May 23, 2025 • 58 mins
Charisma is a word we hear all the time, but what does it really mean? Why are some leaders able to draw people in, while others push us away? I’ve been fascinated by this for years, wondering why we’re drawn to certain people, what makes us follow, and how charisma shapes our lives in ways we don’t always notice. In a culture where stories and leaders are constantly competing for our attention, understanding charisma feels more urgent than ever. That’s why I’m excited to talk with Molly Worthen. Molly is a historian and journalist whose new book, Spellbound, digs deep into the history of charisma in America. She traces how charisma has played out from the era of the Puritans and prophets, through conquerors, agitators, and experts, all the way to today’s age of gurus and influencers. Each era reveals something about what we long for—and what we risk—when we put our trust in charismatic leaders. In this episode, we explore what charisma actually is, how it both unites and divides, and how these waves of charismatic movements have shaped our culture and our faith. We’ll talk about the stories that draw us in, the identities we build, and how to stay grounded as followers of Jesus when everything around us feels like it’s shifting. If you’re trying to figure out who to trust, how to stay rooted, or just want to make sense of all the noise, this conversation is for you.
Molly Worthen is a professor of history at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a freelance journalist. She teaches courses on North American religion and politics, global Christianity, and the history of ideas. She writes on these themes for The New York Times and has contributed to The New Yorker, Slate, The American Prospect, Foreign Policy, and other publications. She has also created video and audio courses on the history of Christianity and the history of charismatic leadership for the Great Courses and Audible. Her previous books are Apostles of Reason: The Crisis of Authority in American Evangelicalism and The Man on Whom Nothing Was Lost: The Grand Strategy of Charles Hill.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Molly Worthen (00:00):
We're storytelling and story seeking
(00:01):
creatures, and we're alwaystrying to plug our chaos into a
narrative that makes sense. Andthat's that's really what, what
I found to be the through line,all the way from, you know, the
Puritans of Massachusetts Bay toour modern you know, social
media, tick tock culture, youJoshua,
Joshua Johnson (00:31):
hello and welcome to the shifting culture
podcast in which we haveconversations about the culture
we create and the impact we canmake. We long to see the body of
Christ look like Jesus. I'm yourhost, Joshua Johnson, charisma.
It is a word we hear all thetime, but what does it really
mean? Why are some leaders ableto draw people in while others
push us away? I've beenfascinated by this for years,
(00:53):
wondering why we're drawn tocertain people, what makes us
follow and how charisma shapesour lives in ways we don't
always notice in a culture wherestories and leaders are
constantly competing for ourattention, understanding
charisma feels more urgent thanever. That's why I'm excited to
talk with Molly. Worthen Mollyis a historian and journalist
(01:15):
whose new book, spellbound digsdeep into the history of
charisma in America. She traceshow charisma is played out from
the era of the Puritans, theprophets, through conquerors,
agitators and experts, all theway to today's age of gurus and
influencers. Each era revealssomething about what we long for
and what we risk when we put ourtrust in charismatic leaders. In
(01:38):
this episode, we explore whatcharisma actually is, how it
both unites and divides, and howthese waves of charismatic
movements have shaped ourculture and our faith. We'll
talk about the stories that drawus in, the identities we build,
and how to stay grounded asfollowers of Jesus when
everything around us feels likeit's shifting, if you're trying
to figure out who to trust, howto stay rooted, or just want to
(02:01):
make sense of all the noise thisconversation is for you. So join
us as we dive deep into thehistory of charisma. Here is my
conversation with Molly. WorthenMolly, welcome to shifting
culture. Excited to have you onthanks for joining me. Thanks
for having me. I have beenfascinated with charisma for
(02:24):
about 10 years, so I'm reallyexcited to have you on to help
me get my head around this wholetopic where I really don't know
what to think. So you have thisbook spellbound. You take the
top of of charisma, you weave itin with politics, religion,
really, through the history ofAmerica. Can you just give me
(02:47):
why this project? Why have youopened this up for yourself and
spent so long on diving into thehistory of charisma?
