Ivan Foster (born 1943)[1] is a retired senior minister in the Free Presbyterian Church of Ulster and a former Democratic Unionist Party politician.
[3] Foster found employment with Ulster Television as a trainee film editor and enjoyed a somewhat raucous private life before turning to religion.
[3] However, once he heard Ian Paisley, whom Foster refers to as "the Big Man", speaking he immediately became a devoted follower of both his religious and political views.
[9] Foster first became active in politics in 1964 when, along with fellow student minister William Beattie, he campaigned in support of Ulster Protestant Action members seeking election to Belfast Corporation.
[10] He became a close associate of Paisley, who at the time utilised provocative street demonstrations targeting both Catholic areas and mainstream Protestant denominations, and was arrested and briefly held in Crumlin Road Gaol in 1966 for public order offences.
[14] Subsequently, Foster abandoned political life to concentrate on his work as a Free Presbyterian minister, having decided that the policies of the DUP were becoming too liberal.
In 2002 he preached a sermon in which he condemned Nigel Dodds who accepted an invitation to attend an ecumenical service at St Anne's Cathedral, Belfast, in celebration of Elizabeth II's golden jubilee.
This began on Thursday 23 November 2006, when Foster gave interviews to the media and met with Ian Paisley in person to express his concerns that the DUP were considering forming a power-sharing government in Northern Ireland, under the terms of the St Andrews Agreement.