The son of a
Sheffield bookseller, Pye-Smith was surrounded by books in his youth and was practically
self-taught: he did take Latin lessons from
Jehoiada Brewer. He became a
Dissenting academic and author, and was the first Fellow of the
Royal Society from a
Nonconformist background. He was also elected a Fellow of the
Geological Society at a time when there was considerable debate about accepting the idea of geological time, and if so to find ways of reconciling this with the teachings of the
Old Testament. He was an advocate of
gap creationism. Throughout his life he worked for the
abolition of slavery. During the politically turbulent 1790s, Pye-Smith took over the editorship of the
Sheffield Iris, the leading abolitionist newspaper in the
North of England, during the imprisonment of its editor, his friend
James Montgomery. In 1830 Pye-Smith took the Chair of the
Board of Congregational Ministers when it passed an anti-slavery motion to secure support from all Congregational chapels across the country in petitioning parliament: "That we feel it to be a solemn duty to employ our influence with our congregations and the public, to promote petitions to both Houses of Parliament for the abolition of Colonial Slavery, and therefore pledge ourselves, and beg to recommend to our brethren throughout the kingdom to prepare from each congregation such petitions to parliament..." The Congregationalists' 1833 abolition lecture, "The Sinfulness of Colonial Slavery", was delivered at John Pye-Smith's Meeting House in
Hackney by his former pupil,
Robert Halley. ==Work in education and theological training==