Disciplined Clergyman Returns to Presbyterian Ministry

The Rev. Donn Moomaw, a nationally known clergyman disciplined two years ago for “sexual misconduct” with five women while he was pastor of Bel Air Presbyterian Church in Encino, has returned to active ministry at a congregation in San Diego County with the blessings of Presbyterian officials.

Moomaw, once an All-American linebacker at UCLA, was best known as former President Ronald Reagan’s pastor when in February of 1993 he suddenly resigned after 29 years at the Encino church, saying he had “stepped over the line of acceptable behavior with some members of the congregation.”

After two years of secrecy, regional church officials announced at the $13.5-million sanctuary on Mulholland Drive overlooking the San Fernando Valley that Moomaw had pleaded no contest to charges of violating a previously undisclosed 1990 agreement barring him from counseling women and engaging in “repeated instances of sexual contact”--not described further--from 1983 to 1992.

Moomaw was ordered to undergo therapy and meet monthly with a church committee. The ruling declared that he could be reinstated on Jan. 1, 1997, if his rehabilitation was considered successful.

The Presbytery of the Pacific, the regional body with jurisdiction in his case, decided that he fulfilled all the requirements, including signs of full repentance, the Rev. Charles Doak, the administrator of the presbytery, said this week.

“He is still barred from one-on-one counseling with women, and a few other restrictions are still in place,” Doak said. But the Presbytery of the Pacific gave permission, through the Presbytery of San Diego, for Moomaw to accept the interim pastor position at the 800-member Village Community Presbyterian Church in Rancho Santa Fe.

Moomaw, who stayed out of the limelight and never answered press inquiries after resigning from Bel Air Presbyterian, was considering an offer from elders at the Rancho Santa Fe church when the news media descended on that small north San Diego County community to cover the Heaven’s Gate cult suicides in late March.

Nevertheless, Moomaw was able to avoid attracting attention then. He subsequently accepted the interim pastor’s post and this month he was the guest preacher at a prominent Newport Beach congregation, St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church. He spoke on the account in the Gospel of Matthew of the apostle Peter’s remorse after he denied three times that he was a follower of Jesus.

Reached by telephone recently at his home, where he still lives within walking distance of Bel Air Presbyterian, Moomaw remarked, “Peter fell, then he had a recall. . . . Some of the best leaders have been people who have been wounded.”

Moomaw, who rejected offers to play professional football and entered the seminary, served a congregation in Berkeley before becoming pastor of Bel Air Presbyterian in 1964. Moomaw was the only clergyman invited to offer prayers at Reagan’s first presidential inauguration in 1981 and was one of four who did at the 1985 inauguration.

In brief reflective comments over the phone, Moomaw indicated that he has had to learn this decade how to cope without the praise he had been used to earlier in his life.

“I’ve been in the limelight ever since junior high; in football I’d hear my name chanted over and over by a crowd,” he said. “If you get your strokes and validation that way, it can become a very seductive way to live.”

But the rehabilitative process has been successful, he said. Although he started drawing his pension at age 62 and will turn 66 in October, Moomaw said, “I believe that some of my best work might be ahead of me.”

Declining to talk about the events that led to the church disciplinary actions, Moomaw said, “I’m so enjoying the reentry that the past is pretty insignificant to who I am right now.”

Asked for a face-to-face interview, Moomaw said he would consult his wife first. A few days later, Moomaw declined. “We have both experienced a fresh new call from God to move on in our lives,” he said. “We have closure on all of this and don’t feel a need at this time to publicly rehearse it any further.”

Reaction in Presbyterian circles to Moomaw’s return to the ministry is mixed, said Doak of the Pacific Presbytery. “Some people are very supportive and others raise questions about his continued role,” Doak said. “I think the majority say he’s taken responsibility for his life and has done that which the church required.”