Something was brought to my attention today and at first glance I blew it off with a “yeah, right, as if anybody is that stupid in the 21^st century in the U.S..  But it apparently took up residence somewhere in the back of my mind, and I finally decided to “give it a google”.  WHOA!  Apparently there are a few people that stupid in this, the 21^st century!

One such person is a so-called “pastor”, Steven Anderson of the Faithful Word Baptist Church in Tempe, Arizona, who believes that “women should be banned from voting and confined to their home”.  Mad yet?  Just wait.  I am woman … hear me ROAR … ! Anderson (I refuse to dignify him by referring to him as “pastor” Anderson) follows with this:

“You know what they mean [by women’s rights]? The right to divorce your husband is what they mean. You know what they mean? The right to rebel and disobey your husband, the right to divorce him, the right to go out and get a job and make your own money, the right to tell him what to do, the right to go vote for our leaders as if women should have any say in how our country is run when the Bible says that ‘I suffer not a woman to teach, not to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence’?”

He once went on a rant about how women shouldn’t be allowed to read, talk, or leave the house without permission from a man. He has even demanded that women keep their mouths shut in church.  (Filosofa says:  Hello … knock, knock, knock … anybody home in there?  Welcome to the 21st century and you have just royally pissed me off, so watch your step, BUCKO!!!)

Deep breaths now … 1 … 2 … 3 …

In 2009, Anderson gave a sermon titled “Why I hate Barack Obama”, in which he said he “had been praying for the death of the president.”  Not surprisingly, he was contacted by the Secret Service.  In an interview with CBS News he said he would like Obama to die of natural causes, as he does not “want him to be a martyr” and “we don’t need another holiday.” (presumably in reference to Martin Luther King Day)   In an interview with another reporter, he said he “would not judge or condemn” anyone who killed the president.

His message of hate is not confined to women and President Obama.  This may surprise you, but he also hates gay people.  According to USA Today (12/04/2014), Anderson declares that no “queers” or “homos” are allowed in the church, and never will be as long as he’s pastor. He goes on to say killing gays is the way to an AIDS-free world by Christmas.  In one sermon, he stated: “All homos are pedophiles. There, I said it, they’re all pedophiles.”  His message is that killing gays is a divinely sanctioned way to rid the world of AIDS. “Because if you executed the homos, like God recommends, you wouldn’t have all this AIDS running rampant,” Anderson said.

And the kicker … Steven Anderson brands all the still-living Holocaust survivors as “paid liars” who are simply lying when they talk about their experiences in Hitler’s death camps. He claims to “know” that Hitler’s Holocaust didn’t really happen, and that the current residents of Israel are not really Jews but a “Satanic counterfeit” placed there by the Rothschild’s family of Europe.  (Where in the heck did this guy lose his marbles, or … what rock did he slither out from under???)

Many adjectives come to mind regarding this man.  In the interest of professionalism, I will use none of them.  I do not claim to be of the Christian faith, nor to understand it in full, but many of my friends are Christians and I have been given to believe that they are a peace-loving people, people who believe in love, not hate … tolerance, not persecution.  I have written before about the Westboro group, and the evil that they perpetuate, but this Anderson character is the very definition of evil, even worse than the Westboro clan.  What is truly frightening is not that one man (idiot?) believes this rhetoric, but that he has followers!  If you look him up on Google, you will find 17.5 million hits!  I do not know how many gullible souls have succumbed to his rhetoric and are a part of his cult, as that data is not readily available. I have left messages on the church’s website asking for membership data, but have received no reply as yet.  On the website, you will find that his hate-mongering sermons have been translated into 115 languages.  He claims that, while he holds no college degree, he has memorized over 140 bible chapters “word for word”.  Apparently none of those chapters were the ones that talk about peace, love and tolerance.

A New York Times article from May, 2015 claims that “seventy-one percent of American adults were Christian in 2014, the lowest estimate from any sizable survey to date, and a decline of 5 million adults and 8 percentage points since a similar Pew survey in 2007.”  With churches like Faithful Word and Westboro, is it really any wonder?  Think about it.