Why Steven Anderson Hates Barack Obama

Yesterday I gave a brief introduction to the Rev. Steven Anderson of Faithful Word Baptist Church, an Independent Fundamental Baptist Church in Arizona. Pastor Anderson made CNN.com headlines yesterday thanks to protests outside of his storefront church by people who were offended by a sermon he preached on August 16, 2009, entitled "Why I Hate Barack Obama."

As I mentioned, I'm a long-time listener to Pastor Anderson's sermons. They're excellent examples of a particular kind of fundamentalism, several steps to the theological and political right of the conservative evangelicalism in which I was raised and about which I write. Anderson himself is an entertaining speaker to listen to, not so much for the polish of his homiletic technique as for his sermons' energetic mix of sarcastic-venomous invective toward those he perceives as reprobates, friendly joshing with his congregation, bombastic oratory about doctrinal points, and improvisatory vamping when searching for a specific verse whose relevance strikes him mid-sermon.

For me, though, Anderson has been a useful interlocutor of the fundamentalist extreme of hermeneutic and theology even as he blurs easy distinctions between fundamentalists and other evangelicals. He and his church evangelize constantly through door-to-door, face-to-face encounters (an evangelical feature), but he also preaches a rejection of and separation from popular culture (a fundamentalist feature). He not only holds to a strict inerrancy doctrine, he believes that in fact only the King James version of the Bible has the uncorrupted, inspired words. He rejects both dispensationalism and Calvinism (usually an either-or proposition for evangelicals) but believes in a coming Millennium and the doctrine of reprobation.

It's this latter doctrine that especially attracts my attention, and it's this doctrine that fuels the "Why I Hate" sermon. Actually, much of the August 16th sermon had appeared on January 18, 2009, in a sermon entitled "Barack Obama Melting As a Snail." Indeed, listening to the latest sermon, I thought at first that he had simply re-posted the old sermon under a new title. But the "I Hate" message was in fact refurbished, preached in honor of the president's August 17 visit to Phoenix. Examining this sermon grants an insight into Anderson's particular take on reprobation and provides a telling contrast with the nuanced views of less-conservative evangelicals.

First, the gist: Anderson begins by reminding his congregation that, as Bible-believing Christians, they must take all their doctrinal cues not from teachers or preachers but from the scripture itself. If a preacher promulgates a message at odds with scripture, the scripture must prevail. This can be difficult, Anderson admits, when the scripture's message runs counter to longstanding, commonly taught beliefs of the church. One example of such a common-but-unscriptural belief, he argues, is the idea that God loves everyone. It's a nice idea, the notion that God's love is for everyone, everywhere. But, Anderson cautions, scripture clearly states otherwise.

Anderson spends time referencing a few examples, such as Romans 9:13 ("Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated") or Hosea 9:15 ("...I [God] will love them no more"). He focuses especially, however, on Psalms 58, an imprecatory Psalm in which the speaker calls on God to punish enemies and evildoers: "Break their teeth, O God, in their mouth . . . As a snail which melteth, let every one of them pass away; like the untimely birth of a woman, that they may not see the sun." God, argues pastor Anderson, clearly hates. Whom does God hate? Those who do violence, those who hate God.

Anderson spends some time defining violence not as the inflicting of harm in general (e.g., as boxers in a match do to one another) but in doing harm (violating) the innocent. For Anderson, of course, the innocent most relevant to this passage are the unborn. Since President Obama supports pro-choice policies, he is for Anderson a violent person, a violator of the innocent. God therefore hates him and calls upon all Christians to hate him, too. Indeed, Anderson reads the "melting as a snail" passage as a fittingly ironic fate for an abortionist, since (according to Anderson) many abortions use a saltwater solution to burn ("or melt," Anderson says) a fetus in its mother's womb.

Anderson, aware that his message ("the Bible's message," Anderson would clarify) is provocative, deals with at least two instances in which scripture appears to run counter to his hating-Barack-Obama argument. The first? John 3:16--"For God so loved the world..." The key here, Anderson points out, is the past tense: God loved the world just as God once loved every human, including Barack Obama. What happened? Obama, like other violent perverts (abortionists, serial killers, child molesters, dictators, and homosexuals), went too far. God did love the young Barack Obama (Anderson disparagingly refers to him as"Barry Sorento," [a garbling of Soetoro or Sutoro, the surname of his mother's second husband] and--dipping into "birther" conspiracy theories--imagines him being born and raised in Kenya). The older Barack Obama, however, clearly rejected God and became a man of violence. Thus, as outlined in Romans 1, God gave up on him, closing forever the door of God's grace on him.

As Anderson explains in multiple other sermons, and as he repeats in this one, reprobates are in essence no longer human. They have been given up to their own desires, cut off from knowledge of good and evil. All of them are equally dangerous (e.g., homosexuals are always for Anderson rapist pedophiles who desire the death of Christians, similar to Jeffry Dahmer or Adolf Hitler), and all are equally worthy of hatred. It is in fact a sin to pray for their well-being.

But (and here's the second possible counter-example), what about verses that call upon Christians to pray for the men in authority over them? Partially, this objection is answered by reference to the fact that reprobates are no longer really men. But mainly, Anderson insists that the imperative to pray for those in authority is only for the good of the people. Obama is clearly set against the good of the people, so is therefore among those whom Christians should pray against rather than for.

In that view, then, Anderson asserts that it is right and proper to pray the curses of Psalm 58 in reference to Barack Obama: "Break his teeth, O God, in his mouth." Anderson is explicit: he prays that Barack Obama will die and go to hell. He does not advocate personal violence toward the president (and in fact speaks directly against such vigilantism in other sermons), calling on his congregation only to pray. He speaks directly against pastors and churches who would insist that Christians should pray for Obama. God is a God of wrath and vengeance, Anderson argues, and any church that suggests otherwise is lying.

More tomorrow,

JF