Welcome back to another episode of five minutes in church history. On this episode we are talking about Bishop James Usher.

James Usher comes from a very long line in Ireland. In fact if you go way back to his great great

great great and beyond grandfather you will find that his father was named Usher because of his occupation. He was in fact

usher to the king. And so this is the family that James comes from and when James

had come of age he was ready to go off to college and of

course he's Irish so he was sent to Dublin and James becomes one of the first

graduates of the newly established Trinity College at the University

of Dublin.

He studied theology in biblical studies and after his graduation he was appointed a professor of theology but he was also then

brought into the church battles in those days and so he was appointed Bishop and

left the environment of the classroom and entered then into church

politics.

Throughout the 16, 10s, and 20s, and 30s, there were some difficulties for those who were intensely behind the

reformation as James Usher was in all of the United Kingdom. This was largely due to King

James and Charles and they were not as

interested in the reforms and the desires of the Puritans. They were more

placators and so they were not only extending their reach there in Great

Britain but also over to Ireland and James was trying to withstand that move

away from the reformation and he devoted many of those decades to fighting for

the reformation in his home of Ireland. He did not neglect his scholarly duties either

in fact he applied his efforts to what would become his big book, took him over 20 years to write.

It was called the Annals of the Old Testament.

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