man at heart, he loved the links to the City and all the socialising and speaking that came with being Dean.
He was the sort of leader who could, and did, create enormous amounts of work, sitting alone in his study writing policy papers, suggesting changes, crafting strategies, and implementing plans. Energetic, determined, urbane, very funny, self-critical, creative, he was something of a force of nature in his own way, and the Church of England is much the poorer without him.
John arrived at St Paul’s from 14 years as Provost of Chelmsford Cathedral. Having served as Archdeacon of Southend, and before that in Coventry and Bedford, he found his mission in cathedral ministry. In both Chelmsford and St Paul’s, perhaps surprisingly for a small-c conservative (and as a former prospective MP for the Tory party, a life-long big-C one, too), John was a reformer. In Chelmsford, among other things, he presided over the reordering of the cathedral, the building of the Chapter House, and the installation of the new organ.
At St Paul’s, he poured energy into two things. The first was the enormous, and successful, campaign to raise more than £40 million for the cleaning, restoration of the vast building, inside and out, which also included the construction of a wooden platform for a nave altar, the moving of the font, the commissioning of a hanging pyx, and the placement of the iconic Light of the World Holman Hunt painting for all visitors to see.
His second focus was, as he would often put it, wresting the initiative back to the Dean and Chapter for how the Cathedral was seen, what sort of activity it hosted and promoted, and making sure that it was an outward-looking cathedral for London and for the nation. He was a William Temple sort of church leader, faithful in his own prayers, acutely aware of the social context in which the Established Church operated, and determined to lead a Church that was worldly in its best sense, ready to take on board the seismic movements in society, wanting to be part of the Church’s contribution to the building of a better society.
In the pulpit, John was at his best on occasions such as Remembrance Sunday or difficult memorials. He spoke with great sensitivity in messy, compromised situations, focused on preaching the gospel in season and out of season in a way that was humane and understanding of the complexities of the human condition. He often spoke about wanting to be on the front line of “primary mission”, which was where he thought cathedrals lived and breathed precisely because they were not too “churchy”. Alongside the national royal services of birthdays and jubilees, he was proud of being at St Paul’s for some of the more complex and sensitive moments: the national service four days after 9/11; and after the Iraq war, or UK forces’ deployment in Afghanistan.
He was always frustrated when he thought that the Church was talking to itself. He wanted to preach the gospel in that borderland between faith and doubt, to step into the issues of the day, such as education or housing policy, or the ethics of a just war, and weave these concerns into the liturgical life of the Church. He had a love of the old hymns, a distaste of liturgical fussiness, a suspicion of the extremes, a love of the Prayer Book, but an understanding that language had to change.
I always exchanged glances with him as he refused to sing one line in the popular modern hymn “For the healing of the nations”. Quietly, he would stop singing when the verse encouraging the banning of “pride of schooling” came around. John was fiercely defensive of everyone’s right to a good education as a way out of limited life chances. He wanted to live in a world where a London boy of modest means could become Dean of St Paul’s, and did not see why he or others shouldn’t be proud of that.
Even while energetically setting about the reform of St Paul’s, John also published both anthologies of sayings from the Desert Fathers and Mothers and an anthology of the writings of one of his predecessors, John Donne. He hung the portrait of Donne in his study, opposite his desk, so that they looked at each other every day. Donne was pictured not in the clerical splendour of other, later portraited Deans, but in an open-necked shirt, staring directly at the viewer, a man of evident appetite, energy, and focus. John’s civic ministry, combined with his determination to remain humane and always understanding of the compromises of humanity, seemed to be in dialogue with Donne as a predecessor and priest: they both wanted to speak of human things that matter to all of us: love and death, and faith along the way.
As a passionate Anglican, John accepted the checks and balances of the Church of England, while at the same time expressing frequent frustration that it was difficult to get things done. In response to a previous Dean’s observation that at St Paul’s, being Dean was like being a mouse watched by four (residentiary-canon) cats, John would always say, with a steely smile, that he was brought up on Tom and Jerry cartoons.
Chapter meetings were purposeful, organised, reforming, and driven by the agenda that was set by the ten-year plan that John had formed with a group on arrival. My appointment as the first woman priest to St Paul’s in 1998, and the subsequent controversy, which rumbled on for some years, found him resolute and unwavering, even though the depth and persistence of the opposition took him somewhat by surprise. Not a natural controversialist, he was not, however, phased by the cut and thrust of politics. Like many conservatives, if he thought that something was obviously right, he just got on with it and made lasting change in the process.
A long ministry was characterised by faithfulness in prayer, courage in the pulpit, the readiness to pop the champagne at a moment’s notice, the ability to fix an agenda by a request for “the briefest of words” and a huge gin and tonic, and a bursting with pride and love whenever he talked about his family.
John modestly described himself as a workhorse who loved and served the Church. But others knew different. His exceptional contribution to English cathedrals, and St Paul’s in particular, was recognised by the the award of KCVO on his retirement, in 2006, something that he was surprised by but completely delighted with.
The Church of England is in sore need of “cathedral thinkers”, people who can lay foundations that can be built on, modified, and celebrated long into the future. John was one of those thinkers and priests. His reforming zeal, grounded in theological reflection and expressed through the love of cathedral ministry in particular, will be felt for generations to come.
John died on 14 July, aged 86. He is survived by Susan and their three children and seven grandchildren.