Responding to Pastor Steven L. Anderson  ## Metadata - Author: [[YouTube]] - Full Title: Responding to Pastor Steven L. Anderson - Category: #articles - Document Tags: [[biblical]] [[rhetoric]] - Summary: Responding to Pastor Steven L. Anderson - URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ST2h0xHC4Yc Hey everybody. Many of y'all are aware that recently a woman has been posing as a single mother desperately in need of baby formula, calling up Christian and Muslim and other organizations to see who will be willing to give her a can of baby formula and she's been keeping track of the results and there's been a lot of positive as well as negative response to her social experiment. And irrespective of how you feel about her social experiment, there is one response that kind of stands out that I want to talk about. And then I want to share how the person who posted that response has defended themselves. And that response comes from a caricature of a pastor named Steven L. Anderson. And here's a tweet that he posted recently. And content warning, there's going to be some misogynistic and harsh language in here. I would be pissed if I donated to a church and found out that they were giving the Lord's money to single mother I would want it to go to the Lord's work or toward helping godly Christians who are in need. Churches should not be funding fornicators and their bastards. And obviously, this is another mediocre white man who seeks out attention by saying ridiculous things. But Stephen has also recently posted a video defending himself. So I want to share that video and respond to some of the ways that Stephen is trying to use the Bible to defend his misogyny. Hey everybody, Pastor Stephen Anderson here from Faithful Word Baptist Church in Phoenix, Arizona. So I made a post on X about how the church should not be funding single mothers who are And the post just got ratioed to high heaven and just everybody's on there just saying how I don't know the Bible. I'm nothing like Jesus and I'm of the devil. >> Well, I would say they got two out of three >> and all this stuff. And this just goes to show just the stupidity and ignorance of scripture that exists among today's so-called Christians. I mean, this is such a clear issue in the Bible. This should not be controversial at all. and let you just have so many people on X that are just losing their minds about me stating what should just be the most obvious thing in the world. Let's go to the Bible and see what the Bible actually says. >> Well, technically it says nothing because it's a collection of texts and texts don't have any inherent meaning. But additionally, it doesn't say one thing because it is also a pluro form and often internally inconsistent and self-contradictory text. And so if you are trying to extract a single unified and consistent perspective or ideal from the Bible, you're going to have to negotiate with it. You're going to have to give priority to certain passages and then marginalize, reinterpret, or outright ignore other passages. So we're not seeing what the Bible says here. We're seeing what you can shape the Bible into here. >> Okay? 1 Timothy 5 says this. >> So there is a law irrevocably decreed in the heavens long before the foundation of the earth that anytime you want to insist the Bible says something and your only proof text comes from the pastoral epistles, you're going to have a bad time. The pastoral epistles were not written by Paul. They were written decades after Paul's death, probably in the 2 century CE. And they were written by somebody pretending to be Paul because they wanted to leverage Paul's authority to authorize their own dogmas which generally have to do with structuring power and values and boundaries within the developing institution of the Christian church. So let's see how bad a time Steven's going to have. In verse three, honor widows that are widows indeed. But if any widow have children or nephews, let them learn first to show piety at home, and to reququite their parents, for that is good and acceptable before God. Now she that is a widow indeed, and desolate trusteth in God, and continue with it supplication and prayers night and day. But she that liveth in pleasure is dead while she liveth. And these things give in charge that they may be blameless. So, the Bible is clearly saying that even when it comes to the church relieving widows, and again, we're not talking about women who went out and committed fornication and are out playing the and out getting pregnant out of wedlock. We're talking about legitimate widows. The Bible is saying that the church should only help the widows that are trusting in God, continuing in supplication and prayer night and day, and that if they're living in pleasure, if they're just out partying, that the church should not finance those widows. So, to my knowledge, and I'm happy to be wrong here, but to my knowledge, the woman who is calling up these institutions asking about cans of baby formula has not represented herself as a widow. And to my knowledge, again, I may be wrong, but to my knowledge, she has not represented herself as