Content warning: This article contains violent anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric, descriptions of domestic abuse and references to sexual assault. Reader discretion is advised.
The eldest children of vehemently anti-LGBTQ+ pastor Steven Anderson have spoken out with allegations of years of domestic violence by their father and his wife, Zsuzsanna.
In a series of interviews with Dead Domain, a trans YouTuber, Steven Anderson’s children paint a traumatic picture of their childhood. The interviews detail punishments that could be defined as extreme.
A history of hate and conspiracy theories
Steven Anderson is the self-appointed leader of the New Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (NIFB) sect. For more than a decade, he has advocated the execution of gay people, and his hateful, violent rhetoric has seen him banned from multiple countries, including the U.K., Ireland and Botswana.
Anderson garnered national attention in 2009 for a sermon called “Why I Hate Barack Obama,” in which he exhorted his congregation to pray for the president’s death. The day after the sermon, ABC News reported that a parishioner named Christopher Broughton brought an AR-15 and handgun to an event where President Obama was addressing a veterans group.
Anderson often refers to LGBTQ+ people in dehumanizing, pejorative terms like “sodomites” and “reprobates.” In 2014, he delivered a sermon just before World AIDS Day called “AIDS: The Judgment of God.” He claimed the cure for AIDS could be found in the biblical book of Leviticus, which calls for men who have sex with men to be put to death. Anderson said: “We can have an AIDS-free world by Christmas. Okay, it wouldn’t be totally AIDS free, but we’d be like 90-some percent AIDS-free by Christmas if we follow this.” He celebrated the Orlando Pulse nightclub shooting, saying that there were “50 less pedophiles in this world.”
Anderson has spent much of the last decade leading and building the NIFB. He grew a fellowship of pastors including Jonathan Shelley of Stedfast Baptist, Aaron Thompson of Sure Foundation Baptist and Roger Jimenez of Verity Baptist Church, all of whom espouse his antisemitic and anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric. In 2019 this group held a conference called Make America Straight Again.
Allegations
Three of Anderson’s children have come forward to claim that their parents abused them. Their stories share many similarities, including beatings with an electrical cord and a pervasive environment of emotional manipulation and control where they were forced to hide the truth about the violence in the household.
In an interview with Dead Domain posted Sept. 26, Miriam Anderson, 17, described a cycle of physical and psychological abuse from both parents. Currently classified by police as a runaway until her 18th birthday, Miriam is the most recent of Anderson’s children to speak about alleged domestic abuse. Miriam has said her memories of violence go back as far as she can remember.
Miriam told Dead Domain that she initially had no interest in going public and merely wanted to be free of the abuse. That changed when she shared her experiences in a small group at a church camp. A church member, who was mandated to report abuse, overheard her share her experiences and notified Child Protective Services. Miriam says Anderson called her and told her she was to come home immediately, telling her, “You are going to suffer.”
Miriam claims her mother, Zsuzsanna Anderson, would verbally abuse her and criticize her every action as “fake.” Miriam said her mother told her: “Miriam … every time I see you, I want to spit in your face. Just seeing your face makes me [so angry] and sick to my stomach. Every time I lay eyes on you, I want to spit on you.”
In addition to verbal abuse, Miriam told Dead Domain that from as young as 4 years old, her mother would put her in ice-cold showers fully clothed, then send her to bed wet without blankets. If she cried, Miriam said, she would be beaten.
In an interview with Dead Domain posted Sept. 6, John Anderson, Steven Anderson’s third-oldest son and a legal adult, told the YouTuber he was beaten with an electrical cord as a child, and that Steven Anderson used the same cord on his wife. John said that he and his siblings were expected to hide the physical abuse they experienced.
Dead Domain’s first interview with an Anderson child alleging abuse was in January, when they spoke with Isaac Anderson, a self-proclaimed Nazi who was discovered to be involved in a violently misogynist church group chat in 2020. Isaac told Dead Domain that his father “absolutely” subjected him and his siblings to physical beatings. Isaac also claimed that racism was a part of his upbringing, telling Dead Domain that both of his parents told him on “many occasions” that interracial marriage was not allowed for either him or his siblings. Steven Anderson, however, has officially supported interracial marriage in his sermons.