Molly Worthen (02:55):
Right? I love that question. I suppose any any
book project, because you've gotto live with it for a while. My
first question is, will this bea vehicle for me to just learn a
lot of a lot of stuff? I don'tknow. And so really, it was that
for me, the opportunity to takea kind of bird's eye view of the
(03:16):
past 400 plus years of Americanhistory and think about the ways
in which religion and politicsare really never siloed off, but
but are always intertwined. Ithink, too for me, as a someone
who's been a student of religionmy whole adult life, I've been
noticing more and more, youknow, with every poll that comes
(03:39):
out and we see, you know, acrossat least most demographic
categories, rates of churchattendance declining. You know,
rates of people saying that theythey believe in God or identify
with a traditional religion tendto be in the decline. It has
seemed to me that most of thetools that scholars and
journalists have used to trackthe religious impulse that
(04:02):
humans have to try to understandhuman spirituality, those tools
are just not very usefulanymore. I don't think that just
because fewer people answer yesto those typical survey
questions, that means that morepeople are in a totally, you
know, materialist, naturalisticframe of mind, and have no
(04:25):
longer any desire for kind oftranscendent meaning. I don't
think that's the case at all.
It's just that that impulse andthat desire has gone somewhere
else, and scholars arestruggling to kind of catch up
to that and figure out a methodfor for studying it. And so for
me, the story of charisma is isone way into that. And I went
(04:46):
into the project with thishypothesis that that that
religious impulse, it to somedegree, might be landing in the
context of our relationship witha particular type of. Compelling
leader, and that that story isactually entwined with the story
of charisma in the New Testamentsense, in the sense of that Paul
(05:08):
describes it right, or that Lukedescribes it, and the human
hunger for direct contact withthe Divine and a sense of
anointing. So
Joshua Johnson (05:20):
then what is charisma? Take me back into into
maybe the Greek definition ofcharisma, and then what we
typically think of it now, maybeeven in the political sphere in
America, for
Molly Worthen (05:32):
really centuries, up until about 100 years ago,
the word charisma was a prettyspecialized theological term.
And as you say, originally, itcomes from the ancient Greek
Charis meant, you know, divinegift. And it had, in the context
of ancient Greek and Romanculture and society, a kind of
ambivalent meaning. It couldmean, you know, a gift that
(05:55):
brought with it strength andprivilege and supernatural
ability, but also it could comewith a sort of curse. Now, Paul,
in in in his letters, turns thisinto charisma. He adds the MA
suffix, which, in, in the KoineGreek, puts emphasis on the kind
of completed state and charismain the New Testament. I mean, it
(06:16):
has a range of meanings.
Sometimes Paul uses it todescribe the gift of grace that
that is core to his explanationof the gospel, and then in other
contexts, he uses it to describequite quite specialized gifts,
whether that's the gift oftongues or interpreting tongues
prophecy, this descent of theHoly Spirit that manifests In
(06:38):
the life of the believer in away that is is beyond the
believers control and and isthis sort of unpredictable force
in the life of the church thatthat is a gift, but a bit of a
scary one. Now, the wordremained kind of siloed in
Biblical Studies and theologyuntil the sociologist Max Weber
(06:58):
around the turn of the 20thcentury, picks up the term from
his colleagues in church historyand finds it a really
interesting way to begin todescribe some of the dynamics
that he is seeing in modernEuropean and American politics
and religion. And he does retainas he's using it and trying to
(07:20):
kind of coax his secularcolleagues in this new
discipline of sociology intousing this kind of weird
theological term, he retains areligious dimension to it. I
mean, he explicitly talks aboutcharisma as this, this quality
that a leader has in whichfollowers are persuaded that He
(07:41):
has a supernatural gift or setof powers, and he is able to
prosper his followers in someway that convinces them that
that he is, he is the chosenone. And, you know, Weber is a
little ambiguous, but, but he,you know, does he mean this
religious language as ametaphor, I don't think
(08:02):
entirely. I think he is graspingfor the word charisma to
describe something that eludesstandard materialist,
rationalist explanations. Andthis is, I think, why it has
become, you know, as it sort offiltered into, well, his works
were translated into Englishfrom the German, and it kind of
(08:23):
filtered into American academiaand journalism. And now it, you
know, it's become this popularterm that I think we still throw
around when we're not quite surewhat we are seeing. There is
some dynamic unfolding between aleader and followers. Usually
we're on the outside. We don'tquite get it, and it doesn't, it
(08:43):
doesn't line up along the linesof, you know, a quid pro quo
over over an attractive policy,or, you know, material wealth
changing hands or or militaryforce. There's something else
going on, and we're grasping forit, and we punt essentially to
that term charisma.
Joshua Johnson (09:07):
What is then going on is charisma. Then, if
we're throwing this term around,a lot of people would throw it
around with, I think, hype, withwith charm, maybe with, with
somebody that is magnetic insome way. What do you think that
we're trying to get at? When
Molly Worthen (09:26):
I started this project, I really thought I
would be writing a lot aboutinterpersonal charm and
celebrity. I thought that allthe subjects I would gravitate
to would be amazing orators andreally good looking, and have
sex appeal and be, you know,just the center of every party.
