Crawford Gribben (QUB): ‘J.N. Darby and the making of Dispensational Theology’

 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.

27 University Square, First Floor Seminar Room

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