having a baby out of wedlock, much less as partying all day or all night, sleeping around, not adequately honoring God, all these other things. to my knowledge, she's not represented her circumstances in that way. So appealing to a passage about widows doesn't seem to be relevant. But Steven seems to me to be addressing that when he says, "Even in the case of widows, as if to say, if the author of First Timothy takes this extreme position for widows, obviously the same would hold true of single mothers." And the biggest problem with that, apart from that it's just an inference, is that in the case of the single mother here, there is an innocent infant's life that is on the line. And so Steven is ignoring the fact that this woman is not asking for her own support. She's asking for a means of keeping an innocent infant alive. And Steven is entirely ignoring that and is willing to throw the infant under the bus in order to shame and debase and disgrace and criticize a single mother ostensibly. Again, we don't know exactly what circumstance she has represented, if she has represented any circumstance other than having an infant who needs to be fed. So, Steven's ignoring that part of it and is ignoring the fact that even the author of First Timothy, who's willing to lie about who he is to try to structure power, is not going to let an innocent infant die just to make a single mother feel bad. Uh that position is not something you're going to find anywhere in the Bible and it's certainly not something that is retrievable from these passages that Steven is going to entirely tieversate. But let's roll the ugliness. It goes on to say, "Let not a widow be taken into the number under three score years old, having been the wife of one man, well reported of for good works, if she have brought up children, if she have lodged strangers, if she have washed the saints feet, if she have relieved the afflicted, if she have diligently followed every good work, the Bible is listing all this criteria that for the church to take care of these widows financially, they have to be over 60, they have to be, you know, well, up for good works, the wife of one man. They have to have lodged strangers, washed the saints feet, relieved. Like, do people even read the Bible at all? Because the Bible is giving all this strict criteria even for the church to finance the widows who are legitimately actually finding themselves as single mothers or or just, you know, women without a bread winner or whatever. >> So, a couple problems here. Again, Steven's not actually addressing what this woman was calling up these institutions to request. Steven is addressing the thing that he made up, which is the notion that she's actually asking them to finance her lifestyle. She's not doing that. She's not asking for any help to be directed to her specifically. She's asking for a single small can of formula for a starving infant. So again, Steven is basically saying, "Let the infant die because we're not going to finance her lifestyle." So this is not only just the brainless braaying of ignorant misogyny and misanthropy and the willingness to allow a baby to die who has done absolutely nothing wrong just because you want to ensure that the single mother is adequately shamed. in which case really the cruelty is the point. Um, but it's also entirely ignoring what is actually going on in 1 Timothy 5 because Steven obviously cannot even pretend to be able to understand the first century CE Greor Roman context of what it means to enroll a widow in the church. Nor is he ever going to question the integrity of the author of First Timothy who is a raging misogynist. But what's going on here is that in this time and place, a woman had no social identity to speak of really apart from the identity of the potter familas of the household of which she was a part until she was married. That potter familius would usually be her father, but sometimes a brother or an uncle or something like that. And then when she got married, she came into the household of her husband who was the potterious of that household. And that is how she gained and maintained a social identity which is what made widowhood so problematic. She is left a drift in a society that did not recognize her identity independent of a household overseen by a potter familius. It was a very patriarchal society. Now what first Timothy 5 is doing is not saying we shouldn't give her baby formula. We shouldn't help her out in any way, shape or form whatsoever. It's talking about enrollments and that is probably close to basically the church adopting her providing a social identity through whatever patriarchal leaders that particular church has. Basically, you're now a part of the church's household formally. So, you have a social identity. Now, why does the author of first Timothy say that she needs to be over 60 years old and do all of these things? Well, again, he's a raging misogynist. And he's going to go on to say that younger widows want to remarry. And in wanting to remarry, they violate their first oath to their deceased husband. In other words, the author of First Timothy is