Setting the tone for the country’s largest conservative media summit, lawyers told a crowd of hundreds on Wednesday to batten down the hatches and boldly defend conservative Christianity in the public square.
“This idea we’re some sort of a moral majority is no longer true. We are an insurgency in this culture and that’s why we’re encountering so much opposition,” said Ryan Bangert, senior vice president of strategic initiatives for Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative law firm, at a religious liberty forum during the National Religious Broadcasters annual meeting.
The religious liberty forum, though one of a hundred-plus panels and workshops at the NRB meeting for everyone from major television studios to small-time social media influencers, highlighted a central message of the 2024 NRB International Christian Media Convention.
That message? Despite recent conservative wins in state legislatures and in U.S. Supreme Court cases, the liberties of conservative Christian are under siege and a multi-pronged defense is needed.
The religious liberty forum on Wednesday, the first full day of the weeklong NRB event at Nashville’s Gaylord Opryland Resort & Convention Center, sought to encourage the partnership between two of those prongs: media and legal advocacy.
“Please put these organizations on the air as often as possible,” said Michael Farris, general counsel of the NRB, who moderated Wednesday’s religious liberty forum, referring to the four panelists representing various conservative law firms. “They need to have an understanding that if they are in trouble, if their friends are in trouble or their church is in trouble, there are people going to help them.”
The NRB, which often holds its annual meeting in Nashville, formed in the 1940s to amplify conservative evangelical Christian radio broadcasters. Over time, its membership has expanded with the evolving media landscape while also deepening its association with right-wing advocacy.
That advocacy is facing opposition in the form of censorship, said the panelists at the religious liberty forum. Jeremy Dys, senior counsel at First Liberty Institute, talked about his firm’s work with the conservative satire website The Babylon Bee to challenge social media content regulations. Controversy erupted in 2022 after Twitter suspended The Babylon Bee for mocking Rachel Levine, a transgender person and U.S. assistant health secretary who USA Today named a Woman of the Year.
The battle over trans rights is another linchpin issue for conservative activists, the panelists said. Bangert referenced the Alliance Defending Freedom’s fight against state laws banning a type of counseling, often called conversion therapy, that seeks to get trans people to identify as their gender assigned at birth.
But courts aren’t the only modicum of influence. Bangert praised the “parental rights movement that’s rising up” to advocate for conservative causes in local school districts. A promo before the religious liberty forum featured conservative education activist Rocky Malloy speaking about his campaign for states to pass laws allowing chaplains in public schools.
The recent push for school chaplains, though it bills itself as ecumenical, has faced criticism for seemingly shoehorning conservative Christian ethics into public schools.
“People don’t know about, it’s a new thing,” Malloy said in an interview Wednesday. “The concept as a person in school who is praying with people and watching out for spiritual care, that’s new.”
Texas was the first state to pass a school chaplaincy law and several other states are considering similar measures. In states that aren’t considering school chaplaincy laws right now, such as Tennessee, there are other education initiatives that Malloy sees as working in tandem with his priorities. One is the involvement of the conservative Hillsdale College in advising state education curriculum or starting new charter schools, the latter of which has received support from Gov. Bill Lee.
Malloy’s National School Chaplain Association is one of dozens of similar conservative advocacy groups, some better known than others, with booths in the NRB exhibit hall this week. In the keynote event of the NRB conference, former President Donald Trump is scheduled to speak on Thursday night.
Liam Adams covers religion for The Tennessean. Reach him at ladams@tennessean.com or on social media @liamsadams.