Pastor Steven Anderson of Faithful Word Baptist Church in Tempe, is calling for the execution of gays. No joke.
Jeremy over at Good As You has uncovered audio of Pastor Anderson where he says:
The same God who instituted the death penalty for murderers is the same God who instituted the death penalty for rapists and for homosexuals – sodomites, queers! That’s what it was instituted for, okay? That’s God, he hasn’t changed. Oh, God doesn’t feel that way in the New Testament … God never “felt” anything about it, he commanded it and said they should be taken out and killed.
Horrifying.
And in another sermon, Anderson talks about Barney Frank and Obama:
Our country is run by faggots. You know who was the man who was the architect of the bailout? His name is Barney Frank, he is a pedophile…
That’s who just sold our country into fascism. That’s who just sold our corporations to the government. That’s who sold out our country, a faggot!
. . . God hates Barack Obama, I hate Barack Obama. I hate Him. God wants me to hate Barack Obama. Someone who commits murder should get the death penalty.
It’d be easy to chalk up this kind of talk to the ramblings of a crazy zealot (and Anderson is a crazy zealot), but he has followers. And a website.
Listen to the audio.
h/t tp Right Wing Watch for the transcription.
22. August 2009 at 12:14 pm
Wait..Isn’t this speech a hate crime? What a bigot! Nice to know he’s a christian! Hope he holes up in a compound and no one hears of him again till he drinks the koolaid!
23. August 2009 at 2:31 pm
Pastor Anderson is not Christian and does not know violence. If he did he would not preach hate or encourage others to hate. To do so is an act of violence. Also, most fundamentalist use bible literal interpretation because they are too lazy to be read, research and become thoroughly educated on religion and spiritual doctrines.
Essentially, Pastor Anderson is an undereducated, uninspired, hateful attention hungry backwoods country hick. I found his church’s website and contact information. Please write him.
Faithful Word Baptist Church
Pastor Steven L. Anderson
2707 W Southern Ave, Suite #105
Tempe, AZ 85282
Phone: (480) 248-4082
E-mail: Info@faithfulwordbaptist.org
His bio below clearly indicates his lack of qualification to preach and lead as a church minister:
Pastor Steven Anderson started Faithful Word Baptist Church on December 25, 2005.
Pastor Anderson holds no college degree but has well over 100 chapters of the Bible committed to memory, including almost half of the New Testament.
Originally from Sacramento, CA, Brother Anderson was a member of Regency Baptist Church. On November 12, 2005, Brother Anderson sought counsel from his pastor, Stephen Nichols, about starting a church in Phoenix, AZ. They discussed and prayed about it and decided that Brother Anderson would move to Phoenix immediately to start the church. The next day, on November 13, 2005, Pastor Nichols called him up on the platform of Regency Baptist Church in the Sunday morning service and had the church pray for Brother Anderson as he would be going out to start this new church. Faithful Word Baptist Church began 6 weeks later as an independent, autonomous Baptist church.
23. August 2009 at 7:14 pm
Many of us with blogs have written about him before, and his sister.
As I’ve noted elsewhere, the comments that regenerated him attention where actually made in October, 2008, so it’s somewhat bewildering as to why all the sudden publicity.
And about that sudden publicity, it’s interesting in that no one has mentioned that guy who showed up at the Obama Speech last week in Arizona goes to Anderson’s church.
24. August 2009 at 5:14 pm
NG — could you provide more specific info for the date of those comments? And any relevant blog posts about him?
For whatever reason, seems that someone recently found these & now it’s making its way around the blogosphere again. I’m interested because a man here in Anchorage contacted me over the weekend about it. He discovered that Anderson had apparently been a guest at a local Baptist church about three weeks ago. I’m attempting to confirm that info, but plan in any case to write a blog post about this. I’ve already been blogging extensively about our just-passed-&-then-vetoed equal rights ordinance (would prohibit discrimination on basis of sexual orientation & gender identity). I tend to be pretty particular in citing my sources, so I wanted to get more exact info about when Anderson delivered these hate sermons.
25. August 2009 at 4:53 pm
Steven Anderson made the blog rounds before, going apoplectic over some billboard he saw while visiting New Jersey.
His sister, Raani Starnes, wrote about wanting radicals to blow up a proposed high school for gay teens in Illinois.