Steven Anderson

Anderson at his church in 2017

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“”Anderson is the embodiment of hate and makes the late Fred Phelps of the Westboro Baptist Church look like Gandhi.

—Michelangelo Signorile

Steven Lee Anderson (July 24, 1981–) is an American Independent Baptist pastor and founder of the nonprofit Faithful Word Baptist Church, which is located in Tempe, Arizona, and the head of the New Independent Fundamentalist Baptist Movement. The church is currently listed as an anti-LGBT hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. His YouTube channel was terminated on July 6th, 2020, according to a Facebook post. In short, he is the new Fred Phelps, with even more influence than Phelps could imagine or want.

Early life

Anderson was born and raised in Sacramento, California to an Independent Baptist family. He attended Woodcreek High School in Roseville, CA and upon graduating, he traveled throughout Germany and Eastern Europe for three months serving in local Independent Baptist churches, studying languages, and getting experience in the ministry. During his travels, he met his future wife Zsuzsanna while out evangelizing in the streets of Munich, Bavaria. He converted her to Christianity and they were married shortly afterward. He also studied German at Sierra College but didn't graduate.

Faithful Word Baptist Church

Establishment and mission statement

Anderson established Faithful Word Baptist Church on 25 December 2005 at his home address. He established it as a "totally independent organization". The church's website states, "Faithful Word Baptist Church is a totally independent Baptist church, and Pastor Anderson was sent out by a totally independent Baptist church to start it the old-fashioned way by knocking doors and winning souls to Christ." About a year and a half later the church was moved to a strip mall that was also used by his fire alarm installation business. When questioned about the relationship between the for-profit business and the not-for-profit church in 2009, he responded angrily. In 2015, the congregation numbered around 150 parishioners.

Doctrine

As stated on their website, the doctrine and ideology of the church include tenets such as:

• Anti-LGBT rights, belief that LGBT people should be executed (and by far the most notable belief of the church)
• King James Only, Anderson believes the Bible is the true, 100% accurate word of God, and the only accurate, uncorrupted English language translation is the King James Version (ironically, King James VI and I was likely bisexual)
• Salvation is only achieved, and possible, through faith
• "Once saved, always saved", and a literal eternal Hell for all those who are unsaved
• Jesus is Lord
• Pro-Local Church movement
• Anti-Calvinism
• Anti-dispensationalism
• Anti-abortion, birth control, and In vitro fertilization
• Anti-worldliness
• Anti-modernism
• Anti-formalism
• Anti-liberalism.

“Hard” preaching and freakouts

Anderson believes in what he refers to as “hard preaching”, which is preaching the parts of the Bible, which are seen as "offensive" or "not applicable these days" by many. He even runs a think-tank promoting it. However, Anderson also uses the term "hard preaching" to excuse overly aggressive and/or outright childish behavior with no relevance to the Bible, such as:

• Bullying people for the way they look, think and act.
• Making false accusations about someone.
• Forcing sexuality on someone for arbitrary reasons (calling someone a homosexual because they're a celebrity, appealing to women and teen girls, or "look effeminate").
• Praying for the death and eternal torment of those he doesn't like.
• Using childish derogatory terms like "libtard", "faggot", "queer", "sissy", "retard" and "homo" to describe people, including other pastors and President Obama and claiming it as "Biblical language".
• Generalizing classes of people, "All actors are sodomite faggots" and "People who don't like me are homos".
• Attacking other preachers because they don't preach against homosexuality, abortion, or other religions.
• Attacking other peoples' religions.
• Attacking other Christian fundamentalists (Ray Comfort, Jack Chick) for not believing exactly as he does.
• Mocking people with disabilities such as autism and Down syndrome.
  • Or believing that those disabilities are just a pharmaceutical hoax and that they "just need more beatings". Unsurprisingly, Anderson is also an anti-vaxxer.
• Mocking anyone that disagrees with or questions him.
• Mocking anyone he disagrees with.
• Circular reasoning
• Claiming that all actors that women "idolize" are "sodomite faggots" who "don't even like women" such as Leonardo DiCaprio, and Keanu Reeves (Anderson claims that he acted in "sodomite porn", but of course has no proof of this), Justin Bieber (who is actually a singer, not an actor), Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt and Johnny Depp.
• Basically he hates all celebrities and mocks any that die such as Prince and George Michael.

