Excerpt from Wikipedia: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_PaisleyIan Paisley was born in what was then the town of Armagh, and brought up in the town of Ballymena, where his father was an independent Baptist pastor. After completing his education at the Model School in Ballymena, he undertook independent theological training at a Bible college in Barry, South Wales and, later, for a year, at the Reformed Presbyterian Hall in Belfast, Northern Ireland, though he graduated from neither.
In 1946 he was ordained, in a ceremony at an independent church on the Ravenhill Road in Belfast, by four ministers from four different denominations, none of whom had ecclesiastical authority from their churches to ordain. A common mistake is the assumption that Ian Paisley personally led an exodus from the mainstream Presbyterian Church in Ireland (the largest Protestant denomination in Northern Ireland). In fact, Ian Paisley was never a member of that church, and was never one of its ministers.
Ian Paisley's academic history has always been something of a sore point for him. He styles himself "Dr Paisley", on the basis of the award of an honorary Doctor of Divinity degree from Bob Jones University, Greenville, South Carolina. Bob Jones Jr., was a close personal friend and a co-leader with Ian Paisley in the international Fundamentalist movement. At the time of the award of this degree, Bob Jones University was a segregationist, unaccredited Christian college which banned black students from its campus. This policy was later reversed, completed in 2000 when the college abandoned its policy banning inter-racial dating following a national debate in the US which was occasioned by George W. Bush's decision to speak from the college's pulpit during his presidential campaign. Bob Jones University is in the process of regaining its accreditation.
In the early 1950s Ian Paisley helped to establish the first Free Presbyterian Church in Northern Ireland. He then, following a vote in his own church, joined the Free Presbyterian Church and was subsequently elected its second moderator, a post he has held for several decades. He eventually set up his own newspaper, the Protestant Telegraph, a strongly anti-Catholic paper, as a mechanism for further spreading his message. A website, the European Institute of Protestant Studies, fills that role today. He is also the founder and leader of the Democratic Unionist Party which is currently the largest unionist party, and the fourth largest party (in terms of seats, the 7th largest in terms of votes cast) in both the United Kingdom and Ireland. He also addresses the Independent Orange Order at their annual Twelfth celebrations.
