Speaker

Molly Worthen is a professor of history at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a freelance journalist. She received her BA and PhD from Yale University. Her research focuses on North American religious and intellectual history. Her most recent book, Spellbound (2025), is a history of charisma as both a religious and a political concept from the Puritans to the Trump era. Apostles of Reason (2013) examines American evangelical intellectual life since 1945, especially the internal conflicts among different evangelical subcultures. Her first book, The Man On Whom Nothing Was Lost (2006), is a behind-the-scenes study of American diplomacy and higher education told through the lens of biography. She created an audio and video course for The Great Courses, “History of Christianity II: From the Reformation to the Modern Megachurch,” as well as a course for Audible, “Charismatic Leaders Who Remade America.” Molly writes about religion, politics, and higher education for the New York Times and has also contributed to the Atlantic, the New Yorker, Slate, and other publications.