The National Religious Broadcasters (NRB) joined the fight to allow evangelical churches to endorse political candidates, Troy Miller, the organization's President and CEO, told Newsmax on Friday.
The NRB has joined with several churches to file a complaint challenging the Johnson Amendment's restrictions on the First Amendment freedoms of nonprofit organizations, including churches.
"It's important to us personally, but it's also important to our 1,500 members, which include a lot of pastors across this country in the pulpits," Miller told "Wake Up America" host Sharla McBride. "We're the only group that's really marginalized and looked at as not being able to do this.
"The whole reason behind our lawsuit is, if you look at this, a number of nonprofit newspapers have endorsed candidates, a number of nonprofit churches, liberal, progressive churches have endorsed candidates. None of them have come under IRS scrutiny. But over the last several years, many, many churches, evangelical churches who have done endorsements or simply had pastors, pastors had candidates in to pray for them, have come under IRS scrutiny. And we just think that's wrong."
The legal challenge will not be settled before November, when former President Donald Trump opposes Vice President Kamala Harris in the race for the White House.
"This is not going to reach the court before that time. And we didn't file this into effect this election at all. We filed it for the future of nonprofits and pastors to be able to exercise their First Amendment rights," Miller said.
Miller said evangelicals comprise a large group of U.S. voters.
"Their vote is extremely important to the direction and the governance of this country," he said. "The one thing we're worried about is evangelicals are not engaged enough, but they are getting engaged in this election.
"I think that the COVID time where churches that were shut down and with the weaponization of government that's going on and with the collusion of government and Big Tech social media companies that have silenced a lot of the messages and a lot of the issues that are concerning to us has really energized Christian voters to get out."
Miller was asked about the Democratic Party seemingly moving away from being pro-choice to pro-abortion.
"You're exactly right. And to think that the Democratic Party today simply wants to go back to a Roe [v. Wade] environment is wrong, because under Roe, the states had the right to restrict abortion," Miller said. "But now the Democratic Party wants to take all of those restrictions away.
"And they've really moved the needle on their end, not closer to rare, but now to whenever and for whatever reason. And I don't know … this is a party that just simply doesn't respect life."
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Charlie McCarthy ✉
Charlie McCarthy, a writer/editor at Newsmax, has nearly 40 years of experience covering news, sports, and politics.
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