{"id":4052,"date":"2016-06-16T14:55:39","date_gmt":"2016-06-16T18:55:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/?p=4052"},"modified":"2016-06-16T14:57:03","modified_gmt":"2016-06-16T18:57:03","slug":"sbc-elects-cartoon-character-to-serve-as-president","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/?p=4052","title":{"rendered":"SBC elects cartoon character to serve as President"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Southern Baptists elected Steve Gaines, pastor of Bellevue Baptist, to serve as its president.  Gaines is the cartoon for every southern stereotype &#8212; heavyset, manipulative, heavy-handed, a shameless money-grubber.<\/p>\n<p>He engineered a <a href=\"http:\/\/stopbaptistpredators.org\/scandals\/bellevue.html\" target=\"_blank\">huge cover-up<\/a> of child sex abuse in his church and barely managed to avoid prosecution himself.  He has pre-emptively blocked advocates for victims of clergy sex abuse from following him on Twitter.<\/p>\n<p><center><\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-lang=\"en\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">I&#39;ve never even heard of Pastor Steve Gaines, but he&#39;s already blocked me. <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/SBC16?src=hash\">#SBC16<\/a> president. What is he hiding? <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/NeI1O0gKtY\">pic.twitter.com\/NeI1O0gKtY<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Janey The Small (@JaneyTheSmall) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/JaneyTheSmall\/status\/743190283957862401\">June 15, 2016<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/center><\/p>\n<p>And his appeals for money would be comical if they weren&#8217;t so successful; <a href=\"https:\/\/vimeo.com\/38351377\" target=\"_blank\">Tom Rich has a clip<\/a> of him telling his congregation that God might kill them if they failed to fork-over 10%.<\/p>\n<p><center><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/player.vimeo.com\/video\/38351377\" width=\"640\" height=\"480\" frameborder=\"0\" webkitallowfullscreen mozallowfullscreen allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/vimeo.com\/38351377\">Steve Gaines Scares His Sheep, Tells Them God May Kill Them If They Don&#039;t Tithe<\/a> from <a href=\"https:\/\/vimeo.com\/user4054328\">FBCJax Watchdog<\/a> on <a href=\"https:\/\/vimeo.com\">Vimeo<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><\/center><\/p>\n<p>And to think that I briefly felt good about the SBC when it managed to pass a resolution condemning the confederate flag.<\/p>\n<p>How did somebody so garish get elected?  I&#8217;m only thinking out loud but, between the dual affronts of Donald Trump and Orlando, I think something fundamental has changed in the <i>zeitgeist<\/i> over the past few months, that the collective &#8216;We, the People&#8217; has finally had enough of the loony right.  So maybe the selection of Gaines is a huge reactionary F-You from the retreating crazies?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Southern Baptists elected Steve Gaines, pastor of Bellevue Baptist, to serve as its president. Gaines is the cartoon for every southern stereotype &#8212; heavyset, manipulative, heavy-handed, a shameless money-grubber. He engineered a huge cover-up of child sex abuse in &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/?p=4052\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4052"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4052"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4052\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4058,"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4052\/revisions\/4058"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4052"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4052"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4052"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}