The Reverend John Moody, a longtime minister in the Episcopal Church and a visual artist, died on November 14th, 2025,  in New York City. He was 98 years old.  He was a longtime resident of New York City and Hillsdale, NY. 

John Wallace Moody was born November 16, 1926, at Abington Hospital, in Abington, Pennsylvania, to Harold Wellington Moody and Lulu Anderson Moody. He had an older brother, Bud (Harold Wellington Moody, Jr.), who predeceased him in 1961.

Reverend Moody attended Bexley High School in Bexley, OH, from which he graduated in 1944. He enlisted in the American military near the end of World War Two, where he served in fire control for the 465th Field Artillery Battalion. Reverend Moody was en route to a possible invasion of Japan at the time of the Japanese surrender.

After military service, Reverend Moody attended the Associated Colleges of New York for two years, finishing his bachelor’s degree at Union College, from which he graduated in 1950. Upon abandoning the study of medicine at Union, he heard the call of the ministry. In Cambridge, MA, he attended Episcopal Theological Seminary, graduating in 1953, after which he was assigned to St. Alban’s Church of Bexley, OH. He served in Ohio for fourteen years, establishing a new parish there and training clergy.

While at seminary, and owing to a lifelong fascination with the arts, Father Moody took a sabbatical from parish life to study painting and sculpture at New York University, from which he graduated with a master of fine arts degree. In 1969, at a time of cultural ferment in New York City, he joined the staff at Trinity Church, where he directed a noonday service and arts program. In 1969, Father Moody also came out as a gay man, meeting his life partner David Smith in 1971, with whom he lived in committed partnership until David’s untimely death in a bicycle accident in December of 2007.

Father Moody left his position at Trinity Church in 1974; after Trinity, his most frequent postings were as a minister involved in arts ministry and arts programming—in Baltimore and at Manhattan Plaza in New York. He was also rector of St. Paul’s on the Hill parish in Ossining, NY, and at St. John in the Wilderness in Copake Falls, NY. In 1988, Reverend Moody was asked to return to Trinity Wall Street, where he served until retirement.

In retirement, Father Moody painted full time. (His favorite painters were Henri Matisse and Marsden Hartley.) However, he paused art-making activities to work as a chaplain in “the pit” at the site of the former World Trade Center after 9/11/2001. He was attached there as a chaplain to a local emergency medical unit.

In his later life, Father Moody’s spiritual life moved toward contemplation and mystical experience, and especially toward the idea that the visual arts can help us catalyze and articulate a relationship with a loving God.

He leaves behind a stepson, Nalla Smith, a sister-in-law, Jackie Smith, four nieces and nephews, including Bud Moody (Harold Wellington Moody III), Diane Spangler, Sandy Velie, and Jeff Moody, and a devoted multi-generational supply of grandnieces, grandnephews, and cousins.

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