(09:47):
And I didn't find that to be thecase really at all. And indeed,
one of the patterns that camewith charisma, as I was
beginning to kind of suss it outfrom the 1600s to the present.
Is this flip side that is thetotal revulsion that people
often feel if they are outsidethe thrall of the charismatic
(10:10):
leader. And what accounts forthat, right? What accounts for
that quite polarizing quality?
So what I found was that whileSure, some some of the people I
write about in the book, youknow usual suspects, people like
you know John F Kennedy, MartinLuther King, Jr, that you know
what you might expect me to dealwith. Some of them certainly had
these, these, these qualities ofamazing rhetorical skills and
(10:34):
interpersonal magnetism. But thereal through line is the ability
to invite potential followersinto a story. I found that the
heart of charisma is thisinvitation to listen to this new
account of reality that totallychanges your perception of your
(10:55):
own situation, your ownsuffering, your own
frustrations, and offers you arole in a narrative going
forward that is more attractive,that gives you a greater sense
of personal agency, but also theprotection and sense of safety
that comes with knowing you arepart of now, a bigger force, a
(11:16):
bigger story you're turning oversome part of your responsibility
to this, this individual, thismovement and and what this
charismatic leader is offeringyou is is more compelling than
the other stories that are, thatare available in the culture.
And I really think that as ashumans, we're we're storytelling
(11:38):
and story seeking creatures, andwe're always trying to plug our
chaos into a narrative thatmakes sense. And that's that's
really what, what I found to bethe through line, all the way
from, you know, the Puritans ofMassachusetts Bay to our our
modern, you know, social media,tick tock culture. And I've
Joshua Johnson (11:57):
always thought that, because we are story
creatures, that's how we makemeaning. That's where we find
our identity. Is in the storiesthat we tell. And because I
think that our age that we'reliving in, and the age for a
long time in America, has beenan identity less age where we're
grasping for identities andthese stories where they compel
(12:19):
us to say, okay, I can find myplace there. I find meaning
there. It's okay. And it seemsto me, as as you start out in
your book, and you're you walkthrough the the Puritans and
Europeans coming into America,and then you just go through
each of these stages in America.
It seems to be a thinkingagainst the culture the
(12:40):
charismatic leader is giving youa different story than what the
predominant culture is at thetime. How does the relationship
between the the culture ofwhat's happening and then saying
you're outside of this? And I'mgoing to compel you into a
different story that actuallyincludes the person that is not
(13:04):
included in the culture that ishappening at the moment.
Molly Worthen (13:10):
Yeah, this is a this is a really interesting
dynamic. There's this sort ofdialectical relationship between
charismatic leaders and from themainstream threads in the
culture, and they can't be sodistant and weird vis a vis the
culture that they're in, thatthey are illegible. But on the
(13:30):
other hand, they they do haveto, they have to have some kind
of innovation and kind of cutleft when the culture is going
right, and this kind of thing.
And certainly, I found a kind ofacross the big span of American
history. I found in differentperiods, a kind of rise of a
particular type of charismaticleader who really a type of
story you could say that thatspeaks to the particular
(13:54):
anxieties of that era, and then,and then the kind of reactions
to that, and then a pen thependulum would swing again.
Maybe one particularlyinteresting example is, is
Joseph Smith, the founder of TheChurch of Jesus Christ, of
Latter Day Saints, who, you knowit, was born shortly after the
turn of the 19th century in inNew England, and in this context
(14:16):
of sort of frustrated, down ontheir luck, post Puritan New
England Protestantism, and Ithink a great deal of his his
genius is, is this ability tocombine and also sense the
weaknesses of the kind ofprevailing political and
religious culture. So there's athere's a way in which the the
(14:41):
revelation that he reveals, thatbecomes the foundation of the of
the Mormon Church. It It answersthese, these uneasy paradoxes in
traditional kind of OrthodoxChristianity, express,
especially as expressed in thekind of Calvinistic strain.
Machine that is so influentialin New England. So, you know, in
(15:01):
in traditional Christianity,there is this tension between
human free will and divinesovereignty, you know,
especially in the morepredestinarian version. Well,
you know, Joseph Smith's, youknow, faith is one that is. It's
the ultimate free will.
