Pastor of Hate Sermon: "Why I Hate Barack Obama"

[Barack_America]

Pastor Of Gun-Toter At Obama Event Prayed For Obama To Die

Chris Broughton, the man who brought an assault rifle and a handgun to the Obama event in Arizona last week, attended a fiery anti-Obama sermon the day before the event, in which Pastor Steven Anderson said he was going to "pray for Barack Obama to die and go to hell", Anderson confirmed to TPMmuckraker today.

"I don't obey Barack Obama. And I'd like Barack Obama to melt like a snail tonight," Anderson said in the sermon.

The sermon, which was titled "Why I Hate Barack Obama" and also contained virulent anti-gay themes, continued:

... 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.

...

More:
http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/08/pastor_of_gun-toter_at_obama_event_day_before_even.php?ref=fpa

Where is the Jeremiah Wright-style outrage over this? Or is preaching that your President should die okay?

This is unbelievable. How does this quality as a "church", preaching this crap?

Edited to add further quotes:

...Obama's death, in Anderson's eyes, would be just punishment for advocating for a woman's right to choose. Calling Obama, "one of the rulers of the darkness of this world," and drawing upon fire and brimstone from the Old Testament, he gets wierdly graphic about what he'd like to see done to the POTUS.

"If someone's gonna twist my arm behind my back," he tells the sunday-go-to-meetin' crowd, "and tell me to pray for Barack Obama -- this is what I'm going to pray, because this is only prayer that applies to him: Break his teeth, oh God, in his mouth, as a snail which melteth, let him pass away, like an untimely birth of a woman -- that he thinks -- he calls it a woman's right to choose, you know, he thinks it's so wonderful, he ought to be aborted. It ought to be, `Abort Obama,' that ought to be the motto."

Anderson also makes clear that his message is political as well as religious:

"Obama is overturning the U.S. Constitution, overturning the Declaration of Independence, overturning everything we believe as a country, overturning 200 some years of history. He is the revolutionary. And it's a socialist, communist revolution. We are the counter-revolutionaries, saying, `No, we don't want change.'"....

More details here:
http://blogs.phoenixnewtimes.com/bastard/2009/08/tempe_pastor_steven_anderson_p.php

[WeDidIt]

1. Pssst. Obama and Wright are black

See, makes all the difference in the world to the media.

[Barack_America]

2. Oh yes, of course.

It's sickening.

[FSogol]

3. Time to yank that "Church" IRS exemption. n/t

[LeftinOH]

4. Wow-- he's *officially* worse than Fred Phelps...

Many in the Phelps/Westboro gang are attorneys- and they know where to draw the line; no overt death threats, no threats of violence. Plenty of hate-talk and vile behaviour from Westboro, but this Anderson guy is absolutely deranged. One hopes his "church" isn't tax-exempt.

[Igel]

5. We were told that

wishing for your foes to go to hell wasn't a bad thing, and we shouldn't criticise unless we've heard the entire sermon. Just hearing snippets wasn't sufficient grounds, and, anyway, we have to understand how "authentic" the emotions and attitudes are. In other words, we had to have empathy for him, in order to understand his utter lack of empathy, and then we had to agree with his lack of empathy to show we're truly empathetic.

Moreover, we were told that it especially didn't matter that a person who sat through such things and considered the sayer of such things a mentor and friend was running for president.

"Gotcha," I thought, "the discourse is so warped that there's no way to defend it, although there needs to be a defense for political reasons, to be correct in our politics."

So, since we expect outrage, we should expect similar conditions. Who in this "pastor's" congregation is running for high public office? Is this pastor widely respected among this ethnic community? Does he publish a widely read, among those of his political persuasion, periodical? (Suggested answers: Nobody, no, no.)

And were you as "offended" last year? (Suggested answer: No.)

I'll say the same things I said then. Such sermons are wrong and ungodly, whether it's Wright having a temper tantrum to amuse his audience by showing exactly how much a worm he is, or this particular piece of work. Even those who believe in eternal hellfire seldom used to think that it was ok to actually *desire* to send somebody there--the usual response was that it's a necessary act, and entirely up to God, may God have mercy on them. You have to get a bit unhinged to go as far as Wright or this cretin; their theology has gotten coarser, less Christian and more doctrinaire, more thuggish. Me, I personally don't like thinking that people should be executed, and when I hear of somebody who deserves death dying my usual response, apart from "well, okay" is "too bad he wasn't a better person." I can't work up glee over anybody's death. Now, I don't believe in eternal hellfire, just a temporary hellfire, some time in the future, that leads to disposing of people who simply shouldn't be--lamentable, but ultimately based upon their choices and acts.

[Barack_America]

6. Well apparently this guy has a flock of 100...

...and only 50 who show up for sermons.

Also, the sermon in its entirety is at the first link.

[orwell]

7. The difference is...

...this whack job is openly calling for the death of the President of the United States in a public forum.

That is where we have to draw the line.

It becomes a national security issue.

[gratuitous]

9. Well, I know that in Rev. Wright's sermon

He was talking about historic shortcomings in the United States, examples of which that resonated with his congregation included lynchings, slavery and general racism. For these things, he said that rather than God blessing America, God should rather damn America. I suppose there's a case to be made for blessing slavery and lynchings, but I confess I'm not open to such argument. Probably a personal shortcoming that I should work on.

But the only part of the Wright sermon that made it into the excerpt for the endless video replayings was his thundering of "God damn America!" Which seems quite objectionable once it's stripped of all context, so I can understand why some people would perceive that discourse as "warped." But then, I would characterize those people as ignorant, whether willfully so or by chance.

I'd like to see what sort of additional context could be provided for Brother Anderson's sermon. He seems quite keen not to be misunderstood, and indeed goes out of his way to affirm in its entirety the snippet of his sermon. For someone to force an equivalence between Wright's sermon and Anderson's sermon seems a perversion of logic.

[H2O Man]

10. Baloney.

What a loaded diaper of a post. Obama did not sit through those sermons. Based on that untruthful statement alone, the rest of your post can be dismissed as nonsense.

[Pangolin2]

8. Steven Anderson...just another Ted Haggard. So consumed with self-hate, he has to

publicly and loudly condemn the worldly extension of his own psyche. How awful it must be for anyone to be that conflicted.