Hate-fueled, anti-gay sermons from Indiana New IFB church spark outrage
Sure Foundation Baptist Church is repeating years-old New IFB rhetoric—and enjoying the attention
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A Christian church in Indiana is getting all kinds of criticism after members delivered anti-LGBTQ sermons in which they called for the execution of gay people and claimed (falsely) that gay people were targeting children.
To no one’s shock, the church is now reveling in the attention, and its leader has already doubled down on their comments.
It’s always interesting when mainstream media outlets realize that a New Independent Fundamentalist Baptist preacher exists among them.
I’ve been covering the movement for years now, and the basics are always the same, so allow me to repeat some things I’ve written before: The sizes of their in-person congregations are always relatively small, but their true congregations are their audiences on social media, where they can be found by like-minded bigots seeking affirmations of their worst beliefs.
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.
More recently, The Oklahoman published an article about how Dillon Awes, one of Anderson’s many acolytes, was working for the Oklahoma City government.
So why is this group in the news now?
Because a week ago, at Sure Foundation Baptist Church Indianapolis, during a “men’s preaching night,” a couple of the men decided to cosplay as their bigoted religious heroes and echo the worst of their beliefs. This clip from Stephen Falco, which comes from the 30:00 mark of a longer sermon, is not for the faint-hearted:
There’s still wickedness in this world. We can’t just never get upset… There’s wickedness going on in this world. You know, we got a bunch of f*****s that want to come around, walk on our streets, and demand our children, and we should look ‘em in the eye and say, “No, you’re not gonna have our children!”
We love the Lord Jesus Christ. We’re gonna protect the innocent. We’re gonna protect those that cannot protect themselves.
You know, why do I hate sodomites? Why do I hate f*****s? Because they attack children! They’re coming after your children! They are attacking them in schools today! And not only schools, in public places, and they’re proud about it! It’s evil! It’s disgusting! And there’s nothing good to be proud about, being a f*****.
You ought to blow yourself in the head, in the back of the head. You’re so disgusting.
You know what? It’s a loving thing for me as a Christian to say that because I love the innocence-y of children. I don’t want kids to be molested. I want kids to stay innocent. I don’t know about you. I love kids. I want them to stay innocent. I want them to be protected. And anyone that wants to hurt them is evil and disgusting, and I want them to die.
… So that was my first point.
To state the obvious, gay people are not coming after your children. That’s just a fever dream that’s conjured up in right-wing echo chambers. Falco makes no effort to distinguish gay people from actual pedophiles because he believes they’re one and the same. (It’s telling that he condemns all gay people, not actual criminals.)
He’s honestly not even a good speaker. He struggled to get those words out. The other New IFB preachers have similar public speaking problems. They think being loud grants them more authority. They think being as extreme as possible makes them better Christians. They ignore nuance because there’s no room in their congregation members’ brains to handle it.
Falco wasn’t the only person speaking like this, though. He was followed by “Brother Wade” who tried to up the ante:
How about all these homosexuals and f*****s? You know, we’ve got another Pride Month here. I mean, obviously, I think they should be put to death. You know what? I'll go further. I think they should be beaten in public first, for all their sick and demented… just f*****ry, and the things they're doing to our schools, to our government, to our institutions, to our churches.
These people should be beaten and stomped in the mud, and then they should take a gun and blow the back of their heads off.
Not sure which lines in the Gospels he’s quoting.
The local media wasn’t equipped to handle these guys or their church either, and you can tell because they asked the church for comment… on statements that this church and other New IFB churches have been spreading for years now. But they did get a response.
Following the sermon, I-Team 8 reached out to the church about Falco’s message.
“He’s only calling for the death penalty and suicide for the actual sodomites (homosexuals),” the church said in an emailed statement. “The Bible teaches that those people are worthy of death. They are supposed to be executed by the government. We are not to take the law into our own hands.”
Well that’s a relief. This church clarified that they’re only referring to “(homosexuals)” and that those people should be murdered by the government or take their own lives. But in case you were worried their congregation might get the wrong idea, they say they don’t believe church members should “take the law into our own hands.”
Again, this is the same awful rhetoric they’ve been pushing for years.
