Dr Trevor Morrow, who will be installed as Moderator of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland this evening, is the longest-serving clergyman of any Christian denomination in Dublin's Liffey Valley area. He has been in Lucan for 171/2 years.
Lucan was to be his Nineveh, he said. According to the Old Testament Book of Jonah, Nineveh was where God sent Jonah, who became angry at God because of his compassion for the people of Nineveh, who Jonah believed should be destroyed for their wickedness. Dr Morrow said Jonah was "a bigot".
The inspiration to go South came to Dr Morrow while he was giving a series of sermons in the North based on Jonah, in which he criticised his fellow churchmen there for failing to relate to people from whom they were separated, especially as they claimed to be people of the Word.
His wife Carys told him: "You are Jonah", simply dumping his own prejudices on his church. It struck a chord and he felt a responsibility to seek out his own Nineveh.
His upbringing had been among the Lambegs of Lisburn, Co Antrim. Both grandfathers were Orange worshipful masters, though his father was not in the order.
His experience in the South has been profound. As he recently told the Presbyterian Herald: "After so many years in the Republic my sense of identity has changed. Through Irish nationalism, Irishness has become associated with being Celtic, Roman Catholic, speaking Gaelic, joining the GAA and playing traditional music. All this is changing.
"In an increasingly pluralist Ireland, you can be an Irishman from Hong Kong (we have such a family in our Lucan church with full Irish citizenship) or Irish and British, which is the unionist position of nearly 20 per cent of the population of the island, or like myself, an Ulster Presbyterian Irishman now resident in Co Dublin who still plays cricket, or a non-practising Roman Catholic who cannot speak a word of Irish and supports Manchester United."
He said: "These are great days to reclaim our Irishness, whatever our political aspirations".
Speaking to The Irish Times, he said "historic unionism and Irishness are not antithetical." He saw no reason to abandon the unionist tradition and ethos he was brought up in to be considered Irish and sought greater opportunity for those who saw themselves as Irish and unionist to express that identity openly.
He queried the rarity with which the Union flag is seen flying in the Republic. It was the flag of a fifth of people on the island, he pointed out, and with parity of esteem it should be seen more frequently, while he understood the historical reasons for the situation. But that was just "one perspective on the story of Ireland. Another has to be recognised, tolerated and accepted," he said.
He would distinguish between those elements of unionism which were overtly political and those which were cultural and religious.
His difficulty with Orangeism had to do with its identification of the reformed faith and Britishness as synonymous. That was "theologically untenable", just as was the identity of Roman Catholicism and Irish nationalism.
Dr Morrow was born in 1948. He attended Magee University before studying philosophy and English at Trinity College Dublin. He was ordained in 1978 and served first in Bangor, Co Down.
His Welsh-born wife, Carys, had been an actuary with Stokes Kennedy Crowley but returned to college to study psychology. She is now director at the Lucan Family Centre. Their son, Peter, is 23 and is in Missouri, working in information technology, while Ceri (21) is studying philosophy at Glasgow University.
Though perceived as being on the more inclusive wing of the Presbyterian Church, Dr Morrow described himself as "theologically conservative". However, he said many in the church were upset last year when the general assembly voted against joining the proposed conference of churches in Ireland. It would have involved all the Christian denominations.
Dr Morrow said last year's vote reflected how divided opinion in his church was on the issue. Many feared Roman Catholic dominance in the new conference. "Unquestionably in all Protestant churches there is still a great, deep-seated fear of Roman Catholicism," he said.