Patheos, a site with news and commentary about religion, documented the fallout within Anderson’s church and subsequent infighting on social media related to Isaac’s disturbing and bigoted contributions to the church group chat that were exposed in 2020. In a screenshot attributed to Steven Anderson, he says he has disciplined his children involved “severely.”
‘They all went straight to literal Satan!’
In a Sept. 29 sermon, Steven Anderson said that even if the allegations laid out across multiple interviews were true, they are biblically justified.
Likening himself to the Apostle Paul, Anderson claims in the sermon that the allegations leveled by his children are a form of persecution to orchestrate his downfall as pastor of Faithful Word Baptist Church. “Even the actions I am accused of are not condemned in the Bible,” he said.
In the sermon, Anderson says his children, whom he calls “my accusers,” teamed up with “a Satan-worshipping transvestite,” using anti-trans and anti-gay slurs to question the legitimacy of Dead Domain, the interviewer.
“My enemies were too stupid to actually attack me in a way that could even be seen as legitimate,” he said. “They all went straight to literal Satan!” In the sermon, Anderson used the Ten Commandments to condemn his children for speaking out. “The accusers themselves are explicitly condemned by the Bible,” he said, claiming his children had “cursed” him by coming forward.
In a sermon from Sept. 22, just days before Miriam’s interview was released, Anderson preached on corporal punishment. Anderson told his audience he was accused of “biblically disciplining” his kids and admitted CPS had been to his house many times over the years. He cited a scriptural reference to “spare the rod, spoil the child” and a Hebrews verse that refers to God “scourging” those he loves. Anderson defined “scourge” as “to whip with a scourge or a lash,” elaborating that the word “lash” means “to strike or beat as with a whip or something similar slender and flexible.” He then joked, “Now I’m trying to think of similar — I can’t really think of anything,” as the congregation laughed in the background. John Anderson’s interview was public by this point, including his allegation that his father routinely used an electrical cord to beat his wife and children.
On Sept. 27, Steven Anderson shared a video on YouTube and Facebook alleging a family member abducted Miriam. Steven Anderson broadcast his family member’s phone number and address to his online followers and requested his viewers surveil his family.
Anderson’s Oct. 6 sermon focused on biblical punishment for failing to honor your parents: “I don’t want you to miss this point, friend. If you curse your father and mother, the Bible says that is a sin that should be punishable by death. But the Bible commands all of God’s people to curse those who disrespect their parents.” Anderson’s biblical indictment of his children is consistent with the tactics he and his fellow NIFB pastors use to justify their hatred and exclusion of LGBTQ+ people from their churches.
Hatewatch reached out to Anderson at a listed email for his church to request comment on this story, but did not receive a response.
Losing allies
Some former congregants in Anderson’s NIFB movement have found these allegations and Anderson’s attempts to biblically justify child abuse disturbing and have split from Anderson. Two new churches that affiliated with NIFB in recent years, Hold Fast Baptist Church and Pure Words Baptist Church, have broken away, citing the children’s testimony and the responses by Anderson and his allies. One of Anderson’s oldest allies, Pastor David Berzins of Strong Hold Baptist, announced in an Oct. 6 sermon, “We are — as a church — we’re separating from Pastor Steven Anderson and Faithful Word Baptist Church.”
Berzins said he could personally corroborate some of the Anderson children’s allegations. “There are two specific instances that they told stories that I can, firsthand … being me or my wife, say, ‘Oh, I remember that,’ or ‘I remember this part of that,’ or a portion of the story that would definitely corroborate their memory,” he said. “That gives a lot of credibility to the accusations.”
Picture at top: Steven Anderson, leader of the New Independent Fundamentalist Baptist sect, and his wife, Zsuzsanna, have been accused by his three eldest children of years of physical and psychological abuse. (Credit: SPLC)