Controversial Arizona pastor Steven Anderson’s sons have begun speaking out again the firebrand KJV-Onlyist from Faithful Word Baptist Church in Tempe, AZ, sharing what life was like growing up as his son while also alleging vicious instances of physical abuse and beatings.
Anderson, who is known for his rigorous Independent Fundamentalist Baptist theology, hatred of Calvinism, the infamous “pisseth on a wall clip,” and open glee at the thought of homosexuals being killed, at one point had the dubious distinction of being banned from 34 countries, including every English-speaking developed country.
You don’t get to say things like, “If I had a button right here on this pulpit, I could just push this button and every fag would just fall over dead. I would push it until it breaks,” without raising a few eyebrows.
Two years ago, Anderson’s videos were purged from many social media sites for violating their terms and conditions, with Anderson’s YouTube pages having uploaded nearly 7000 videos, which were watched by more than 135,000 subscribers, and resulting in over 100 million views.
In a wide-reaching interview with the Dead Domain, Anderson’s second oldest son Isaac, who we’ve written about after he came out as a self-professing, full-fledged Nazi, details life growing up under the notorious preacher.
I think they were a little too strict on certain things, like that the Bible doesn’t even talk about. Like for example, all the pants on women stuff. I think that’s a misappropriation…I understand if they’re okay with saying ‘women should wear skirts, men should wear pants’ but they shouldn’t say it’s a sin for women to wear pants. I disagree with that…
Commenting on his father’s propensity to label all things “gay,” Isaac insists he “disagrees with that crap:”
So I’m a straight married man. I’m not going to be told that if my shorts fall a couple inch above my knee I’m a homosexual for that. Like ‘oh wow I’m a homo now.’ Really? Or if I wear a pink tie or a pink shirt I’m now suddenly a queer for that? That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard. Or if you put any effort into your hair or appearance, like if you use lotion ‘oh yeah you’re a queer, you use lotion.
Isaac spends time excoriating many other NIFB preachers as a “bunch of fat mouth breathers” that “can’t even properly string together sentences,” as well as routinely writes off members of Faithful Word Baptist Church as “a bunch of weirdos.”
At the prompting of the host, he readily confirmed a report of his mom, Zsuzanna Anderson, saying that she “wouldn’t want any of her daughters marrying a black person:”
“Oh absolutely! That is absolutely true. Black, Mexican, they’re not marrying any of those, neither the sons either for that matter. That is abs– I didn’t see that on Reddit but that is absolutely true, at least when I went there. They didn’t say it quite so nicely, but yeah they said that.
..So my dad from the pulpit preaches he’s totally fine with interracial stuff, he doesn’t care doesn’t care, he just doesn’t want it for his kids… they may or may not deny saying that, but they said that both of them, on many occasions.
And it’s not that he has any dislike for black people, because the church is quite racially diverse. Tons of Mexicans, Asians, Black people, tons of diversity honestly. Like it’s a lot. It’s not like there’s just one token black family. There’s tons of Black church members, tons of Asians, a lot of Latinos, so we have all kinds of people in in the church.
I mean, even stuff in his personal life, it’s not even racist because he’s not saying black people are worse than white people or something, and he’s even pro-interracial marriage. He has nothing against it, he just doesn’t want his kids doing it because it’s his personal preference.”
A large portion of the interview centers around a chat log that caused controversy in the church that was never made widely public. This is a file that was shared with us years ago but which we chose not to cover at the time on account that it contained a hundred or so screenshots and private group chat logs involving several minor children from the church saying sexually explicit and racist things.
One of the children’s mothers discovered the chat, which was only a small portion of the total message because the logs were frequently deleted, and shared it with other parents, creating a storm.
Steven Anderson preached about the incident from the pulpit in a sermon that was never recorded. He condemned their actions and punished his children steeply, but he still lost dozens of members because of it. Isaac insists that they were just joking the entire time.
“Most of the bad screenshots are not our true beliefs whatsoever. We’re teenagers, we’re just joking around saying awful things. (Such as hiring hookers and beating them, as well as using the N-bomb, things he himself reveals in this interview) That’s what happens you put a bunch of teenage boys on a group chat…we didn’t actually mean any of the stuff we were saying.”
In harrowing detail, however, he alleges that his father attacked him and sought to beat him and possibily kill him for it, describing it this way:
My father’s not a very large man, he’s about 160 pounds… I was sitting at the kitchen counter on like a wooden bar stool basically, and when he heard about this I was sitting at the counter. He walked in through the front door, I didn’t hear him come in… he basically like ripped my chair backwards so to crash, like the chair shattered, it was like a WWE style entrance basically.
He made his entrance and just started kicking and stomping me into the floor. He said he was going to kill me at the time. He kept trying to provoke me to fight him because I think it was only me and him there..no one was around.
In hindsight I believe he was trying to provoke me into… bloodying his nose so that he could, if he sent me to the hospital or kill me, he could claim self-defense.
So which obviously I do Jiu-Jitsu in kickboxing, I would break him in half if I ever fought him. I didn’t care though because, as I said, he’s not very big. Despite him stomping and kicking and trying to slam me into the tile and concrete floor, he couldn’t cut me, couldn’t do anything because he’s not that big or that strong.
I can bench press more than he could squat, so there wasn’t really much he could do to actually like seriously injure me or hurt me, but it wasn’t for lack of trying. He absolutely tried, he failed, but he absolutely tried to beat me senseless, absolutely.
Isaac then details an incident where his father allegedly smashed his brother’s death against a concrete window sill as another example of meted-out abuse and punishment.
“And his head was like smashed like a melon over it, and it split him to where you could see his exposed skull underneath the bone, like underneath the skin. It split him to the bone and he’s permanently scarred on the side of his head.”
Finally, when asked whether or not Isaac had an any memories of his father being “loving” and “supported,” he hesitates a bit, before finally answering:
I don’t know about loving and supportive. I mean we definitely had some fun times with him because when he’s not losing his s***… he could be a pretty chill guy to hang with, if he’s not angry and flipping out like. Because he’s a surprisingly normal guy when he’s not going apes***, he’s surprisingly normal. So um it’s hard to say I guess. He was probably, yeah, like we definitely have plenty of happy memories with him, but just woe to anyone who was in the house if he was angry basically.
