Reverend al sharpton

Once an overweight Brooklyn firebrand who favored tracksuits and bedecked himself in medallions, Reverend Al Sharpton has transformed himself into an omnipresent television pundit, a polarizing spokesman for progressive causes across the country and a devotee of green juices and salads.

Over the decades, Sharpton has proven to be both a chameleon and a lightning rod with an uncanny ability to stay relevant amid the shifting sands of American politics and media. From leading protests against police brutality in Brooklyn to serving as a confidant to presidents, his career is a master class in adaptation. 

The civil-rights activist and cable-news host was born in Brooklyn on October 3, 1954. His father, Alfred, Sr., was a contractor who invested in real estate on the side. His mother, Ada, worked as a maid. When he was young, his father moved the family to Hollis, Queens, a middle-class, racially mixed neighborhood, where they lived in a ten-room house and kept his-and-hers Cadillacs in the driveway.

Preaching came to Sharpton almost as soon as he could speak. The story goes that at age four, he began mimicking the pastors he saw at his Brooklyn church, lining up his sister’s dolls as a makeshift congregation and using a candle as his microphone. By 10, Sharpton was ordained as a Pentecostal minister, marking the beginning of a life on the pulpit. 

Sharpton first stepped into New York’s political scene in the early 1980s, where his bombastic style and unapologetic rhetoric made him a symbol of the city — and a polarizing figure. Then-mayor Ed Koch famously dubbed him “Al Charlatan,” encapsulating the skepticism many in the political establishment felt toward the brash activist. But Sharpton thrived on controversy, leveraging the headlines to catapult himself into the national spotlight. 

He became a household name as an advisor to Tawana Brawley, a Black teenager who accused a group of white men of abducting and raping her in Wappingers Falls, New York, before leaving her covered in feces with racial slurs scrawled on her skin. The case captured national attention and ignited discussions about race in society, until a seven-month investigation determined that Miss Brawley's account was a hoax.

Today, there is hardly a better known civil rights leader in the country, nor one with bigger reach:  Sharpton presides over the National Action Network (NAN), the civil rights organization he founded in 1991, which boasts over 100 chapters across the United States. Telegenically thin with a fondness for tailored suits, he hosts "PoliticsNation" on MSNBC each weekend and helms “Keepin’ It Real,” a nationally syndicated radio show heard on 70 stations. On Sundays, he delivers a message of empowerment on "The Hour of Power" and leads a weekly action rally from NAN’s Harlem headquarters, broadcast live on Impact Television and WLIB Radio.

sarah mCcammon

Raised as an evangelical in Kansas City, Missouri, and once a member of a bible-belt mega-church, Sarah McCammon brings a rare blend of personal experience with conservative thinking and liberal values to her job as an NPR correspondent covering the most explosive points of conflict in America’s culture war - abortion, religion and President Donald Trump.

Her personal epiphany, she says, came while observing on the January 6 takeover of the capital and “watching people go into the Capitol with signs that said ‘Jesus saves’ and crosses and Christian symbols.” It made her realize that her personal story had wide resonance and motivated her to look inward to write about her evangelical upbringing and her decision to leave it behind. “I wanted to tell my story,” she says.

The ensuing book, "The Exvangelicals: Loving, Living, and Leaving the White Evangelical Church", was published last year to raves and was called “both timely and superb,” by one reviewer. It is credited with helping to bring new breadth to the divisive discussion of the role of religion in the country’s public life and, in a sign of its impact, turned the term “exvangelicals,” coined in 2016 to describe the millions of former faithful who have left the church, into a household word. 

McCammon’s path to journalism began in high school when she wrote a column on teens for the Kansas City Star. While at Trinity Christian College in Illinois, she interned for the Daily Herald's DuPage County editor, who described her as a, “…pro beyond her years.” After college, which included studying at Oxford University for a semester, McCammon began her career as newspaper reporter before switching to radio, reporting for local NPR stations in Georgia, Iowa, and Nebraska. In 2015, she joined NPR’s national desk and soon was promoted to lead political reporter for the network, assigned to Trump’s 2016 campaign.

McCammon has been honored with numerous regional and national journalism awards, including the Atlanta Press Club's "Excellence in Broadcast Radio Reporting" award in 2015. She was part of a team of NPR journalists that received a first-place National Press Club award in 2019 for their coverage of the Pittsburgh synagogue attack and won the 2020 Gracie Award given by The Alliance for Women in Media Foundation. She lives in Virginia with her husband and family. 

