P e r ∙ C r u c e m ∙ a d ∙ L u c e m

Month after month, the amazing team at Wipf and Stock continue to make available an enormously helpful range of great books, not a few of which would simply be left to die (go out of print) if it were not for their ministries of discernment and resurrection. (Would that other publishing houses followed their lead!). They have recently announced the release of Geoffrey A. Studdert Kennedy’s After War, Is Faith Possible?: The Life and Message of Geoffrey “Woodbine Willie” Studdert Kennedy, edited by Kerry Walters. I have much appreciated being exposed to ‘Woodbine Willie’s’ thought in recent years, and very much look forward to reading this volume.

Here’s the wee endorsement from John Perry, SJ, Associate Professor, Arthur V. Mauro Center for Peace and Justice, St. Paul’s College, University of Manitoba:

Kerry Walters and Cascade Books deserve our thanks for retrieving for us in the twenty-first century, embroiled as we are in various violent conflicts, an accessible and coherent presentation of Studdert Kennedy’s early twentieth-century religious thought on war and its aftermath. Earning the nickname ‘Woodbine Willie’ from English soldiers he served as chaplain in the ‘Great War to end all wars,’ the cigarette-smoking padre knew firsthand the unspeakable horrors of war. He also knew that faith was not only possible after the hostilities ceased; it was necessary.

His was not a disembodied or privatized faith. He is especially helpful in linking the Eucharist with social justice. Although fellow Anglicans and interested Protestants may well treasure this collection of Studdert Kennedy’s writing, Roman Catholics like myself will appreciate his passionate love for the poor, wounded, and dying Christ and his commitment to the church, where he and others can insist that, indeed, after war faith is possible.