asserting the assumption that widows who are under 60 are just driven to do all these bad things because they're just women and that's what women do. And that's obviously not true. But also women under 60 who may have a brother or a son or an uncle or something like that. Again, that's going to be the first place they should go in order to become part of a patriarchal household that has a potter famil. So it's saying you should go to your family first. If you have living family who can provide that potter familius, you should go to them first. A widow over 60 is not going to be able to work the way a widow under 60 might be able to. A widow over 60 is less likely to have uh a grandfather or an uncle or someone else who can take her into his household. So, while the author of First Timothy is a raging misogynist and doesn't really take women seriously on their own terms, certainly doesn't care about their own agency, much less how they actually think or feel. What he's talking about is not a single mother looking for formula for a baby. What he's talking about is this system, this patriarchal household system where a woman's social identity was contingent upon and subordinate to the potter Familas of that household. And why this particular raging misogynist, author of First Timothy, who's pretending to be Paul, wants to establish a set of rules so that the church does not formally adopt widows into the household who might not meet these misogynist criteria. they set up. So Steven is obviously entirely ignorant of the actual historical, ideological, rhetorical settings that are leading to the rhetoric that the author of First Timothy is writing and also endorses the misogyny. So doesn't really care about the fact that this is entirely inaccurate and it's asserting things about women that are just not true. But that's the nature of the author of the pastoral epistles. And again, one of the reasons that if the only case you can make from the Bible is an appeal to the pastoral epistles, you're going to have a bad time because the author of the pastoral epistles was not a good person. I mean, how in the world could you read First Timothy 5 and then walk away saying, "Oh, God wants us to just finance fornicators and just pay for women who are producing bastard children out of wedlock." That's where the Lord's money should go. And again, I don't care about your feelings. Facts don't care about your feelings. You haven't provided any facts yet, Stephen. All you've provided is your own feelings. You are misrepresenting what that woman is asking for. You are misrepresenting the circumstances she is representing. You are misrepresenting what is actually the issue in First Timothy. You are misrepresenting the origins of First Timothy. You have no facts to share. You are doing nothing but spewing your own feelings all over the internet. And those are profoundly misguided, uninformed, and bigoted feelings. >> You know, the Bible is truth. And at the end of the day, I go by what the Bible says. I'm going to preach what the Bible says. >> No, you don't. You don't have the first clue what you're talking about when it comes from the Bible. You're entirely ignoring what James says about the relationship of mercy and justice. You're entirely ignoring what Jesus says in the Gospels about taking care of the poor and the needy. You're entirely ignoring what the Hebrew Bible has to say about it. You're not even getting right. First Timothy, the only passage you could possibly appeal to in defense of your raging bigotry. You have no clue what the Bible says for you. It is just the authorization of your ignorant, bigoted feelings. You have no facts to which you can appeal and you don't know the Bible very well at all. And you can whine and moan and complain about it. And you can ratio me on X. >> Well, you're already being badly ratioed on TikTok, too, by people who know the Bible significantly better than you do. And now it's only going to get worse. It doesn't change the fact that I'm right because 1 Timothy chapter 5 says that I'm right because the whole Bible teaches that I'm right. >> Yeah. No, it doesn't. >> Nowhere would God's money be used to fund fornication or pay for the bastard children that fornication produces. God bless you and have a great day. >> You are so bad at this, Stephen. And the irony is that you appeal to that facts don't care about your feelings rhetoric while being so deep in your feelings and being so hurt by getting ratioed. And you're going to look to the few dozen likes that you get on these posts uh these little digital pats on the butt to make you feel better even though they're going to be absolutely annihilated by the voices of the people who know better than you. You do not even begin to know what you're talking about when it comes to the Bible, Stephen. You are just ignorantly trying to reach to the Bible as the authorization of your petty and your ignorant and your bigoted feelings. Get over your feelings, Stephen. You are so bad at this. Do better. And the fit for this video is X-Men 97., Responding to Pastor Steven L. Anderson, YouTube, 01ka78fa557tq11x4zrahymn3n.