Bushfires are “judgement of God” banned pastor claims
Image: Steven Anderson claims "God's judgement" is the reason Australia is burning.
Source: (Steven L. Anderson / Faithful Word Baptist Church) & MarcusObal via Wikimedia Commons
An Arizona Christian hate pastor declared that the bushfire crisis currently ravaging Australia is the “judgment of God” for “banning and deporting preachers of the Gospel,” after Australia banned him from entering its borders.
The leader of Arizona’s fringe Faithful Word Baptist Church, Steven Anderson, planned on visiting Australia in November last year for a missionary trip to local Baptist churches. His visit was blocked in July by the Australian government – making it the 33rd country to do so.
Anderson has previously called for the execution of gay people by stoning as a means of eradicating AIDS and openly celebrated the massacre at Orlando’s Pulse gay club in 2016 – calling victims “a bunch of disgusting perverts and paedophiles” and “disgusting homosexuals who the Bible says were worthy of death.”
In a Facebook post published from the Faithful Word Baptist Church last week, Anderson hit back at the Australian Government.
“Maybe if Australia weren’t banning and deporting preachers of the Gospel, they wouldn’t be under the judgment of God,” the post, which features images of the bushfires, read.
A link to a sermon delivered by Anderson was also in the post. In it he claims that natural disasters are used by God “as a punishment or judgement”.
In July 2019, Anderson revealed that Australia had banned him when he unsuccessfully tried to enter the country to speak at the New Life Baptist Church with Pastor Kevin Sepulveda.
“I just got word back today that, basically, I’m banned from Australia,” Anderson told his followers on YouTube.
Since the start of the 2019 fire season, a staggering 10 million hectares of land have been burned, with all states and territories impacted except the ACT.
While Australia has always been a bushfire-prone nation, experts have pointed out that these massive, destructive fires are occurring more frequently in the last 20 years or so.
The reason? It’s not because of the gays, but definitely because of our government.
Many are claiming that climate change, combined with inaction from the government after three years of drought, is the “performance enhancer” for this savage bushfire season which has already burned more land than in the Amazon Rainforest fires of August last year.
Despite his seemingly delusional world-view, Anderson has more than 100,000 subscribers on YouTube, where he evangelises his anti-LGBT beliefs to an extremist, diehard following.
Banning this guy is a start although Oz was the, what?, thirty third to do so? Typical of this government, poll driven, hang back and see how the land lies before you make a decision. Now for the pentecostals and the evangelicals whose unchecked proselytising is every bit as dangerous. I am working on a novel in which God and Satan, in the eighteenth century, are forced to join forces to defeat a looming and as yet unknown threat to the very existence of humanity which will manifest itself in the 21st century. This will turn out to be not Islamist extremism but rampant Evangelicalism, the secret weapon of a mentally deranged American president.
He’s certainly got a big opinion of himself. God is burning a whole country because we banned this lunatic.. didn’t know the Goddess was such a big fan of this idiot.. which clearly she isn’t..
I’m so frustrated that these fires are being blamed on God, the gays, marriage equality, poor luck and freak conditions.
It’s climate change driven by man made activities like coal mining and burning, factory emissions and just poor land management.
Until we admit this and start changing our behaviours, it’s going to get a lot worse before it gets better.
As I’ve noted before on these pages, religious types seizing on whatever misfortune hits anyone anywhere as evidence of their deity’s anger at the rest of us for not jumping on their particular agenda is a very old trick. How old? It literally predates history.
Humankind was still living in caves when witch doctors were arranging sacrifices and declaring any misfortunes to be evidence that the gods were angry. Our species and our societies have evolved a long way since then, but not these dickheads. After all, they don’t believe in evolution. And that’s why they’re pulling exactly the same shit they’ve been pulling for 30,000 years.
There will be many more like him in Australia now that we have a government playing games to prolong the licensing of religious hate speech and even making gifts of public money to a Happy Clappers group connected to the prime minister