Religion, it absolutely, youknow, enables the believer to
(15:25):
take the reins and and, youknow, through declaring faith
and going through the steps thathe lays out to really achieve,
you know, the heights ofcelestial exaltation in a way
that I think is absolutelyempowering and appealing to this
kind of pioneer Class of, youknow, sort of New Englanders who
(15:50):
are looking for a new life, youknow, many of whom are sort of
frustrated with theirsituations, you know, as they've
inherited them from theirparents generation. And there
also is this kind of dynamicthat I think is often left out
of our understandings of thefoundation of the Mormon Church,
which is the degree to whichit's intertwined with this
mission to evangelize and joinwith and sort of supersede the
(16:14):
indigenous people of the NorthAmerican continent. I mean, the
the first edition of The Book ofMormon, you know, has on the
title page, you know, this is amessage to the Lamanites, which
is, you know, the kind ofancestor people, and Joseph
Smith's, Joseph Smith's kind ofcosmology of modern day Native
Americans. And is, you know, sothere's a way in which all, you
(16:38):
know, you kind of Europeanextracted Americans are thinking
about their relationship to thenative people of the continent.
And that's that's a broaderstory, but it is absolutely
baked into this vision for kindof conquering the continent
with, with divine authority, andindeed, the first Mormons. And
(16:58):
this is where New Testamentcharisma kind of gets bound up
with with political charisma.
The first Mormons spoke intongues all the time. So this is
another thing that we forgetabout about Mormons, because
later on in the church'shistory, they put the kibosh on
that. And initially, a lot ofthis, these manifestations of
tongues, are in the Mormonunderstanding something like
indigenous languages meant forthis, this vision of a of a new
(17:21):
kind of American spiritualitythat I think speaks to the
anxiety of European Americanswho are sort of wrestling with
this Calvinistic heritage, andalso wrestling and feeling
uncertain about their place, visa vis the Native people of the
continent. And Smith, you know,packages all of this in a way
(17:42):
that, you know, as if you readthe Book of Mormon, you know,
it's, it sounds like the KingJames language, right? It sounds
like the King James Bible. Andso he's, he is, he is using the
idiom of, of kind of Protestant,biblical, scripturally based
Christianity. But he's he'sinnovating it. And, I mean, I
will say, too, he was a greatcase study for me to get at the
(18:06):
question of the role of theindividual charismatic leader,
and how important he is, ascompared to the message. Smith
is remembered as this incrediblymagnetic presence, like, quite
tall for the age, electric blueeyes. But I found other, you
know, records from people whomet him in person saying, Ah, he
(18:27):
was an absolute charlatan and acreep, and he had these weird,
fat hands and, like, Why? Whydoes anyone follow this guy?
Right? And then the moststriking kind of data point for
me was thinking about the 1000sof new LDS converts, whom Mormon
missionaries made in Britain andCanada, who moved to Nauvoo,
Illinois, right? Which was thenthe Mormon sort of base of
(18:51):
operations, without ever layingeyes on this, on this guy,
Joseph Smith, right? So there issomething about the story Smith
is absolutely important. Don'tget me wrong, but it's really
the Mormon story that speaks tothat early republic moment in a
powerful way. Why
Joshua Johnson (19:09):
do you think some people then with these
charismatic leaders or thesecharismatic movements that
happen? Why do you think thatsome people are often repelled
by them, and some people are soattracted to them. What did you
find in these things where thosetwo dynamics are at play at the
same time? I
Molly Worthen (19:29):
think this is where, you know, as a as a
historian, I always have toremember that, you know, there's
this, there's this mandate rightto make sense of history and
look for these big patterns. Butbut the caution is always that
history is a story ofidiosyncratic individuals. And
so I think to really get intothe the anatomy of these
(19:52):
movements, and why is it thatthey they divide families. I
mean, whether you're talkingabout the 19th century
spiritualist. Trance speakerswho, you know, these, these
women who, who come into anauditorium in a state of trance,
supposedly, and and some peoplehear them and think, Wow. You
know, the the spirit of BenjaminFranklin is really speaking
(20:13):
through this 16 year old girlright now. And the person
sitting next to them, you know,it thinks this is all absolute
humbug, you know, all the way tothe 1970s and I got really into
the story of of the thefollowing of the Guru Maharaji
and the Divine Light mission,and these kind of former
activists who are who gravitateto him, to the horror of their
(20:34):
friends who have the same story.
