Saint of the Week: "Woodbine Willie" Kennedy
3/11/2026
Geoffrey Anketell Studdert Kennedy
Priest, 1929
G. A. Studdert Kennedy was born in Leeds, England, in 1883, one of nine children. His father, William Studdert Kennedy, was vicar in Leeds. Studdert Kennedy earned a degree in classics and divinity in 1904 at Trinity College, Dublin. After his ordination, he served parishes in Rugby and Worcester.
At the outbreak of the First World War, Studdert Kennedy volunteered as a chaplain to soldiers on the Western Front. Along with the spiritual comfort he gave to the wounded and dying, he was famous for handing out Woodbine cigarettes to the soldiers, who called him “Woodbine Willie.”
He received the Military Cross in 1917 for conspicuous gallantry and devotion to duty during the attack on Messines Ridge on the Somme. He had volunteered for a number of tasks carried out under heavy fire, including bringing in three wounded men from the battlefield. One story re-told by the BBC “tells of him crawling out to a working party putting up wire in front of their trench. A nervous soldier challenged him, asking who he was, and he said ‘The Church.’ When the soldier asked what the Church was doing out there, he replied ‘Its job.’”
Studdert Kennedy’s religious poetry is represented in the lyric of the hymn, “Not here for high and holy things” (The Hymnal 1982, #9). His verse, some based on his experience as war-time military chaplain, was published in the volumes Rough Rhymes of a Padre (1918) and More Rough Rhymes (1919). He also published a collection of sermons entitled I Believe: Sermons on the Apostles’ Creed (1928). His later poems and prose works express the Christian socialism and pacifism he adopted during his war years. He eventually worked for the Industrial Christian Fellowship. On one of his speaking tours on their behalf, he became ill, and he died in Liverpool on March 8, 1929.
Studdert Kennedy remains a powerful influence on the pacifist cause and anti-capitalist critiques, and his many writings have inspired figures such as the former Archbishop of Capetown, South Africa, Desmond Tutu, and the German Reformed theologian, Jürgen Moltmann.
Glorious God, we give thanks for high and holy things as well as the common things of earth. Awaken us to recognize your presence in each other and in all creation, so that we, like Geoffrey Studdert Kennedy, may love and magnify you as the holy, undivided Trinity; who lives and reigns, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
