Looks like Pastor Anderson is continuing his tirade. Its posers like this who bring reproach upon the name and character of Jesus, the Church, and Christianity.
Watch: Pastor Wants Obama To Die Of Brain Cancer: “Like Ted Kennedy”
*Update:
You may recall the post (Fear Tactics in America) concerning a recent news story about the guy who showed up outside a Town Hall meeting in which the president appeared, carrying an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle and a hand gun. His name is Chris Broughton. It was shrugged off by many people as nothing more then a stunt.
Well, Steven L. Anderson is Chris Broughton’s Pastor, and shares his prayer and hope that Obama dies:
Gun-Toter From Obama Event: I, Like My Pastor, Want The President To Die
Chris Broughton, the man who brought an AR-15 rifle and a handgun to an Arizona Obama rally earlier this month, says he “concurs” with his fundamentalist pastor’s prayer for President Obama “to die and go to hell.”
In an interview with ABC 15 outside the storefront Faithful Word Baptist Church in Tempe, Broughton said of Anderson’s controversial August 16 “Why I Hate Barack Obama” sermon: “I concur, I think we’d be better off if God would send [Obama] where he’s going now instead of later. [Obama] is destroying our country.”
And when a reporter followed up with, “you’re not advocating violence against the president?” Broughton, who has previously said his weapons are for defense, says “I’m not going to answer that question directly.”
“I don’t care how God does it, I’m not going into further detail than that,” Broughton says. (more)
Also see: Secret Service ‘Aware Of’ Gun-Toter And Pastor’s Prayers For Obama To Die
When people like these two “professing” fundamentalist Christians, make these type of statements, they are planting seeds in the minds of disturbed and/or angry people. And in my opinion, they know exactly what they are doing.
“But I say unto you, That every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of judgment.” Matthew 12:36
A holy mind cannot repeat a vile thing, let alone be the creator of a vile suggestion. –John G. Lake
"If the professed convert distinctly and deliberately declares that he knows the Lord's will but does not mean to attend to it, you are not to pamper his presumption, but it is your duty to assure him that he is not saved. Do not suppose that the Gospel is magnified or God glorified by going to the worldlings and telling them that they may be saved at this moment by simply accepting Christ as their Savior, while they are wedded to their idols, and their hearts are still in love with sin. If I do so I tell them a lie, pervert the Gospel , insult Christ, and turn the grace of God into lasciviousness."
When Paul wrote 1 Tim 2:2, Nero was emperor. Would to God that conservative Christians would read their Bibles…
Seriously … I know! People seem to think that we’ve somehow got worse leaders than Paul ever imagined. Are you kidding?
People are so ignorant of their Bibles and their history that it’s beyond frustrating.
Paul, i’ve used that argument too, but it never seems to sink in.
Religion Dispatch has an article on this story today.
quote…
When an Arizona man brought guns to an Obama speech the story went unnoticed by a media prone to seeing such people as lone nuts. A look at the sermons of his pastor who’s been praying for Obama’s death, however, reveals similarities to a far right theology associated with militias, radical prolifers, and proponents of theocracy.
Chris Broughton, 28, made national news when he showed up to protest a speech by President Barack Obama in Phoenix, Arizona with an AR-15 automatic rifle slung over his shoulder and a handgun. While Broughton claims that his (apparently legal) actions were not meant to threaten the president, there was more to the story than a single citizen’s dubious actions and pronouncements. Local print and television coverage in Phoenix, and bloggers all over the country, have led the way on an interesting and important story of religion and politics that has been almost entirely ignored by the traditional media.
Here is what they missed.
The night before Broughton’s fifteen minutes of fame, he attended a fiery Sunday sermon by his 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:
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 prochoice, and therefore a “murderer.” Despite all this Anderson has insisted to reporters that he was not calling for vigilante violence. Ditto for Broughton, who told a reporter for the Phoenix New Times: “I don’t care how God does it, I’m not going into further detail than that,” said Broughton. “It would be better now than later.”
While our national media and political culture often succumb to the temptation to classify people who take extreme political acts, particularly of violence, as lone nuts, in fact such people are not necessarily either nuts or alone.
