Evangelicals have
been a powerful political force in Washington since the days when Jerry Falwell
and his Moral Majority organization helped President Ronald Reagan win the 1980
election by registering millions of evangelicals to vote. And since those time, evangelical leaders
from Billy Graham to Focus on the Family
founder James Dobson have had a unique ability to direct people’s attention
toward a particular candidate or issue.
However, according to some people in the religious conservative
movement, new advances in technology and social media may have rendered this
top down model of engaging where you have a couple of leaders who are able to
give marching orders to the faithful, to be obsolete and as a result it just
might not be so successful at rallying evangelicals to go out and vote for a
particular candidate in 2016. Joining me
today to discuss the growing gulf between the evangelical leadership in Washington and evangelical voters across the country is Sarah Pulliam Bailey a religion reporter for the Washington Post. You can also follow Sarah on twitter.
Back on April 15,
2013, two homemade bombs exploded near the finish line of the Boston marathon, killing
three people and wounding more than 264 others. In the ensuing manhunt,
Tamerlan Tsarnaev died, and his younger brother, Dzhokhar, was captured and
ultimately sentenced to death for the crime. Yet long after the investigation
into the bombing and the subsequent trial, what we still haven’t learned is why
these two young immigrants decided to carry out this horrific act of
violence. Joining me today in studio to
offer some insight into this question and to discuss her new book The Brothers: The Road to an American Tragedy which tells the history of the Tsarnaev brothers and follows
their family from one war-torn locale after another and then ultimately to the
disorienting world of Cambridge, Massachusetts, is acclaimed Russian-American
journalist and author Masha Gessen. You can also follow Masha on twitter.
Listen to The Michelangelo Signorile Show weekdays live from 3-6 pm ET on SiriusXM Progress 127 and on the SiriusXM iPhone, Blackberry and Android apps. Not a subscriber? Not a problem! Listen online any time with a free thirty-day pass or, if you have an if you have an iPhone or Blackberry, go to the app store and download SiriusXM for free, for a 7-day trial, and listen on your phone.
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