Anti-LGBT hate group leader Steven Anderson going to Jamaica
Steven Anderson, the virulently anti-LGBT pastor of Tempe, Arizona-based hate group Faithful Word Baptist Church, is scheduled to be in Jamaica the end of January.
According to the Faithful Word events page, a “Jamaica Missions Trip” is slated for January 29 through February 3, though in a YouTube video Anderson posted December 30, he said the trip is January 28 through February 4 and that he just bought his ticket, ending the short, one-minute video by saying, “See you in Jamaica, mon.”
In a sermon video posted December 1 on YouTube by another user, Anderson talks about the Jamaica trip, noting that it’s a “missions [sic] trip” for people who are willing to pay their own way. According to Anderson, a member of the congregation was already in Jamaica making appointments to preach in multiple schools, claiming that people are “super-receptive.” Another congregant, Anderson said, would be heading down soon and the two would be “farming the place” over the next two months, being “the boots on the ground” until the arrival of the main group.
Anderson said he would like a team of 20 or 30 people from all over the world to join him in Jamaica. Jamaica is not the only place in the Caribbean Anderson has been involved with; he was in Guyana and also in Trinidad and Tobago in 2016.
In the December 1 sermon video, Anderson likened the upcoming trip to the Guyana trip, which he said was kept quiet and involved a team of nine. The group went to various schools in Guyana and preached to 4,500 students and distributed approximately 7,500 DVDs and flash drives of preaching. Anderson said they “hit it hard” and he would like the same thing to happen in Jamaica.
Anderson, who has called for the executions of all LGBT people and celebrated the deaths of “50 less pedophiles” following the Orlando massacre in which 49 people at an LGBT club were shot to death and 58 others wounded, was banned from South Africa (along with members and associates of his congregation) and deported from Botswana in 2016 because of his rhetoric. He was also banned from the UK and, according to a video he posted on YouTube in November 2017, he was banned from Canada.
In addition to his anti-LGBT statements, Anderson has made an antisemitic film and promoted Holocaust denial, claiming that it would be impossible for the Nazis to have cremated a million Jews at Auschwitz and also that the slave laborers at the camp were compensated for their work and could buy items at a commissary.
A petition has been launched calling on the Jamaican government to prevent Anderson from entering the country.
