After reading diaries here, like Pastor Anderson: God thinks gays should be executed,AZ town hall gun toter: better if Obama dies now, and other pieces like "[I] Pray For Barack Obama To Die And Go To Hell": The Story The Media Missed, the word "jackleg preacher", popped into my head. I can remember my grandmother using that term, which she spit out in the same breath with "snake-oil salesman". Raised a Bible Belt Baptist, my grandmother had little tolerance for those so-called men of the cloth, who dubbed themselves "preachers" to mount a pulpit and spew hate and bigotry.
Let me state here, I'm not a Christian. I am a priest in my African-Caribbean faith tradition. But many of the great leaders in my community have been ministers, and have preached a message of love and respect from the Bible, among them Martin Luther King Jr, and Sojourner Truth. I respect them and have no problem honoring their commitment to faith and good works.
There are great truths from all the world's religious and spiritual traditions. Unfortunately there are also those who neither follow those precepts, and distort the message of love, and service to humankind into one that is diabolic.
Many of you who read here are spiritual, or religious people. Others are secular humanists and/or atheists. Time to challenge the media description of this man as a "Pastor" and tell it like it is.
Here is Jackleg Anderson's bio from the website of his "church".
Pastor Anderson holds no college degree but has well over 100 chapters of the Bible committed to memory, including almost half of the New Testament.
Originally from Sacramento, CA, Brother Anderson was a member of Regency Baptist Church. On November 12, 2005, Brother Anderson sought counsel from his pastor, Stephen Nichols, about starting a church in Phoenix, AZ. They discussed and prayed about it and decided that Brother Anderson would move to Phoenix immediately to start the church. The next day, on November 13, 2005, Pastor Nichols called him up on the platform of Regency Baptist Church in the Sunday morning service and had the church pray for Brother Anderson as he would be going out to start this new church. Faithful Word Baptist Church began 6 weeks later as an independent, autonomous Baptist church
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Here is the doctrine of his "church" (my bold)
We believe that the King James Bible is the word of God without error.
We believe all Scripture was given by inspiration of God, and that God also promised to preserve his word. Divine inspiration is of no value to Christians without God's promise of preservation.
We believe that salvation is by grace through faith. Being born again by believing on the Lord Jesus Christ is the only requirement for salvation.
We believe in the eternal security of the believer (once saved, always saved).
We believe that the unsaved will spend eternity in torment in a literal hell.
We believe that Jesus is God, and that Jesus Christ was begotten by the Holy Ghost of the virgin Mary.
We believe only in the local church and not in a universal church.
We reject the teaching of Calvinism and believe that God wants everyone to be saved.
We are Non-dispensational.
We believe that life begins at conception (fertilization) and reject all forms of abortion including surgical abortion, "morning-after" pills, IVF (In Vitro Fertilization), birth control pills, and all other processes that end life after conception.
We believe that homosexuality is a sin and an abomination which God punishes with the death penalty.
We oppose worldliness, modernism, formalism, and liberalism.
Excerpts from his rants (aka sermons)
He does not believe in Bible Colleges, or education for ministers, in order to defend his JD. (Jackleg Degree)
Why Bible College is Unscriptural and Wrong
He doesn't think highly of doctors or medical treatment either.
Physicians are of no value,. Ironically his rant is anti Texas Governor Rick Perry, who he compares to Hitler, because of HCV vaccine:
Now think about this. We are going to see the correlation in a little bit. What does HPV remind you of? Doesn’t that sound kind of like HIV, ok? But listen. We are going to get to that correlation in a little bit.
Perry also directed state health authorities to make the vaccine available free to girls ages nine to 18 who are uninsured or whose insurance does not cover vaccines."
So here is what he is saying. He just, like Adolf Hitler, like Chancellor Adolf Hitler back in the 1930s he is just making executive orders. He doesn’t care what the congress of Texas says. He doesn’t care...I mean the guy is a stinking fascist. The guy is Adolf Hitler. He doesn’t care what the law makers say. He just says, "I am going to make an executive order, thus saith the Lord, thus saith Governor Rick Perry." He says, "Every school girl must be vaccinated when she goes into the sixth grade for an STD." And this is the first line of the... I don’t know if you caught the first line that I read. "Many parents and conservative activists are saying, ‘We feel like you are giving the green light to a sixth grader that she is entering the age of, you know, promiscuity, that now she can become active in that way.’"
No surprise is his stance on gay folks.
