He was educated at Sheffield Royal Grammar School and St John's College, Oxford,[1] obtaining a double first in classics.
He was accepted for graduate study at Keble College, but moved to London instead to work with the Student Christian Movement (SCM).
His scholarly reputation rests on the books of moral theology that he wrote during the 1920s and 1930s, especially Conscience and Its Problems and The Vision of God: The Christian Doctrine of the Summum Bonum.
Kirk issued a temporary seal as the function of Chancellor of the Garter was dissociated from the See of Oxford in the wake of the Abdication Crisis.
In piety as well as scholarship, Kirk followed in the tradition of the Oxford Movement, emphasizing the sacramental nature of the Catholic Church and apostolic succession.
He worked with the Archbishops of Canterbury, William Temple and his successor Geoffrey Fisher, and with George Bell, Bishop of Chichester, however, in devising a compromise solution, and in May, 1950 a resolution was passed in the English Convocation allowing for limited intercommunion.
The title of his last published work, Beauty and Bands, is that of a sermon he gave at the episcopal consecration of Glyn Simon in Brecon Cathedral.