Craig L. Parshall
Senior Vice President and
General Counsel
Craig Parshall is the Sr. Vice-President of Communications and General Counsel for National Religious Broadcasters (NRB), a national association representing the interests of over 1,400 Christian broadcasters and media ministries. NRB has the primary mission of advancing biblical truth, promoting media excellence, and defending free speech. As Senior Vice-President, Mr. Parshall oversees all of the communication efforts of NRB, including media relations, and he is Executive Editor of its various publications. As General Counsel, Mr. Parshall heads the Office of General Counsel, and handles both the internal legal issues for NRB, as well as external legal, regulatory and constitutional issues that implicate NRB’s mission to maximize freedoms for Christian broadcasters. Mr. Parshall also heads NRB’s John Milton Project for Religious Free Speech, which monitors the threat of anti-Christian censorship of new media platforms like Apple’s iTunes App Store, Facebook, and Google.
Prior to coming to NRB, as a civil liberties attorney Mr. Parshall has been licensed to practice law in, and has represented clients before the U.S. Supreme Court, and the federal District Courts and Courts of Appeal in Washington, D.C., Chicago, New York, Milwaukee, Philadelphia, Denver, Dallas, and Richmond, and has argued religious liberty cases before the state supreme courts of Wisconsin, North Carolina, and Maryland. Mr. Parshall has appeared on numerous media outlets, including NBC’s Today Show, CNN, CBS radio, C-Span, PBS, NPR and Court TV. His cases have been profiled in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Washington Times, The Boston Globe, The National Law Journal, The Chicago Tribune, The Milwaukee Journal, The Los Angeles Times, and The Des Moines Register, among others.
In Mr. Parshall’s work with NRB, he testified in 2009 in both the House and the Senate on the religious freedom implications of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), and in 2010 he presented NRB’s position on media freedom at the FCC’s “Future of Media” panel proceeding. Mr. Parshall worked with Senate leaders, and in particular Senator Sam Brownback (R-KS), in drafting a religious freedom amendment designed to protect faith-based communicators from being prosecuted under the new federal hate crimes law. That amendment was part of legislation passed by Congress and signed into law by President Barack Obama.
Mr. Parshall’s work as a New York Times best-selling novelist has received critical acclaim from Publishers Weekly, numerous fiction reviews, and film insiders like Hollywood producer/director Ken Wales. He has published nine suspense novels, his most recent, Edge of Apocalypse and Thunder of Heaven, as a co-author with Left Behind author Tim LaHaye. Mr. Parshall is a frequent speaker on issues of faith and biblical worldview, and has debated organizations like the ACLU, Americans United for Separation of Church and Faith, the Freedom From Religion Foundation, as well as atheist groups. He has addressed a wide divergence of audiences, from legal and public policy events in the Washington, D.C. area, to debating movie directors in Hollywood on the role of violence in cinema. Mr. Parshall is a member of Who’s Who in American Law, and Who’s Who in Emerging Leaders in America. He is married to nationally-syndicated Christian radio broadcaster Janet Parshall.
