John Nelson Darby (1800-1882) is well-known as one of the most consequential protestant theologians, and is often identified as the 'father of dispensationalism', the end-times narrative that is used to buttress Christian Zionism. But his relationship to this eschatological system is much less direct. In the late 1820s, he abandoned his vocation as a priest in the Church of Ireland to identify with a new religious movement that became known as the 'Plymouth Brethren'. Fiercely antagonistic to democratic reform, he nevertheless anticipated the end of the British empire, the break-up of the United Kingdom, and Irish independence – while exhorting his followers to do nothing to prevent what he regarded as political disaster. This presentation will consider some of the Irish contexts in which Darby shaped the ideas that would do so much to influence the world’s half-a-billion evangelicals.

Crawford Gribben is professor of early-modern history at Queen's University Belfast, and a specialist in the history of Protestant evangelicalism. His publications include The puritan millennium: Literature and theology, 1550-1682 (2000), God's Irishmen: Theological debates in Cromwellian Ireland (2007), John Owen and English Puritanism (2016), Survival and resistance in evangelical America: Christian reconstruction in the Pacific Northwest (2021), and The rise and fall of Christian Ireland (2021). His latest book, J.N. Darby and the roots of dispensationalism is published by Oxford University Press in February 2024.

This event will be both in-person in the Irish Studies Seminar Room, 27 University Square, and online via MS Teams.