With convicted rapist Ernie Willis safely behind bars and Chuck Phelps having proven himself to be a liar by his statements under oath, one would think that the IFB world would have the grace to blush. Or at least one would hope that they would stop talking about the trial and bad publicity and wish for it all to be quickly forgotten. But evidently that is not the case.

Dr. Ed Nelson, pastor and representative of Baptist World Missions (which has Chuck Phelps on its advisory board) is an insider in the world of the IFB as evidenced by this glowing introduction that Chuck Phelps himself made for Ed at Maranatha Baptist Bible College back in 2007. Ed is obviously a made man. So apparently, Ed decided to return a favor at the FBFI Conference held on June 14th by making sure that everybody knows exactly what the FBFI thinks of Chuck.

“The only way you get publicity is to have somebody hate you, as brother Chuck Phelps has had, and they come up with evil reports [about you,] then you get in the papers. And by the way, thank God he [Chuck Phelps] stood right all the way through all of this and we ought to stand with him and encourage him, but I don’t suppose newspapers here in Indianapolis write a whole lot of articles about Crosspointe.”

(You can hear audio of these statements on sermonaudio.com, the remarks start about 21 minutes in)

He’s stood right through all of this? He stood right when he questioned the integrity of the victim? He stood right when he lied about her age? He stood right when he refused to apologize in any way for enabling her rapist and covering up the crime in front of the congregation? “Right” must have some different definition in the FBF.

I can almost hear the voice of Paul crying out “[Y]ou are arrogant! Ought you not rather to mourn? Let him who has done this be removed from among you.” But they will not listen. They’ll simply defend their guy to the bitter end no matter what he has done or who he has hurt.

For more details on this you can check out the Chuckles Travels blog.