An Oklahoma City employee moonlights as a pastor who preaches death for LGBTQ people

During the work week, Dillon Awes secures city data. But at the church he runs, he has a history of despicable sermons.

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What happens when a man who works for a city government’s IT department is revealed to have a side job as a Christian hate-preacher? And not just a hate-preacher but the sort of hate-preacher who regularly calls for the execution of all gay people by the government and openly celebrates when LGBTQ people are murdered?

That recently happened in Oklahoma City and the most surprising thing about it is that it took this long for the pastor’s colleagues to realize who they were working with.

Dillon Awes

For years now, I’ve posted on and off about pastors in the New Independent Fundamentalist Baptist movement. While the sizes of their in-person congregations are relatively small, their true congregations are their audiences on social media, where they can be found by like-minded bigots seeking affirmations of their worst beliefs. (After YouTube banned their churches’ channels, along with those of multiple sock puppet accounts, they migrated over to Rumble.)

New IFB preachers have celebrated the deaths of LGBTQ people, called on the government to execute homosexuals with a firing squad, spread Holocaust denialism, promoted misogyny, and more. Some have said women shouldn’t be judges and shouldn’t be allowed to vote. They believe abortion doctors should be killed.

It’s all horrible, but the death-to-gays rhetoric is like the “Margaritaville” of their sermons; the crowd just expects it at this point. One of them mocked the death of a gay man at a Pride parade (“I think it's great! I hope they all die!”) and appeared at an Arlington City Council meeting in Texas to push back against their acknowledgment of Pride Month by repeating the same calls for violence.

The ringleader of the group is Steven Anderson, a guy who responded to the Pulse nightclub massacre by claiming, “The good news is there are 50 less pedophiles in this world.” His sermons have been so outrageous that 34 countries won’t allow him to step foot within their borders.

I met with a couple of New IFB pastors last year when they were in my area, but the whole movement seemed to crumble last year after Anderson was exposed as abusive by several of his own children. (A documentary about the situation is supposedly in the works.) The pastors still post their sermons online but to much smaller audiences.

So I was surprised when I saw a recent article in The Oklahoman about Dillon Awes, one of Anderson’s many acolytes. Awes leads Anchor Baptist Church, a strip-mall church next to an acupuncture facility. (It used to be called Stedfast Baptist Church, the same name as another New IFB church, but he changed it last year.)

What kinds of things has Awes said over the years?

Well, there was the time he called for the execution of gay people by the government and even offered his fantasy scenario for how they’d die: "They should be lined up against the wall and shot in the back of the head! That's what God teaches. That's what the Bible says."

And the time he justified that cruelty by claiming (falsely, obviously) that "all homosexuals are pedophiles." Either they've done the crime already, he insisted, or "they haven't had the opportunity yet."

And the time he said “sodomites” were responsible for school shootings—and actively celebrated those tragedies. "That's the type of people sodomites are." (The irony of that comment was lost on him.)

He went all out in spouting this hate in a single sermon once, after one of his buddies got evicted from his strip mall church site due to all the hate speech. In that sermon, Awes longed for the days when gay people were stoned, hanged, and executed by a firing squad. He said gay people were “full of disease” and “predators.”

And when Awes heard that a popular pastor was letting gay people speak at his conference, he was apoplectic: "Now there's f****ts behind the pulpit!... These f****ts should get a bullet in their brain!... They should get the death penalty, not be preaching behind the pulpit."

And, just for good measure, he’s absolutely against letting women preach: "You might as well just be spitting in the face of God!... It's better not to be in church than to be listening to a woman preaching the word of God. That is wicked."

Most of those comments were made years ago. He hasn’t changed one bit.

But I guess leading a hate-church doesn’t pay the bills, because Awes’ day job is working for the Oklahoma City government… in cybersecurity.

Records obtained by The Oklahoman show Awes was hired by the city of Oklahoma City on Aug. 6, 2024, as a ground maintenance employee and then was promoted on March 14, 2025, to be an application support technician with hourly pay of $26.47 — about $55,000 a year.

The Oklahoman notes that there have been no incidents at work suggesting his religious rhetoric ever comes out in the office. His secular colleagues described him as
”polite and friendly.” But some of those colleagues are LGBTQ and when they found out what he really thinks about them, they were rightly horrified:

“It’s terrifying,” said one of two LGBTQ+ co-workers interviewed by The Oklahoman. “I didn’t expect that to come out of his mouth. While watching those videos, I felt physically ill.”

…

“He is very bright and prompt,” one of the employees said. “He is polite to everyone. And then when you see the videos, it’s like the earth shifts. It’s not this very nice person you know at work.”

The more pressing question is how this guy got hired when any basic Google search for his name would have uncovered these comments and raised all kinds of red flags. Did they not do any sort of online background check?

No, they did not.

… that history, according to several sources, was unknown locally when Awes was first hired to mow lawns at Oklahoma City parks.

The employees say they have raised their concerns with their bosses and other city officials and were told they would keep an eye on his activities at work.

…

The city’s spokesperson, Kristy Yager, said human resources policy prohibits hiring managers from using search engines to vet a job applicant. She said the city does not have the staffing to add online searches for job applications.

Yager said the city, which has a workforce of 5,000, employs four people in human resources who screened 27,000 applications in 2024.

There are legitimate reasons to prevent hiring managers from using Google to screen applicants when they should be judged on the merits and their ability to do the job in question. But in this case, because Awes had (I assume) no criminal record, he was able to get through an extremely cursory background check.

For what it’s worth, the reporters attempted to interview Awes about all this, and he removed the fire from his mouth to say very bluntly, “I will not be doing an interview as I don't want my words to be misconstrued as the beliefs of my employer.”

Not a bad statement if you want to avoid getting fired.

But that’s really the crux of the problem here: If this guy does his job and leaves his hateful beliefs at home, he really can’t get fired simply for what he thinks and says in his spare time. If that were allowed, a hell of a lot of people would be out of a job. There also haven’t been any actual acts of violence linked to Awes’ church or the people in it. (His website says “Anchor Baptist Church vehemently condemns all individual acts of violence and vigilante justice.”)

(I should mention that a few years ago, a man who attended a different New IFB church was charged with a hate crime for things he said on social media. In April, the charge was dismissed.)

At the same time, though, if one of your colleagues spent his free time openly calling for your murder, even indirectly, wouldn’t that cross a line even if it was done in the context of a sermon? (Awes did not respond to a handful of questions I sent him last week.)

For now, Awes still has a job in cybersecurity. That means he theoretically has access to private information about LGBTQ people in Oklahoma City, the sort of data you wouldn’t want to see fall into the wrong hands. And he’s still preaching all kinds of hate. Just last week, he titled a sermon, “Real Christians Hate Pride Month.” He hasn’t distanced himself from Anderson, either. In late January, Anderson preached at Awes’ church.

Even if Awes and his congregation never act on their beliefs, the problem with his brand of preaching is that they’re planting seeds that an even more deranged person could use as motivation. If that ever came to pass, Awes would almost certainly insist he had nothing to do with it… while also rejoicing over the body count.

Much like Anderson, his joy comes from making others miserable.

At least when he’s off the clock.

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