THE CHURCH OF DONALD (profanity alert):

[L]ike any piece of local media that goes viral on a national level, the video is missing years -- in truth, decades -- of context. "It's wild that the national story is that there's a bunch of Marxists attacking Christians in the street," one local, who asked not to use her name because of her employment affiliation, told me. "Everyone here knows that this is our Westboro Baptist." (Grace Baptist Church and its pastor declined multiple requests for an interview).

The day of the video, the church was hosting its second AR-15 "raffle" in two days: In the middle of a neighborhood stricken with gun violence, the church was giving away one of the deadliest guns on the market. The Black Lives Matter protesters were invited inside by the church's pastor, John Koletas, a self-proclaimed "bigot" who has preached against interracial marriage, defends the use of the n-word, and believes that Black people, as descendants of Ham and Canaan, are cursed by God. He thinks Black History Month is "communism and Marxism month." He calls Black Lives Matter protesters "savages." He places a pork product -- a ham or hot dogs -- at the door, and requires all church attendees to touch it, supposedly to ward off would-be jihadists. He abhors feminists and gay people. He hates Catholics and thinks Muslims shouldn't be allowed in the country. He mocks sexual abuse victims and the #MeToo movement. And videos of Koletas preaching these beliefs are readily available on the church's Facebook and YouTube pages.

Grace Baptist is not the sort of Baptist church most people would associate with the denomination. It's an Independent Fundamentalist Baptist church, better known as IFB -- a movement that broke off from the Baptists in the late 19th and early 20th centuries in order to preserve their more conservative beliefs.

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