Church Conferences

Crawford Gribben teaches history at Queen’s University Belfast, and writes about the history of puritanism and evangelicalism, with special interests in the life and work of John Owen and J. N. Darby. He is married to Pauline, who has been variously employed as architect, artist and homeschool mum, and together they have four children. The family is part of a small fellowship in their local town.

– Queen’s University Belfast, PhD

Martyn C. Cowan (PhD, University of Cambridge) is a minister of the Presbyterian church in Ireland who serves as the director of postgraduate research and vice principal of Union Theological College, Belfast, Northern Ireland. He is the author of John Owen and the Civil War Apocalypse: Preaching, Prophecy and Politics and editor of the volumes of sermons in the Crossway edition of The Complete Works of John Owen.

– University of Cambridge, PhD

After a ministry of church planting in central Massachusetts, Dr. James Renihan and his family moved to Escondido, CA in 1998 to begin serving as Dean of the newly formed Institute of Reformed Baptist Studies. He led that work for 20 years, and when it became IRBS Theological Seminary in 2018 was appointed the first president. He has served as a pastor of churches in Massachusetts, New York and California. He is a graduate of Trinity Evangelical Divinity School (PhD), Seminary of the East (MDiv), Trinity Ministerial Academy, and Liberty Baptist College (BS). His academic work has focused on the Second London Baptist Confession and the broader Puritan theological context from which it arose.

– Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, PhD
– Seminary of the East, MDiv
– Trinity Ministerial Academy
– Liberty Baptist College, BS

Zach McCulley is a historian of early modern Britain and colonial America. He earned his BS from Cornell University, MDiv from the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and his PhD from Queen’s University Belfast. McCulley has also served three years as a visiting researcher at Yale Divinity School and the Yale University Department of History. His research focuses on the political theology, ecclesiology, and social networks of seventeenth-century Protestant dissenters, with particular attention to John Owen, transatlantic anti-Catholic literature, and early conceptions of toleration. He has discovered and published on previously unknown auditors’ notes of John Owen’s sermons and is currently co-editing The Sermons of John Owen, forthcoming with Oxford University Press. McCulley has taught history and religion at John Witherspoon College, Fairfield University, and most recently at The College of William and Mary as a Visiting Assistant Professor of History and Religious Studies. He is currently a professor of American History and Program Director of the Academy for American Civic Republicanism at the University of West Florida.

– Cornell University, BS
– Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, M.Div
– Queen’s University Belfast, PhD

Dr. Bingham joined Phoenix Seminary in 2024 after having served in both ministerial and academic contexts in the United States and the United Kingdom. Most recently, Dr. Bingham taught and held administrative leadership positions at Oak Hill College in London. Alongside these academic pursuits, he has served as a pastor in the United States and Northern Ireland.

Dr. Bingham is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, and his research and writing focus primarily on the history and theology of post-Reformation England. He is the author of A Heart Aflame for God (forthcoming, Crossway), Orthodox Radicals: Baptist Identity in the English Revolution (2019, OUP), and numerous articles in peer-reviewed academic journals. He is married to Shelley and together they have four children: Amelia, John, James, and David.

– Queen’s University Belfast, PhD
– Princeton Theological Seminary, MDiv
– University of California Los Angeles, BA

Although raised a reformed Baptist, Noah joined Lydia, his high school sweetheart, in the Reformed Presbyterian Church of North America during their years at Geneva College. They now have six kids: Katie, Michael, Julia, Andrew, Elaina, and Allen. Noah earned his M.Div. at RPTS in Pittsburgh, PA. After eight years of church planting in northwest Oklahoma, Noah took up the pastorate of First RPC of Cambridge, MA in 2017. Noah plans to begin his PhD at Queen’s University Belfast this autumn, studying the transatlantic literary debate between New England Congregationalism and Scottish Presbyterianism in the 1640s and 50s.

– Reformed Presbyterian Theological Seminary, M.Div