"Hard preaching" is also used to excuse his very hot temper and tendency to kick out churchgoers who disagree with him, question him, or just don't like him. In 2018, after a man requested a prayer, Anderson had the man forcefully dragged out by his security, followed up by yelling, screaming, and ranting, implying that allowing that man to ask for prayer would've threatened Anderson's leadership.

Homophobia

“”To me LGBT stands for Let God Burn Them, but to them it means lesbian gay bisexual transgender. You say, "Well, it's LGBTQ." Well then you could say, Let God burn Them Quickly or Let God Burn Them Queers.

—Steven Anderson

He is obsessed with homosexuals and has ranted many times about how much he hates them and wants them to die. Like many other Christian homophobes, he cites Leviticus 18:22 and Leviticus 20:13 to justify his homophobia instead of confronting his own biases, while loudly ignoring the other laws of Leviticus and the Bible as a whole: and also, Galatians 3:22-25, which states that these ancient Jewish laws are no longer applicable to Christians today. Though he admits that stuff like conversion therapy doesn't work, he believes that nobody is born homosexual and that God makes people homosexual later in life as punishment for rejecting the Bible. He often uses the term "Sodomite" and refuses to either use the term "gay" or distinguish between homosexuals, bisexuals, etc, because he believes that all non-heterosexuals are predators who will have sex with anything and anyone and should kill themselves; unsurprisingly, he also believes in the homosexual recruitment conspiracy theory.

He believes that AIDS was created by God to punish homosexuals and fornicators. In December 2014, he called for governments across the world to execute all LGBT people to eradicate AIDS by Christmas. In a bizarre news interview shortly afterward, he stated when asked about his children's sexualities that they would never become homosexual, and if they did, it was the same as if his daughter became an axe-murderer, or his son grew up to be like Adolf Hitler. On the topic of Adolf Hitler, his vile and absurd proposition resulted in him being dubbed the "Hitler Pastor" by Kyle Kulinski of Secular Talk Radio.

After the 2016 Orlando nightclub shooting, he insisted that the victims were pedophiles and that he was glad there were "50 less pedophiles around", and claimed it was bad there were survivors. Nonetheless, he did state that the shooting was wrong, but that the victims should have been tried and executed by a "righteous" government. Because of the publicity of his anti-LGBT rantings, several on-line fundraising accounts for his church was shut down.. He also attended the notorious Make America Straight Again conference.

Other examples of wingnuttery

“”May we all live our lives so that people like Anderson demonize us after we’re gone.

—Hemant Mehta

Aside from his abhorrently hateful views on homosexuality, his opinion on almost any given topic can be described as far-right authoritarian. Interestingly, he did not support and strongly dislikes Donald Trump, believing him to be vain, prideful, and arrogant, and he does not support either of the two major US political parties. In a May 2015 YouTube broadcast, he argued that the Holocaust never took place.^{[dead link]} Holocaust survivor Rabbi Leo Abrami has accused Anderson of lying to him in order to have him appear in his anti-Semitic "documentary", Marching to Zion, that he co-produced. He prayed for the death of Caitlyn Jenner in 2015 during a sermon and made a series of transphobic remarks.^{[dead link]} If you want to have an idea of his hateful speech, it can be found here.

Anderson is an advocate of abolishing police^{[dead link]} and prisons and using slavery as a form of punishment. Anderson believes in the death penalty for homosexuals, adulterers, murderers and any others condemned to death by the Bible.

Anderson is also a massive misogynist and opposes divorce for women, as well as women's suffrage, and women in the workforce and in politics, and states that women should be "obedient" and "good" for their husbands. No, not like that. He justifies these positions by citing 1 Timothy 2:12.

He is also a conspiracy theorist, and appeared on Alex Jones' Infowars to discuss New World Order nonsense with Jones' cohort Jakarri Jackson.^{[dead link]} He's also a Young Earth Creationist who believes the Earth to have been created in 4,234 BC, but possibly between 25 years earlier and 25 years later. Anderson also believes going to college makes you dumb.

