RSS
Home
Christian Pastor calls for the President’s death
Print
Email
RSS
Subscribe
.jpg)
Pastor Steven L. Anderson
It is not all that uncommon to hear about how some fundamentalist Muslim group has called for the death of someone. In fact, there are quite a few people who are forced to live with security details because they said or did something that some Muslim cleric considered worthy of death. We hear of these types of “Fatwas” all the time in the Muslim world; but what about in the Christian world?
As it turns out, Pastor Steven Anderson of Faithful Word Baptist Church in Arizona is calling for kind of Fatwa of his own. In a sermon delivered on Sunday, August 16th, Pastor Anderson claimed to “hate Barack Obama.” He clarified that he doesn’t just hate his politics, or what he stands for, but that he hates the man himself and that “God hates Barack Obama” too. He goes on to say that because Obama is pro-choice, he deserves the death penalty. He claimed that Obama needs to be “punished.” Pastor Anderson even went as far to say that “Obama ought to be aborted.”
Now some people may claim that this is just hate speech and not actually a call to violence, but Pastor Steven Anderson would disagree. According to him, the purpose of his sermon was not to just “tickle your ears but to give you a swift kick in the pants.” He goes on to say that “God is a god of wrath and vengeance” and that he, Steven Anderson, is going to “pray for Barack Obama to die and go to Hell.”
“I’m a preacher, and so I am preaching to you what the Bible says, tonight.” He closes his sermon with a prayer that Barack Obama “melt like a snail,” a reference to a theme he hit on throughout his hour long sermon in which he claimed that the Bible says that evil people should melt like a snail. He also used that reference in relation to abortion.
In fairness, Anderson also said that he viewed former President Bush in the same way. But it should be noted that he never gave an hour long sermon calling for Bush’s death. If he had, there is little doubt that the then Vice-President would have had him be arrested and water-boarded.
Anderson’s sermon wouldn’t have made any headlines except that the day after he delivered his fiery sermon, one of his parishioners showed up at an Obama town hall event with an assault rifle and a pistol. Chris Broughton claimed that he was not planning on using the weapons, but was simply exercising his right to bear arms. Is that kind of excuse something we should take seriously? What if someone put a gun to your head and said that they hated you, thought you were working for the devil, and think that you deserve death. But when the police came, he told them, “Officer, I wasn’t going to use my loaded weapon, I was just exercising my right to bear arms.”
The fact that Pastor Anderson is inciting this type of behavior and violence is appalling. But is it criminal? That I don’t know. But I do know that Pastor Anderson will claim that he is just preaching the divine word of God right out of the Bible… and he isn’t far off with that claim. While the Bible obviously doesn’t mention our President by name, Anderson makes a compelling Biblical case in his sermon. As much as we want to label him as some extreme radical who is distorting the Bible, I am not sure we can just dismiss his sermon so easily. I would like to hear what some other pastors have to say about Anderson’s interpretation without simply labeling him a wacko. While Pastor Steven Anderson has incited Chris Broughton to bring loaded weapons to the President’s speech, the Bible is what has incited Pastor Anderson.
Atheism 101 Articles:
Atheism 101: What is the difference between atheism and agnosticism?
Atheism 101: Is there moral grounding without God?
Atheism 101: The Purpose of Life
Atheism 101: Is the Bible the inspired word of God?
Atheism 101: The anti-intellectualism of religion
Atheism 101: Why has Christianity demonized nudity, sex and sexuality?
Atheism 101: Does it take more faith to be an atheist?
Atheism 101: How to respond to the ex-atheist
Related Articles:
Comments
