Britwashing

There’s an article by Michael Luo I saw today that repeats a classic lazy error of misattribution by stating that John Nelson Darby, the founder of the now-peculiarly USian superstition of Rapture was “British”. While technically this does reflect the political reality at the time, it is perhaps more correct to call him “Anglo-Irish”. It should also be noted that Bretheranism, the seed from which grew Dispensationalism, consisted in its early years almost exclusively of Irish or Anglo-Irish men educated in Trinity College, Dublin, and that the early theological viewpoint of the Bretheren was formed within an Ireland sinking into the listless decay of the forced political Union with the United Kingdom. As impoverishment and famine increasingly spread throughout the country, and the optimism and prosperity of the late 18th century became a fading memory within Ireland, it must indeed have been easier to believe that the End Time was approaching. Of course, for many in Ireland, the End Times did in fact arrive, in 1845-1848.