I mean, I think you, you haveto, you have to dig into the
biographies of of individuals,and perhaps the you know, one,
one pattern that is important,whether we're talking about the
17th Century or we're talkingabout today, is an individual's
relationship to institutions andsources of Traditional
(20:58):
authority. And I suspect thatthose of us who have been let
down, disillusioned, hurt insome way by those frameworks,
you know that that we've we'vebuilt as humans to to give us a
narrative to plug into thatleaves us perhaps in a in a
frame of mind where we are, weare more interested in in
(21:21):
alternatives, whereas those ofus who have found homes in those
other forms of intellectualauthority, perhaps look askance
at challenges to them. It's so
Joshua Johnson (21:34):
interesting how one person and family could say
yes, the other person says no.
That is just it divides people.
And of course, we're seeing thattoday in with Trump, like you
have families divided all thetime. You have churches divided.
You have, you know, communities,everybody's divided. Is this a
(21:56):
new phenomenon where we saythere's such polar opposites
that we're so diametricallyopposed. One is repulsed by it,
the other is not. Is it new? Isit or is it something that we
could actually learn from whathas happened in the past?
Molly Worthen (22:12):
I think, in broad terms, it's not, it's not new,
and that this is a, this is aresponse that communities have
to every single charismaticleader I write about in the
book, from the Puritan hereticas she was deemed, Anne
Hutchinson, who, you know,divides the community of Boston
in the 1630s as you say, all theway up to Donald Trump. Seems to
(22:35):
me that what has made thepolarization feel more, more
pungent, more more kind of allconsuming in our own time, is
the way in which our reaction toto these figures is embedded in
a in a broader context ofmultiple kinds of polarization.
(22:56):
So, you know, to take theopposite example, you know, a
generation or a bit more ago,the Democratic Party and the
Republican Party both were hometo people who would call
themselves conservatives andliberals of a certain type,
right? So that mean they bothparties had their more
conservative wings. They hadthey had internal disagreement,
(23:18):
and because of kind of thesorting that's happened since,
really, the 1970s although youcould trace it back to the 40s,
if you like, we've seen a, youknow, a much closer alignment in
our own time between the sort ofpartisan identity and and these
ideological categories in a waythat that lends the ideological
(23:39):
polarization more power. Andthis has happened at the very
same time that we've seen thedecline of Americans affiliation
with traditional forms oforganized religion. You know
what people commonly refer to assecularization, although I would
say that term secularization, itreally just describes our
eroding relationships with allinstitutions, not just, not just
(24:02):
religion, but, you know, I thinkit absolutely is the case that
humans seeking the thing thatthat a generation ago, more of
us got in the context of ofreligion, a sense of
transcendent meaning, of, youknow, a tribal identity that was
at least a bit attenuated by theUniversalist claims of
(24:22):
Christianity. You know, when,when Christians live them out,
more and more people are bereftof that, and they find it in in
politics, which has has lentthis kind of religious, you
know, fundamentalist fervor tosome of these, some of these
Thanksgiving tableconversations, I would love
Joshua Johnson (24:41):
for you to just walk us through in broad brush
strokes this history ofcharismatic leaders and
charismatic movements. And youknow, in your book, you go
through five different movementsthat you title, what happened
and how was the the next era, aresponse to the. The the first
era that they were respondingto, and these charismatic
(25:03):
leaders and movements werehappening so as talking through
prophets and conquerors and soon and so, yeah, great.
Molly Worthen (25:10):
I Well, the book really, it begins in in the
aftermath of the Reformation.
And there's this way in which Isee this story as a, as a, as a
an outworking of the long tailof the Reformation in in the
American context, whichsupercharged some of the kind of
the democratic, you know,schismatic energy of the of the
(25:34):
Reformation that the era of theprophets, which I begin in the
early 1600s and that takes usup, really, to the Revolutionary
period. Is a time when thecategories and practices and
identity of old world religiousgroups, they still have a fair
(25:55):
amount of purchase on theEuropean Americans who've begun
to settle the eastern part ofthe United States and the
prophets, are these figures whobegin to challenge those
categories. And sense, I think,perhaps ahead of, you know, the
people who are kind of in chargeof the culture, so to speak,
(26:19):
they sense the the new situationthat is the case in the
colonies. This even, you know,even in Puritan Massachusetts, a
degree of of institutionalweakness and decentralization
that is different from, youknow, what, what these kind of
hierarchies and institutionswere set up to deal with in in
(26:41):
the old world, and what I what Idetected in that early moment,
and this became a, really acategory that I found myself
carrying along, you know, intothe later centuries, is what the
Puritans would call the thequest For the desire for
assurance, the desire for apersonal, confirming, visceral
(27:02):
sense that I am one of theelect, that I am one, you know,
whom God has chosen to save, andthat, you know, there's this
tension, of course, in inChristianity And the Puritans
are deep in this tension betweenthe the conviction that you are
saved by grace, and it is freegrace, and it is not up to you
(27:26):
on one hand, on the other hand,if you are, if you are a
Christian, the Holy Spirit hashas planned works for you to do
right like this is what Paulsays in Ephesians. And so it
ought to show there ought to besome proof, but, but be careful
not to let that become worksrighteousness and and the
Puritan magistrates kind of livein that tension and and see
(27:48):
correctly that you need thattension if you want to create a
governable, peaceful society,really from scratch. And
Hutchinson sees that in thecontext of the of the, you know,
unex, unexpected, constantthreat of of um, of mortality,
especially for women, you know,facing this, and every time you
(28:10):
know they're they are expectinga child, and just the the
general kind of challenges ofcolonial life, I think she sees
the desire for a direct line tothe Holy Spirit, so to speak.
