National Religious Broadcasters



National Religious Broadcasters (NRB) is an American organization that represents Christian religious broadcasters on American television and radio, including several high-profile televangelists and Christian radio show hosts. It claims a membership of more than 1700 organizations. It is headquartered in Manassas.

Services
NRB also operates a Christian television network on the DirecTV satellite television service called the NRB Network. The network consists of programming produced by NRB members, including FamilyNet and the Christian Broadcasting Network, among others.

NRB magazine is published nine times per year. The magazine contains news about the Christian broadcasting industry. It includes columns and feature articles about the radio, Internet, and television concerning finances, ethics, and management.

History
The NRB was founded in 1944 in response to evangelical denominations being unable to obtain radio time, with the mainline Federal Council of Churches controlling most Protestant radio time.

Governance
Frank Wright, an ordained elder in the Presbyterian Church in America, is the president of NRB. NRB is governed by a board of directors. Annually, the board establishes an executive committee consisting of five elected officers of the association and five members-at-large elected by the board. In March 2008 Bill Skelton, the President and CEO of Love Worth Finding in Memphis TN was elected chairman of the executive committee. NRB General Counsel Richard E. Wiley is a former FCC chairman. He is a senior partner in the law firm of Wiley Rein LLP.

Criticism
In a May 30, 2005 column in Harper's Magazine, Chris Hedges identifies National Religious Broadcasters as one of the leading groups of the Dominionist movement: "traditional evangelicals, those who come out of Billy Graham’s mold, are not necessarily comfortable with the direction taken by the Dominionists, who now control most of America’s major evangelical organizations, from the NRB to the Southern Baptist Convention, and may already claim dominion over the Christian media outlets." TheocracyWatch, a project of the Center for Religion, Ethics and Social Policy (CRESP) at Cornell University, points out the link between National Religious Broadcasters and Dominionism.