Dr. Andrew Farley

In the intractable war between secular and religious America, the Evangelical Christian Andrew Farley is as close as there is to a bridge connecting the obstreperous combatants.   

The voice behind one of the nation’s most popular evangelical radio shows, Farley is the lead pastor of Grace Church in Lubbock, TX— the headquarters of his nightly broadcast, “The Grace Message with Andrew Farley.”

Part of an eponymously named non-profit book and media ministry, it carries the tagline, “Jesus plus nothing. 100% natural. No additives,” a message focused on emphasizing religion’s transformative power and echoing his favorite Bible verse, Galatians 2:20. “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me,” it reads. “The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”

A frequent guest on Christian broadcasting networks, Farley became a household name among secular Americans through his wife, Katherine Hayhoe, a nationally known climate scientist. Appalled by his skepticism about the crisis, a view he shared with much of religious America, she set out to change his mind with facts, figures, and, eventually, NASA’s data on rising global temperatures. Their lively debates didn’t just transform Farley’s beliefs, they led to their co-authored book, "A Climate for Change: Global Warming Facts for Faith-Based Decisions". Farley has authored ten other bestselling Christian books, solidifying his reputation as a thought leader in the evangelical community.

Farley is more than a pastor—he’s also a scholar and a linguist. He holds a doctorate in applied linguistics, combining academic rigor with a disarming, conversational style. Farley preaches what he calls “a no-additives gospel,” rejecting the performance-based Christianity he encountered in his early years. His sermons eschew fire and brimstone for warmth and wit. 

Raised in a Christian household, Farley initially pursued a career in academia. After earning his Ph.D., he became a tenured professor and taught applied linguistics at prestigious institutions like Notre Dame and Texas Tech University. However, a personal crisis in his 30s reignited his faith and set him on his evangelical path.

russell moore

Once the voice of evangelical Christians in the capital’s power circles, Russell Moore embodies the breadth of Christian political influence as well as serving as a paragon of its intolerance to criticism. 

As the head of the policy arm of the Southern Baptist Convention—the largest Protestant denomination in the U.S. with nearly 15 million members—Moore was a central figure in evangelical thought and advocacy, hailed in 2017 by "Politico Magazine" as one Washington’s top 50 power brokers.

But Moore’s vocal criticism of then-candidate Donald Trump as morally unfit during the 2016 election season drew a backlash from fellow Southern Baptists, triggering calls for his resignation and a crisis in which more than 100 churches threatened to withdraw donations to the denomination's Cooperative Program. He apologized and survived to complete his term. 

But his rift with the Baptist Convention deepened in 2020 when a letter leaked in which Moore, who affirms the inerrancy of scripture, condemned the group’s handling of a sexual abuse crisis and expressed alarm over what he saw as the church’s growing tolerance for white nationalism. The next year he joined Immanuel Nashville, a nondenominational church, as a pastor in residence. 

Despite his split with Southern Baptists officials, he remains one of the most visible and influential figures in American evangelicalism. He now is the editor-in-chief of Christianity Today, which The New York Times has called “arguably the most influential Christian publication” in the United States and remains an outspoken advocate for racial harmony and human dignity. 

A native of Biloxi, Mississippi, and the grandson of a Baptist preacher, Southern Baptist traditions infused his life. He joined the faculty of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in 2001 and, in 2004, became dean of the School of Theology and Senior Vice President for Academic Administration. Over the years, he hosted a Christian radio show, served as executive editor of The Southern Baptist Journal of Theology, and, in 2013, was appointed president of the E.R.L.C.

Moore’s critique of contemporary evangelicalism extends far beyond partisan politics. He views the movement’s embrace of Trump as emblematic of a broader crisis—a shift in priorities that conflates Christianity with political identity. In Moore’s eyes, the pursuit of political power has overshadowed the church’s moral and spiritual mission.

“Almost every part of American life is tribalized and factionalized. But it shouldn't be that way in the church,” he said in a conversation with NPR’s Scott Detrow. “The very existence of the church is to mean a group of people who are reconciled to God and to each other and, from the very beginning, was standing apart from those sorts of factions.”