Ian Paisley Ian Paisley Ian Richard Kyle Paisley, Baron Bannside (6 April 1926 – 12 September 2014), was a loyalist politician and Protestant religious leader from Northern Ireland. He became a Protestant evangelical minister in 1946 and remained one for the rest of his life. In 1951 he co-founded the fundamentalist Free Presbyterian Church of Ulster and was its leader until 2008. Paisley became known for his fiery sermons and regularly preached and protested against Roman Catholicism, ecumenism and homosexuality. He gained a large group of followers who were referred to as Paisleyites. Paisley became involved in Ulster unionist/loyalist politics in the
John Church (minister) John Church (minister) John Church (1780 – c. 1835) was an Independent minister who was most famous for his involvement in the homosexual scandal of the Vere Street Coterie. He is often claimed as the first openly gay ordained Christian minister in England. Contemporary rumours about this are unproveable one way or the other, though circumstantial evidence may suggest that his "inordinate affections which led me into error" can be equated with homosexual inclinations. A foundling discovered as a toddler barely able to walk on the steps of St John's Church Clerkenwell (hence his name) or St Andrew's Church Holborn,