... pastor, Rev. Steven L. Anderson, at Faithful Word Baptist Church in Tempe, Arizona. Rev. Anderson, also 28, explained not only “Why I Hate Barack Obama,” but also why he and God both want the president dead. “When I go to bed tonight,” Broughton’s pastor declared, “Steven L. Anderson is going to pray for Barack Obama to die and go to hell.” He even goes so far as to claim that:
God appointed [Obama] to destroy this country for the wickedness of the United States of America. God appointed him because that’s what our country has turned into. That’s who we deserve as a president.
And yet, even though we may deserve Obama, Anderson urges his congregation to pray for the president’s death, issuing imprecatory prayers and repeatedly asking God to kill the president. Most dramatically, and in an interesting shift to the passive voice, he said Obama “ought to be aborted” because the president is pro-choice, and therefore a “murderer.” Despite all this Anderson has insisted to reporters that he was not calling for vigilante violence. ....
Anderson believes in the death penalty for homosexuality, and the death penalty for abortion (which is of course understood to be murder). And these points are highlighted in the sermon he gave the night before Obama’s speech in Phoenix:
… you’re going to tell me that I’m supposed to pray for the socialist devil, murderer, infanticide, who wants to see young children and he wants to see babies killed through abortion and partial-birth abortion and all these different things—you’re gonna tell me I’m supposed to pray for God to give him a good lunch tomorrow while he’s in Phoenix, Arizona? Nope. I’m not gonna pray for his good. I’m going to pray that he dies and goes to hell.
http://www.religiondispatches.org/archive/religiousright/1801/%E2%80%9C%5Bi%5D_pray_for_barack_obama_to_die_and_go_to_hell%E2%80%9D:_the_story_the_media_missed_
Anderson’s anger is hair-raising as he shouts: “I am not going to stand by… and let faggots run the church! It’s bad enough that we’ve got a bunch of faggots running the government!”
It might be tempting to dismiss Anderson as the meaningless leader of a small congregation whose post-controversy service drew, by his own account, only forty-nine. But he says such extraordinary things all the time—as his effective and demagogic appearances at teabagger rallies and other venues of the far right have shown—and it doesn’t take large numbers of people, acting singly or in cell groups, to commit horrific acts of violence in God’s name.
Virulent ideas, and a will and a capacity to carry them out, are all that matter. We have seen many such cases in recent years in which at some point, actions meet the demands of the words of leaders with particular ideas about what God may require.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
4 comments:
Hi Margie, This really is scary. You never know what someone like this can get people to do that listen to him! I love your Thanksgiving family photo. It is such a great picture of everyone.
Thanks so much! We did have a great Thanksgiving. This is the same nut they caught at one of the tea parties with a gun. I fear for Obama's life.
Even more disturbing than this young pastor are the evangelicals who have latched on to Psalm 109 as a coded reference to what they hope will happen to Obama. I can't remember the exact verse nor have the Bible with me at the moment, but its the line about praying that God will replace our leader with another and that his wife will be a widow and his children orphans. Its really an abuse of the scripture to use that verse to express one's hope that such a fate might befall our president.
Even as much as I despised Bush, I did not wish his death. I always prayed that he would have a change of heart and realize the errors of his ways.
That scripture was posted on the church's web board recently, Nicholas. It was an example of taking scripture out of context and bending it to say what you wish personally.
Post a Comment