Who Is Pastor Steven Anderson? 'Church Leader' Calls Single Mum Asking for Milk a 'Whore'

When TikTok creator Nikalie Monroe launched her 'baby formula testing trend' in early November, where she was ringing churches across the US to ask for a single tin of formula during the SNAP shutdown, she intended to highlight how religious institutions respond to people in crisis. But one man, known as Pastor Steven Anderson of Faithful Word Baptist Church in Arizona, sparked a backlash far beyond her experiment.

Reacting to the experiment, Anderson, who has a long record of inflammatory preaching, made a post on X saying, 'I would be pissed if I donated to a church and they give that money to "single mother" whores.' Later, he released a video defending his statement and claiming he was referring to unmarried mothers whose children are 'bastards.'

His comments, now widely circulated on TikTok, have drawn scrutiny on his controversial footnotes and raised fresh questions about who some churches believe deserves compassion.

Who Is Steven Anderson?

Anderson, 44, leads Faithful Word Baptist Church and is regarded as the driving force behind the New Independent Fundamentalist Baptist Movement, a network centred on literalist readings of the King James Bible, strict gender hierarchy and hostility towards government institutions.

Born in 1981 and raised Catholic, he says he converted at 18. He married his wife, Zsuzsanna, in 2000, and the couple have twelve children, several of whom have accused their parents of long-term physical and psychological abuse since 2024.

His sermons and online posts have made him notorious well beyond Arizona. According to reports, he is banned from more than 30 countries over violently anti-LBGTQ+ rhetoric, including his 2009 statement, 'The cure for AIDS is to kill all homosexuals.'

In fact, he reportedly became the first person to be banned by Ireland under a 20-year-old law in 2019. He has reportedly preached against women's autonomy, rejected protections for domestic abuse survivors and dismissed accusations of family violence as a 'Satanic conspiracy.'

Despite repeated controversies ranging from antisemitism to praising death metal concertgoers' deaths in the 2015 Bataclan attack, Anderson continues to preach weekly to a loyal audience.

His Response to the Baby Formula Test

After posting his opinions on X about the 'baby formula test,' Anderson addressed the matter and the backlash he faced in a Facebook video in a sermon-style vlog shared widely on TikTok. He said, 'Churches should not be funding fornicators and their bastards... I'd be upset if [donations went to] a single mother who fornicated... Facts don't care about feelings. The Bible is the truth.'

He repeatedly used the term 'whores' to refer to unmarried mothers, later clarifying online that he meant those 'who had kids out of wedlock,' not widows or divorcees.

He doubled down, 'Having a child out of wedlock = being a whore.' He added, 'I didn't say every single mother was a whore. I am specifically talking about those who had kids out of wedlock.'

These posts fed wider conversations about what critics call 'MAGA Christianity,' where political identity and fundamentalist doctrine often appear intertwined.

A Pattern of Comments on Women

Anderson's remarks about single mothers are consistent with his long-standing teachings on gender and marriage. In one circulated clip, he declares, 'If your husband slaps you down and you call the cops, you're evil.'

His son John Anderson, who has publicly discussed childhood abuse, has reportedly described hearing his father beat his mother, recalling, 'I remember it was Easter Sunday... I could hear it happening for the first time.'

Meanwhile, the reaction online has been fierce. TikTok and Reddit users called Anderson's comments 'predictable but still horrifying,' while others said the episode exposes a consistent pattern of railing against single mothers.

Anderson himself has posted the series of phone calls in a montage, which he labels as 'hate voicemails' in which multiple women had rejected his comments and has stated that Anderson is struggling with a mental health condition and needs desperate help.

Furthermore, it's fair to say that a back-and-forth response between Anderson and the online community that doesn't approve of his preachings and opinions is continuously at work. Meanwhile, the experiment, which aimed to challenge assumptions about charity, has raised uncomfortable questions about who churches choose to help, and why.