Anderson believes that Hindus worship Satan. He said that to cure poverty in India one should teach Hindus the Bible so that God won't forsake them. In the wake of the November 2015 Paris attacks, Anderson claimed that God allowed the attacks to happen to punish France for being a "sinful nation", citing (along with other things) that Paris is considered to be a very "queer" friendly city. In the same sermon, he claimed that listening to death metal is akin to worshiping Satan (and that those who were killed in the Bataclan theater deserved death), that Muslims worship Satan, and that Muslims were taking over France (which he stated was also part of God's punishment).

Anderson has even claimed that Mormons and Jews worship Satan. Pretty much, Anderson hates anyone who isn't a Baptist and believes that anyone who isn't a Baptist worships Satan, but he has a distinctive and strong hatred for Catholics and Orthodox Christians, claiming them to be crossdressing pagans disguised as Christians. Anderson has stated that when he was 16, he went to a pool party and a girl was told that she looked like Mother Teresa after pulling a towel on her head, to which Anderson responded by first doing an impression of Mother Teresa laying down dead and then followed up with an impression of her screaming in hell. He also praised the idea that Antonin Scalia was burning in hell shortly after his death, although he may be right about that^{[citation NOT needed]}.

Many Christian fundamentalists praised the idea that Stephen Hawking was burning in hell after Hawking's death, and Anderson was not an exception, stating that Hawking was in hell "experimenting with extreme temperatures" in a "zero gravity environment."

Ironically, Anderson hates Fred Phelps and the Westboro Baptist Church because he believes that Phelps was on the government payroll and that the Westboro Baptist Church doesn't preach any message of love. In addition, while many Christian fundamentalists take a vehemently pro-Israel stance in the conflict with Palestine, Anderson does not support either side in the conflict, believing that nobody truly owns the land and that all land is owned by God. He even posted a video in which he rants against fundamentalist Christian writer and publisher Jack Chick, and his stand on Israel.^{[dead link]}

God has chosen me to be a prophet to the nations, to preach the word of god, and to sound it out with no fear with a boldness, not like these preachers who are only interested in people's money so they tell them what they want to hear for money. I don't want your money, I want to preach the truth; you can like it or lump it.

Clearly, Anderson could do with a big heaping helping of Matthew 7:1.

Legal issues

Anderson made national news following a confrontation with the United States Border Patrol agents at an interior checkpoint on Interstate 8, about 70 miles east of Yuma, Arizona. A police dog gave an alert after sniffing Anderson's car, and Anderson refused to move his car or roll down his windows, triggering a 90-minute standoff and the calling of Arizona Department of Public Safety officers to the scene. The confrontation ended when authorities broke Anderson's car windows and forced him to the ground. Anderson asserts that authorities beat him and shocked him repeatedly with a taser while he was lying prone on the ground.

At his arraignment in April 2009, Anderson pleaded not guilty to two misdemeanor counts of resisting a lawful order. He was acquitted of the two charges by a jury in August 2010.

A day after Anderson delivered his "Why I Hate Barack Obama" sermon, one of his parishioners, Chris Broughton, carried an AR-15 semiautomatic rifle and a pistol to the Phoenix Convention Center, where President Obama was speaking. Broughton explained that he was not motivated by the sermon although he agreed with it. The New Mexico Independent reported that Broughton's appearance at the rally was part of a publicity stunt organized by conservative radio talk show host Ernest Hancock, who also came to the rally armed, and engaged in a staged interview with Broughton which was later broadcast on YouTube. Anderson told ABC News affiliate KNXV-TV in Phoenix that the Secret Service contacted him after this event.

Bans

Anderson has been banned from entering at least 36 countries due to his horrific hateful views. Anderson has been banned from entering Australia, Botswana, Canada, Ireland, Jamaica, Malawi, New Zealand, South Africa, and the United Kingdom. He is also banned from entering all of the countries in the Schengen Area, an open border area that includes the majority of Europe. Many of the countries in the Schengen Area had previously banned him from there.

