Ian Paisley, who became Lord Bannside, was undoubtedly a gospel man.
He was born, the younger of two sons in a Catholic section of Armagh, to James Paisley, a baptist pastor in Ballymena. His theological education was in the Barry School of Evangelism of the Reformed Presbyterian Church during the early 1940s. He was ordained in 1946 and became active in the National Union of Protestants.
His life could be broadly thought of in two sections. From the 1960s onwards, mixing his faith with politics, he became an abrasively outspoken defender of Protestant Northern Ireland against what he saw as the attempts of various governments to sell out to Sinn Fein and the Catholic Irish Republic in the South. The tone and aggressiveness of many of his declarations probably did not help the cause of Protestantism in the UK more generally as he was seen as a tub thumping anti-Catholic fundamentalist. He spent two periods of three months in prison during the first of which he wrote an exposition of the New Testament book of Romans which won him an honorary doctorate from Bob Jones University in South Carolina, USA.
While he condemned loyalist attacks on Catholics throughout his career, during the 1980s he dabbled with the idea of forming Protestant ‘people’s militias’. He famously invited journalists to a hillside in County Antrim one night to see 500 men brandishing firearms licences. The obituary in The Telegraph said: ‘The loyalist paramilitaries criticised him for inciting them to violence and then distancing himself from them when it occurred’.
But there was also a very gracious side to this enigmatic character which came out later in life. He was the most popular man in Ulster politics, topping the poll in every European Parliamentary election from 1979 to 1999. He proved himself scrupulously helpful to his Catholic constituents. ‘I am anti-Roman Catholic,’ he said, ‘but, God being my judge, I love the poor dupes who are ground down under that system’. Following the Good Friday Agreement (1998), in 2007 he took office as First Minister of Northern Ireland with Sinn Fein’s Martin McGuinness as deputy. He retired as an MP at the 2010 election.
Some would commend a man for putting his faith into action. But evangelical wisdom has classically discouraged clergy from being involved in politics, especially the kind that ties the gospel to matters of geography, Jesus said: ‘My kingdom is not of this world’ (John 18.36).
