Not satisfied with the tenets of the Presbyterian faith, Ian Paisley made up his own religion and invented the Free Presbyterian Church. And since he founded it, he made himself its head.
At the age of 81, Mr. Paisley has witnessed profound changes in his little corner of the United Kingdom, changes that are due in no small part to the influence of the European Union on the Irish Republic. Once highly industrial, the northern portion of the island has lost ground to the twenty six counties, which came out of a shell and discovered prosperity.
When Paisley's Democratic Unionist Party agreed, unwillingly, to go into government with Sinn Fein, it was because the patriarch of unionism recognized that his world was not encased in amber, forever preserved. Multinational corporations would not invest in a colony that was torn apart by factional fighting, and the only way that Northern Ireland could survive was through investment. The British government was clearly getting weary of propping up the place financially, and there was nowhere else to go.
Today it has been reported that the Free Presbyterian Church has shown Mr. Paisley the door, as if the time has come to separate church and state. After all, when the church's main function is to legitimize hatred and persecution of Catholics, how could the head of that same church turn around and accept Catholics in government?
Without the church's problems to worry about any more, Mr. Paisley can now focus all his attentions on preventing the devolution of policing powers to local authority, and fight with all his might to prevent a public investigation into the collusion between security forces and loyalist thugs that resulted in several murdered, and innocent, Catholics.
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