The Truth about Homosexuals
He is against television because it is full of "queers", and advocates violence against gay folks.(my bold)
I am not a fool. Don’t tell me that Sodom is not on the TV because it is. I mean, don’t tell me that there is a prime time show that doesn’t have these filthy sodomite queer characters, because it does. I remember when I was in high school. I was 17 years old. The show came out Ellen. Ellen, the first...was going to be the first lesbian sitcom. It was ripped off the air. That was in 1999. That was 1998 or whatever it was. They ripped it off the air. And they said, "No. People couldn’t handle it."
Twelve months later it was back on the air. And twelve months after that, every prime time show had sodomite characters. That’s how fast it happened. And I don’t know all the details of what is on TV. I couldn’t even name the shows for you. You know, I could maybe name a few that I have heard about, but I couldn’t really name all the shows. I mean, I don’t really know what they are. But I promise you it is just filled with, with sodomy. I promise you it is just filled with gays and lesbians and freakos. I promise you.
And you know what? Even if it is not... You say, "Well, I don’t watch that stuff. I just watch the weather. I just watch the cooking channel."
Those guys cooking on the cooking channel are a bunch of queers. You know they are. "Oh, you know, I just throw in a little bit of this."
Good night. Be a man. "Oh, I just like...I just watch the home decorating show." Oh, good night. What’s that guys name? This guy was on when I was a teenager. Christopher Lowell. And who has ever heard of that guy? Is that what his name is? I got the name right? Christopher Lowell. That gay little piece of trash. I would like to beat the fire out of him. Somebody needs to beat him with the ugly stick. I am going to tell you something. The TV is filled with sodomites. The whole agenda behind TV is a brainwashing session. And the reason that you watch it is because your eyes lust to see all those beautiful women on there or all those robust men on there or all those...you long to look at all the explosions, right? You want to see all the explosions and you want to fly in the jets in the airplanes and, boy, it will really tickle your eyes, won’t it?
You get the picture.
Fredrick Clarkson's piece gives more background on Jackleg Anderson's other affiliations, specifically with the Constitution Party:
At a teabagger rally in Arizona, Anderson denounced both the Republican and Democratic Parties, declaring without a hint of irony that Obama, the "worst president" in American history, is "selling us into slavery and serfdom." Further research revealed Anderson’s involvement in the Constitution Party, the third largest "third party" in the U.S. In a June speech to the state convention of the Arizona Constitution Party he introduced himself (in addition to being pastor of ) as owner of a "firearms business" operating in "several states" and closed with a plea for an American government based on God’s laws as set out in the Biblical book of Deuteronomy. The Constitution Party, which has tended to be the political home for people with views strikingly similar to Anderson’s, is frequently dismissed as a fringe party of little electoral consequence, even though its significance lies elsewhere. It is in fact a steaming hotbed of far right factions with theocratic, vigilante, and sometimes revolutionary ideas whose like-minded members get together to make their plans, just like any other organized faction in American public life. The party says it is 100% pro-life and pro-gun.
Many of the party’s early leaders were Christian Reconstructionists, or heavily influenced by Reconstructionism, including party founder and three-time presidential candidate Howard Phillips. Reconstructionism is a theocratic systematic theology whose seminal thinker, the late R.J. Rushdoony, spoke at the Constitution Party’s founding convention and was a longtime advisor to Phillips. Reconstructionism was one of the significant theological catalysts for the modern Religious Right—a movement, like other social and political movements throughout history, that has transcended party identification.
The Constitution Party has also been a political home to a wide array of militia proponents, including one of the movement’s leading theorists, Larry Pratt, head of Gun Owners of America, Rev. Matthew Trewhella, founder of Missionaries to the Preborn who has urged parents to buy each of their children "an SKS rifle and 500 rounds of ammunition" for their church militia; Operation Rescue founder Randall Terry, (who ran as a Constitution Party candidate for Congress in 1998, but who has since become a Republican); and even Rev. Michael Bray, a convicted felon and longtime leader in the Army of God.
Now is the time for all people of faith, (and particularly those of you who are Baptists) to have your churches, temples, and mosques condemn these jackanapes.
He has thoughtfully provided us all with his email address, and the location of his snake-oil box.
Faithful Word Baptist Church
Pastor Steven L. Anderson
2707 W Southern Ave, Suite #105
Tempe, AZ 85282
Phone: (480) 248-4082
E-mail: Info@faithfulwordbaptist.org
UPDATE hat tip to darthstar. His wife has a blog. Called
Yes, I did just say that. This is the woman who is home-schooling the kids.
She claims to have studied anthropology in college in Germany. As an anthropologist, I find this impossible to believe.