Even when acting individually, (as Chris Broughton did when he brought an automatic weapon to an Obama speech) they are frequently operating out of a particular religious, cultural and political context.
Absent the distraction of a horrific crime, the story of Chris Broughton and Steven L. Anderson provide a perfect example. In fact, Broughton had discussed his act in advance with Anderson, who praised him afterwards, writing “Good job, Chris!”
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.
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.
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.
more here
First off, let us not fall for the media trap. PLENTY of liberals routinely advocated the violent deaths of conservatives. Example: Suzanne Malveaux once stated on a PBS show that she hoped Clarence Thomas’ wife fed him lots of pork so he’d have a heart attack and die prematurely. Jon Stewart once posted a picture of George W. Bush on his TV show with the caption “snipers wanted.” And so on. Do a web search on “liberal hate speech” and you will most certainly find similar statements made by liberal clergy. After all, religious right clergy have only recently rediscovered imprecatory prayer and prophetic statements of judgment, woe, etc. on people. Liberal theologians, especially liberation theologists (please recall that liberation theology specifically advocated the VIOLENT MILITARY OVERTHROW of capitalist societies and institutions!) have been doing it for DECADES. You could have gone practically anywhere in Latin America or Africa and also in many parts of Asia in the 1970s and 1980s and found many (often Soviet Union funded!) liberation theology “preachers” promoting everything from assassinations to large scale civil war, and the very same people in the press who are now acting so aghast at stuff like this were 100% advocates and apologists for liberation theology, and will never forgive the current pope for doing his best to crush the movement in the 1980s (which incidentally JUST HAPPENED to wither on the vine and die out when the primary source bankrolling it, the Soviet Union, collapsed). But consider the Congressional Black Caucus … they did their best to have the Clinton administration bankroll the Haitian government led by Bertrand Aristide (liberation theology monk) despite knowing full well that Aristide was assassinating political rivals (as well as whistleblowers) and using his “they are tools of the capitalist establishment” doctrines to justify it. And also, how many liberation theologists and theological liberals love and apologize for Fidel Castro’s murderous reign, and also Che Guevara? Stuff like this actually goes on a lot more in the religious left circles than the religious right (in large part because the religious left is inherently subversive, mind you … the “nonviolent” civil rights movement is a coverup for the true nature of the religious left), it’s just that when they do it you never hear about it.
Regarding these fellows, the argument of Romans 13 and 1 Tim 2:2 don’t apply to these people’s thinking. The reason is that these people regard America to be special, a nation created by God for God’s purposes, or at the very least a nation founded by Christians for Christian purposes. They believe that it is because of our Christian status that God has blessed this country with wealth and military and political might, and if we cease to honor God, God will turn us into Bolivia, Romania, or some place like that, and because of our lack of wealth and power, we will A) no longer be safe and B) no longer be able to do things like defend Israel. They don’t believe the same regarding the Roman Empire.
Job, i’ll always feel impressed upon to speak out against all of those who spew hate in the name of Jesus. I think its our duty as followers of Christ to not only speak out boldly against them, (especially when they’re in the news) but to actively distance ourselves publicly from their misrepresentation of Christ and Christianity.
If we don’t, the lost in this world believe our silence means we agree with these snakes.
If you mean liberal and conservative Christians, i actually don’t believe there are any such ‘animals’.
We’re either Christians [Christ followers] or we’re not. If someone calling themselves a liberal [or conservative] Christian spews hate they are not Christians but posers.
Yes i agree…and these people are fearful of truth!
They would rather continue to be deluded, to believe in their special-ness, even if it means destroying others.
This is why they are dangerous.
I was reading today on a few Christian news sites and one discernment website. They were outraged that the president (and other public officials) had dinner in the White-House with Muslims who are celebrating Ramadan:
What all of them failed to recall is he recently [also] held a Passover Seder, inviting Jews to the White House. He even proclaimed May as “Jewish American Heritage month”
I’m a Christian and follow no man but Christ only, so im not threatened by having a president for ‘all the people’ in America. Even if i don’t agree with all his policies. I don’t ‘need’ or require a president who is a ‘Patriotic right-wing’ conservative.
But these folks, like the nut above, do. It helps them continue to believe the lie, that we are a Christian nation with Christians in control. .