Update. Rolland Slade has issued an apology for liking David Bumgardner’s tweet. We are thankful that this apology has been made and hope that others will follow suit and do what’s right with the Bucks.

Just to further demonstrate how deep the rot is in the establishment camp of the Southern Baptist Convention, Pastor Rolland Slade, the Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Executive Committee, one of the highest offices in the denomination, expressed his support for David Bumgardner as he published a statement making himself out to be the victim rather than the perpetrator of the recent blackmail attempt against conservative Texas pastor, Tom Buck.

As we’ve covered recently, Tom Buck and his wife, Jennifer, were the victims of a shady attempt by the SBC establishment elites to force Buck into silence after former SBC presidential candidate, Willy Rice dropped out of the race. Buck, who was aware of a sexual abuse incident involving one of Rice’s deacons, contacted Rice to apprise him of the situation and admonish him to do what was right. Soon after, Rice threw his deacon along with Tom Buck under the bus in an attempt to salvage his presidential candidacy.

But that didn’t work, and Rice ultimately dropped out of the race. Shortly after, Buck began receiving threats from a circle of SBC establishment pastors and leaders that if he refused to step out of the limelight and stop exposing the corruption in the SBC, they would release an article accusing Tom of being an abuser.

The article would be based on a rough draft of a story that Tom and his wife were working on years prior that had been given to a small handful of people to review.

However, shortly after the threats were made, an article was released at the far-left fake “Baptist” media outlet, Baptist News Global, by David Bumgardner. Bumgardner’s piece contained information that could have only been known by those with access to the rough draft that Tom and Jennifer never published. Bumgardner clearly gained access to this rough draft from those SBC establishment elites who gained access to it from Karen Swallow Prior, a SEBTS Professor whom Tom had given it to years before to review.

Fast forward two weeks later, amid the outcry of those who believe Tom and Jennifer were mistreated, Bumgardner released the following statement ultimately making himself out to be the victim of this scandal. Bumgardner claims that not only did SBC elites not coerce him—an obvious lie as he won’t reveal who sent him the rough draft—but also that “telling the truth as best as I know how has come at great personal cost, including some persons publicly lobbing out very serious accusations of sins of various types against me.”

And as Bumgardner claims victimhood while the actual victims, Tom and Jennifer, are still kept in the dark over who the actual source of the leak was, Rolland Slade, liked that tweet and ignored Tom and Jennifer.

This is how rotten the SBC has become and it’s time to purge it with fire or flee from it without looking back like Sodom and Gomorrah.