Faithful Word Baptist Church
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Far-right Phoenix pastor Steven Anderson seems to have forgotten all those parts of the Bible about Jesus Christ’s compassion for the vulnerable, the meek inheriting the earth and the whole Mary Magdalene thing.
In a recent tweet that garnered attention on X, Anderson said that “‘single mother’ whores” don’t deserve a helping hand from Christian churches.
“I would be pissed if I donated to a church & found out that they were giving the Lord’s money to ‘single mother’ whores,” wrote Anderson, who is the pastor at Faithful Word Baptist Church. “I would want it to go to the Lord’s work or toward helping godly Christians who are in need. Churches should not be funding fornicators and their bastards.”
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Anderson has more than 24,000 followers on the site. His tweet has been viewed 200,000 times, according to X’s metrics, and has generated more than 400 likes. Screenshots of the tweet, posted by alarmed X users, have gone much more viral.
On Wednesday, Anderson posted a poll asking his followers, “Should churches give money to ‘single mother’ whores to pay for their bastard children, or should the church’s money be used exclusively for the work of the Lord?” Amusingly, as of early Wednesday afternoon, “Yes, fund the fornication” was winning handily the vote over “No, don’t finance sin.”
Anderson’s Faithful Word Baptist Church, which used to be located in a strip mall, is now housed in Phoenix’s warehouse district at a former movie theater on Van Buren Street and 33rd Avenue. Anderson said in a video posted to X that between 200 and 300 people attend the church’s services.
Anderson claims on his website to be a polyglot who “has read the New Testament cover-to-cover in 17 languages and the entire Bible cover-to-cover in seven languages.” If that’s true, it’s an impressive number of ways to miss the point.
Perhaps Anderson glossed over Ephesians 4:32, which reads: “Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.” Then, of course, there was Peter’s message: “Finally, all of you, have unity of mind, sympathy, brotherly love, a tender heart, and a humble mind.”
Even the fire-and-brimstone Old Testament says the faithful should help the helpless. “Give justice to the weak and the fatherless; maintain the right of the afflicted and the destitute. Rescue the weak and the needy; deliver them from the hand of the wicked,” Psalms 82:3 reads.
Anderson did not respond to questions from Phoenix New Times’ request about how he squares his “‘single mother’ whores” tweet with the Bible’s many lessons about loving one’s neighbor.
This isn’t Anderson’s first brush with controversy. He’s made headlines for decades.
Back in 2009, Anderson’s church attracted roughly a hundred protesters after he gave a sermon titled “Why I Hate Barack Obama,” in which he called on his parish to pray for the president’s death. A critic of U.S. support for Israel and Zionism, Anderson has also plunged into the depths of antisemitism. A recent tweet invoked Jewish deicide, which is the antisemitic trope that all Jews are to blame for the death of Christ.