In September 2016, after Anderson had announced his intention to travel to South Africa. Malusi Gigaba, the Minister of Home Affairs banned Anderson and his followers, citing the Constitution of South Africa and stating, "I have identified Steven Anderson as an undesirable person to travel to South Africa." That's ok, he's undesirable here too.

Anderson was also banned from entering the United Kingdom leading him to change his travel route to Botswana by flying via Ethiopia. On 20 September 2016, Anderson was banned and deported from Botswana.

In a YouTube video, Anderson mentioned a planned trip to Malawi in order to set up a church there. Malawian authorities subsequently made it known that he would not be welcome in the country and that he would also be banned from entering it in the future.

Anderson has also mentioned that he was banned from entering Canada (at the time, it appeared to be only his fourth banned country).^{[dead link]}

On January 29, 2018, Anderson announced on his YouTube channel that he was banned from "even stepping foot" in the country of Jamaica. He had been planning a mission trip there and was scheduled to arrive on the island that week.^{[dead link]}

The Netherlands refuses Anderson's admission. This effectively blocks him from Europe (the 'Schengen' area) totally. Anderson wears his country bans like a badge of honor, although it's unclear how getting kicked out of Iceland could be considered cool even in Fundamentalist circles.

He is the first person to have been banned from the Republic of Ireland by an exclusion order.

On July 23, 2019, Anderson was denied entry to Australia. He later celebrated the Australian bushfires and said they were God's punishment.

On August 7, 2019, Anderson was denied entry to New Zealand.

Anderson's entire YouTube ecosystem was completely purged in the summer of 2020.

His family

Zsuzsanna Anderson

His wife has also followed her husband down the fundie path, holding forth in her blog on how Godly her life is and how unGodly everyone else is. Displaying remarkable ignorance, she provides fine examples of fine Christian womanhood. For example, she says she disregards all science that is contrary to the Bible in her homeschooling, discourses on how every male OBGYN is a pervert, and comments on how she would abandon and disown any child of hers who was homosexual. She also believes that church nurseries are sometimes run by pedophiles, so any church that has a separate place for young children during services is possibly raping children. She runs the "world-famous" swimsuit company Cute and Covered, providing very "sexy" swimsuits for Christian fundamentalists, guaranteed to make any man aroused.

His children

+	This section requires expansion.

Anderson has 12 children, excluding another child who was stillborn. They were homeschooled by his wife Zsuszanna Anderson, including education on the German language. They now share racist garbage in private group chats; his son Isaac Anderson posted a Nazi tattoo, racist rhetoric and Holocaust denialism. The Andersons don't bother dogwhistling their hatred and fascist ideology, instead confirming it outright when asked.

Fruit inspections

Anderson judges other pastors by performing, of all things, fruit inspections.^{[dead link]} This does not mean that Anderson is working for the USDA. Rather fruit inspections are his favored method of divination to ascertain the health of a particular congregation, church and pastor. Usually it involves visiting the congregation and checking out the congregation's bananas, nuts and melons. If the melons and nuts pass the Anderson test for melon health your congregation is considered saved. Anderson, never the shrinking violet, encourages other pastors to check him out by performing a fruit inspection on him.

Stopped clock

Despite being a young-Earth creationist, Anderson has criticized fellow creationists for trying to 'prove' a young Earth scientifically. He fully concedes that the astronomical evidence points to an old universe but adopts the "apparent age" hypothesis to preserve his interpretation of the Bible. He also criticized Kent Hovind for his misuse of the word 'theory' and said that many fundamentalists unfairly criticize scientists and malign their work by presuming bad intent.^{[dead link]}

See also

• Independent Baptist — a particularly cranky fundamentalist branch of unaffiliated Baptists.
• Make America Straight Again

External links

• Steven Anderson's Blog
• Zsuzsanna Anderson's Blog
• Steven Anderson's Church, Faithful Word Baptist
• Videos and Text, Faithful Word Baptist Church - Text
• Site debunking Steven Anderson and people like him, run by a fellow Independent Baptist.
• Short debunking of Steven Anderson's video "The Holocaust Hoax Exposed"
• Video by IFB preacher debunking Andersonite horseshit