And I think that that Americansin later periods hunger for some
version of that. I mean, theymay not, they may be wholly
outside the categories oftraditional Christianity, and
(28:32):
not call it divine assurance,but but one, one way of
describing what charismaticleaders offer is, is as that as
a kind of assurance that you areon the you are on the right side
of the cosmic story. But the theera of the prophets who are kind
of throwing stones at Old Worldinstitutions, provokes a
(28:56):
backlash, certainly a desire to,you know, set up laws and
institutions that that corralthese, these threats and and
also we see, you know, in as weget into the Revolutionary
period and the early 19thcentury, a desire to build, to
to conquer. And so I call thatsecond period the age of the of
(29:19):
the conquerors. And I so, I meanit not just in the sense of
someone like Andrew Jackson andyou know Napoleon, who,
although, of course, he's notoperating in the American
context, he he is the referencepoint for what a leader should
be. I mean it also in the senseof metaphysical conquest. And so
I got really interested in inthe spiritualists and in this
(29:40):
kind of optimistic vision ofprogress that starts in this
world but doesn't end with deathand and it is a kind of, you
know, it got tied up with allkinds of progressive political
ambitions as well, you know, so,so many spiritualists who were
interested in in communicationwith. Spirits in the in the
hereafter were also, you know,involved in the abolitionist
(30:02):
movement and women's suffrageand so forth. So this, and this
is kind of in the context, too,of the aftermath of the Civil
War, when the country isliterally rebuilding. But I then
I carry, I carry the story tothe third period of of the what
the group I call the agitators,who are kind of kissing cousins
(30:22):
to the prophets, and that theyare, they are anti
institutional. Their impulse is,is to to challenge, if not
destroy, in the face of thiskind of encroaching presence of
institutions and federalgovernment power in the lives of
Americans. So I write, I write,and I write about the
Pentecostals in this context,and the rise of of charisma as a
(30:44):
term that begins to enter thediscourse. I do think that Max
Weber is thinking about charismaand what he's observing in the
tension between sort of theencroaching what he calls iron
cage of modernity, right, thebureaucracies of the 20th
century and his kind ofambivalence about that, and the
(31:04):
Pentecostals reactions againstoverly rationalistic, modernized
Christianity, their desire fordirect power. So the stories are
intertwined. This takes us up toWorld War Two and the agitators
kind of paving the way for therise of fascist demagoguery that
is, is, you know, one of themain plot points of World War
(31:28):
Two, and I think that's whatallows the the backlash that
comes in the in the 50s and 60s,which I call the age of the
experts, just Really the onlyperiod in American history when
Americans have been inclined togrant to enter into a
charismatic relationship withnerdy eggheads. It is the sort
(31:49):
of apogee of, you know,technocrats. It's the brain
trust of JFK. Even someone likeMartin Luther King Jr is so
effective because he's able,he's able to kind of blend the
cool rationality, you know, thesort of Boston University PhD
vibe he could give off when hewanted, with that prophetic
(32:10):
black Christian tradition. Andthere's this sense, because the
experts sell this story to theAmerican people, that technology
and scientific discovery and thethe growth of higher education,
this is all in service of ofAmericans writ large. This is a
this is a juggernaut that'sgoing to carry all of us forward
(32:32):
as citizens. And it's a storythat that Americans buy for a
time, but I think, for reasonsthat have to do partly with
broader social factors, and thenalso a degree of sort of self
sabotage on the part ofacademics that really undermines
the credibility of universities.
