![]() Given the DUP’s size, and the way in which it has blended the spiritual and the secular, that rift will have implications for all of Northern Ireland. Since then, Church and party have diverged to the point where if the Church is to be consistent in its attacks on those with whom it disagrees, it will increasingly have to condemn the party which it helped birth. Within a year, he had lost the party as well, overthrown by a power-hungry machine of his own creation which calculated that the octogenarian was by then an electoral liability. He chose the latter, leaving his role as moderator of the Church. It took decades for that relationship to weaken, but by the time Dr Paisley decided in 2007 to share power with Sinn Fein, the Church gave its founder a blunt ultimatum: choose it, or choose government. Founded by Dr Paisley two decades before he established the party, the fundamentalist Church provided the fledgling DUP with workers, candidates, an organisational structure and a crusading zeal which stemmed from a belief that the party was enacting God’s will. ![]() For years, the Free Presbyterian Church was an asset to the DUP. ![]()
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