A fringe church group protests at fallen soldiers? funerals to continue a tradition of religious fundamentalism dating back centuries, witnesses testifying on behalf of the church said Friday.
Westboro Baptist Church, founded about 50 years ago by Fred Phelps, follows in the footsteps of militant, fire-and-brimstone evangelists such as Jonathan Edwards, a Puritan from the 1700s, and Carl McIntyre, an anti-Communist picketer and preacher from the 1960s, said Randall Balmer, a religious history professor at Columbia University.
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