“We’re called to be a witness in the public square. We’re not called to be a silent witness,” Troy Miller, the NRB president since 2022, told the “Hamilton Corner” program on American Family Radio.
Miller leads a national group that can be traced back to the 1940s. That is when Evangelical pastors, who used radio for preaching programs, organized and pushed back when major radio networks such as CBS and NBC tried to push them off the air.
NRB’s current location, in Washington, D.C., can be traced back to the first lobbying effort in 1944 that urged Congress and the networks to sell airtime for church services and religious broadcasting.
In modern-day America, Miller said, NRB is representing its 1,500 members on Capitol Hill to keep an eye on federal regulation that would impede the message of the gospel on radio and on television.
Miller recalled how NRB sued to stop a Biden administration rule that required TV and radio broadcasters to list and share private employee information, including race and gender, with the FCC, Federal Communications Commission.
AFN reported in a May 2025 story, just under a year ago, the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled unanimously the FCC lacks the “statutory authority” to require the employee disclosures.
“The Left would always like to take and isolate the Church to either the four walls of the Church or just your home,” Miller warned.
Miller informed show host Abraham Hamilton that NRB is currently working to defeat the Johnson Amendment, the controversial federal law, on the grounds it violates the First Amendment right to free speech.
After the NRB and the Trump administration worked out a legal settlement last summer, a judge dismissed the lawsuit in late March. NRB has appealed the ruling to the 5th Circuit.
The legislation, which dates back to 1954, was attached to larger tax reform legislation by then-Sen. Lyndon Johnson. He used the amendment as political revenge against two conservative political organizations in Texas, both nonprofits, that had opposed his re-election.
What was used as political revenge nearly 75 years ago is used today to frighten churches, especially conservative Evangelical congregations, into remaining silent on political issues or risk losing their non-profit status through the IRS.
Prior to the Johnson Amendment, and the threat that comes with it, Miller said churches and church pastors were never afraid to speak about issues of "governance" that he says affect the membership.
“We like to use the word ‘political’ today,” Miller said, “but it's really about how our country is governed and the civics responsibility of people that sit in the pew.”
While most conservative congregations keep politics in the parking lot, Democrat politicians are rather famous for showing up in black churches that are courted heavily when an election day is approaching.
During the most recent U.S. presidential election, numerous black pastors were caught using talking points from the Kamala Harris campaign to brag about her fundraising.