They set themselves up for afall and land us where we are
(32:55):
now, which is what I call theage of the gurus, which is a
period of really unprecedentedinstitutional weakness and and
power accruing to individualswho are in that tradition of the
prophets and the agitators. Theyare generally destroyers, but
(33:16):
they have far more influencethan those earlier epochs
because our institutions are soweak right
Joshua Johnson (33:22):
now, it feels like, you know, if, if Trump is
a guru and follower in the timeof gurus, feels like it's a
destroying type of thing, likewhere we're trying to destroy
some of the governmentalinstitutions at the moment and
remake it something new, butit's also hearkening back to the
(33:46):
1950s of like, let's, let's goback to some of that. How does
the how do you see that rightnow play into his rhetoric? Of
like, let's go back into some ofthese things. But then let's
actually tear down a lot ofwhat's happening as well. Yeah,
Molly Worthen (34:05):
that's, that's a really perceptive question,
because there is this nostalgiain in in the in the rhetoric of
Trump and his supporters. Butthe area they are harkening back
to is is an era of, you know,unprecedented federal investment
in higher education and and, youknow, fairly secure cultural
(34:28):
authority for a small number ofmainstream media outlets that
sought explicitly to, you know,give give justice to both sides
and aim for somethingapproaching scientific
objectivity, right? And so itall. There's so many important
features to that period that arequite at odds, I think, with the
(34:48):
vision that that Trump is isadvocating now. And I think
there's a desire to to totallyuntether, you know, one piece of
that era. From the reallyimportant, but perhaps less
obvious, structural, structuraldynamics. So, you know, I don't
(35:09):
know that you can, you can dothat right, that that what you
know, what, what makes an era,what gives it its its overall
cultural integrity, has to dowith the interaction between
between those two things, but Ithink I'm really worried about
civilization. I mean, I, I thinkI, I'm, I'm, I'm struggling to,
(35:30):
I don't want to sound like acomplete pessimist, but I do
think I mean, for some of thereasons that you identify that
that have to do with the way weconstruct our identity as as as
humans and and how atomized weare. We there. There in a
healthy kind of culturalecosystem you have. You have
(35:52):
charismatic leaders who are, whoare challenging institutions and
other forms of authority. Butyou then also have robust
institutions and forms of kindof family and local and and
organizational connection. Andso it's an ecosystem that has a
certain balance, and I thinkthat balance is completely
(36:14):
broken right now. And so we'rewe're not, we're not really
equipped to to learn and engagewith these, these charismatic
leaders in a way that I thinkcan, can, in principle, be
healthy if you also have theseother sources of information and
ways to judge you know whetherthe story you're being told
resembles reality or not.
Joshua Johnson (36:34):
So how do we know what reality is when we're
in an age where reality is beingquestioned. But I do think that
there is this, this, you know,spiritual age. And I think
people are being wooed by God,that people are finding faith
and spirituality and a lot ofdifferent things, but the
reality is being shifted. Wedon't know what to stand on. Can
(36:58):
we have a healthy relationshipwith charismatic leaders and
movements. If it still is at anage where everything seems
untethered, I just think thatreality and everything is
untethered at the moment. If Ithink we're untethered, that
means that man, I the culturecould shift very quickly which
(37:19):
it has right, and it shiftsquickly into following one
charismatic leader. And if we'rein the era of gurus, like we're
going, Oh, this guru didn'tactually give me everything I
needed. So I'm going to gofollow another guru really
quickly, and I'm going to goover here. It feels like we're
untethered. How do we tetherourselves? How do we ground
(37:40):
ourselves so that we could havea healthy relationship with
charisma and charismatic leadersand the ideologies and stories
they're trying to sell us.
Molly Worthen (37:50):
I hear in what you're saying two really
important questions. One is, Ithink, how do we how do we
maximize our chances of havingan accurate picture of the
world. And the second is, how dowe have a an accurate, how do we
accurately understand our ownimpulses and desires, right?
(38:10):
Because part of the trouble isthat, especially since the 1960s
although I, you know, I thinkthis is a strand in American
thought that goes back at leastto Ralph Waldo Emerson and the
transcendentalists. And this,this, this sense of self
reliance and kind of connectionwith with reality that is
located just in your individualexperiences. We we've made a
(38:33):
kind of cult of of personalauthenticity. And you know, the
as if, as if there is in each ofus like this, this little flame
that we're born with. And thedefinition of a meaningful life
is the is the cultivation ofthat flame into a kind of
bounded conflagration. And thatis, that is, you know, self
(38:54):
expression. And we and we neverpause to ask, you know, where,
where have I gotten this idea ofwhat, what authenticity is like,
who, who taught me to, you know,for example, elevate, you know,
sexual fulfillment and desire aslike the mainframe of who I am
as a person, right, that has athat has a history, and we, and
(39:16):
we don't interrogate it enough,and then, And then there is this
problem of the way charismaticgurus have maximized our very
atomized media landscape, andwe're all kind of at sea. We're
in our we're in our own mediasilo. I think the key question
to to pose, you know, when youfind yourself lending more and
(39:39):
more authority to a particularindividual is to say, is this
individual acting as a gatewayfor me into a broader tradition
and a broader community withwith structures and a sense of
its own history and a system foraccountability? Or is this
leader saying, I am, I am theWAY and the TRUTH and the LIFE?