The news team didn’t pick up on that:
I-Team 8 reached out to the denomination’s leadership to ask if they agree with Falco’s message and have not heard back.
I’ll help them out. Yes. They agree. They all agree. That’s how these ideas get implanted in the oh-so-smooth brains of their members. In fact, on Thursday, the church was celebrating its new notoriety, writing on Facebook, “… Thanks WishTV for all the free publicity!! We are more popular than ever!!… If you are looking for a great church that doesn't censor the truth of God's word, and reaches the community and the world with the gospel, and protects children by keeping OUT predators come and join us this Sunday!!”
Despite how excited they are, it should be noted that they posted all the individual sermons from men’s preaching night on YouTube… except for Falco’s. God may be all-powerful to them, but YouTube’s potential to ban their channel generates far greater fear in the space their hearts are supposed to be. (There’s apparently no worry that Facebook will ban their page since that company is owned by a Trump loyalist.)
I need to stress that this is not a large church. They exist in a strip mall between a beauty salon and a braids store:
The leader of the church is Aaron Thompson, one of the two pastors I spoke with last year for a multi-hour-long conversation. He’s stood by comments like those made at the church as long as I’ve known of him. (I reached out to him for this story, but he had a busy Sunday schedule and we were unable to talk.) I would only point out that the rhetoric preached in these churches can be dangerous. A few years ago, a man who attended a different New IFB church, and who wrote on social media that he had been baptized by Thompson, was charged with a hate crime for things he said on social media threatening to kill LGBTQ+ people. (In April, the charge was dismissed.)
Thompson disavowed any connection to that man and he wasn’t present during the church service in Indianapolis, as far as I can tell.
Later on Thursday, however, the other leader of the church, Evangelist Justin Zhong, issued a formal response to the controversy.
It wasn’t helpful.
In addition to a cherry-picked list of random Bible verses that condemn homosexuality, he wrote that he would not apologize for what was said in his church because the LGBTQ+ crowd is “full of domestic terrorists.”
To those who are interested,
I want to take a moment to address some recent developments concerning the Men’s Preaching Night last Sunday.
I will not apologize for preaching the Word of God. I will not apologize for stating facts. I will not negotiate with terrorists, among whom the LGBTHIV crowd is full of domestic terrorists.
The Bible is crystal clear that sodomites (homosexuals) deserve the death penalty carried out by a government that actually cares about the law of God. We are not to take the law into our own hands.
…
Sure Foundation Baptist Church is a Bible-believing church. Whatever the Bible says, we believe it. We don’t care about what the world, culture, or media think. It is funny that these so-called “faith leaders” and some “Christians” do not approve of this message. This simply shows me that they do not care about the Bible.
Sure Foundation Baptist Church protects children from predators. We don’t separate children from their families. We expose perverts and pedophiles. No homos will ever be allowed to attend any church services.
Written with all the maturity of a toddler…
In response to my own questions about the sermon and the aftermath, a representative of the church—the email was unsigned though it was likely Zhong—told me that the fact so many Christians were upset by the sermon just means they “don't actually believe the Bible.” If they get banned on social media, it won’t change what they say during services. “Any Christian who disagrees with our stance on homosexuality is either brainwashed or does not read their Bible.”
So… of course they’re not apologizing for anything. Falco and Wade’s comments weren’t accidental or unexpected. They were just repeating what other New IFB preachers have been saying for years. They’re just now getting attention for it. Given the jealousy that exists in this religious bubble, I suspect other pastors will try to go even further in their upcoming sermons.
Much like Westboro Baptist Church, they believe the only way to draw attention to their message is by spreading hate, not by talking about Jesus.
The coming of the internet allowed people from all across the free-thought community to realize, often for the first time, they are not nearly as alone as they once thought. Unfortunately, it has also allowed religious and political extremists to do the same thing. I think it is one of the fundamental flaws within the human species that hate has a vastly larger audience than reason. I suspect it is something that severely limits our chances of long-term survival. If these extremist groups managed to execute all of the worlds gay people, they would simply move on to their next target. It's really about hate for its own sake.
Let anyone continually chant "Death to Christians! Feed them to the lions!" and these Baptists (who have quite the track record of molesting chidren) would scream PERSECUTION!!!