(40:00):
Life and everything, everythingstops with me, and I personally
am pulling back the veil foryou. And don't listen to those
other you know, those othervoices, right? So I think if
it's the latter, that that isthe sign of a poisonous
relationship, I am encouraged bythe beginnings of signs we see
(40:22):
of the of the RE engagement, atleast among college educated
younger men with traditionalreligion. You know, Catholicism,
with established Protestantchurches, with orthodoxy. I
mean, that movement is reallyinteresting. And part of what's
encouraging to me about that isthat it's, you know, it's, it's
(40:43):
putting these, you know, lonely,atomized individuals, especially
young men, who've been told bythe culture that they are toxic,
right? That there's no, there'sno healthy way to be a young
man. It's putting them intocontact with these, with these
broader communities andinstitutions that have these
long traditions of how to thinkabout the classic human
problems. So that's that thathas the beginnings of a kind of
(41:07):
a correction to the, you know,perhaps the attraction of of
internet gurus, of, you know,Andrew Tate or, I mean, I think
Jordan Peterson is a reallyinteresting cultural figure who
is proving, for manyindividuals, a kind of gateway
to organized Christianity,traditional Christianity. I
(41:29):
think it probably is a problemif one stays, you know, just
listening to Peterson as anindividual, as as your, as your,
as your, you know, guide for alllife questions.
Joshua Johnson (41:39):
So I want to how did this affect your faith as
you studied charisma and thehistory of charisma and
charismatic leaders, andespecially leaders within
Christianity and spirituality asthey're guiding in in different
ways and being affected by thecultural aspects of what is
(42:00):
happening in the world, andlike, how did that affect your
faith, and how does thatintertwine between your faith
and what you think of thebroader culture?
Molly Worthen (42:12):
It's something I'm still thinking about. I
became a Christian in 2022 whenI had written about two thirds
of this book. So it really myown personal spiritual process
really kind of interrupted my mymy scholarly work. And you know,
on the one hand, the book isabout the religious impulses
(42:34):
that we all have and and the theways those impulses mutate and
where they land, absent thenormal landing places of
organized religion. And I havealways thought my whole career
as a agnostic, you know, raised,raised totally secular,
historian and journalist, I'vealways thought of religion in
(42:55):
this way, as this likefundamental component of what it
is to be human, so that that isnot like an epiphany that I came
to after, you know, coming toChrist myself. But, you know,
there's a way in which, when Istep back and look, look at my,
my path, I think, well, why? Whydid I think I would be exempt,
(43:16):
in a sense, from this, thisthing that I think is a
fundamental to humans like I, Itoo, have had this tropism
toward toward transcendentmeaning, right? And so, you
know, it's, it's, it's helpedme, I think, see the way in
which every historian, I mean,I'm not some like, you know, I
(43:37):
don't go in for, like, the postmodern nonsense about how
there's there's there's, there'sno truth, and like none of us
can be, you know, of course,none of us can be perfectly
objective. There's no view fromnowhere. But I do. I I certainly
think it's possible to and mosthistorians, every every
historian who studies religion,has some kind of personal
(43:58):
relationship to it, right? It'sjust that there's a bit of a
there's a bit of a doublestandard, I think we think about
those scholars who are, youknow, personally devout, as
being incapable of, ofdisconnecting themselves enough
from their own, you know, theirown, their own location, vis a
vis the religious community thatthey're studying, compared to
(44:22):
atheist or agnostic scholarswho, who also have, you know,
have a set of convictions. Andcertainly, certainly I did, and
I, you know, I probably was notpressed to interrogate those
enough by the culture in a waythat I now feel I am, I would
say, you know, I followed in thebook the conventions that
(44:43):
professional historians follow,and that includes historians who
are personally believers in thesupernatural and those who are
not, which is to say, a lot ofthe book is about crazy stuff,
right? Like the Holy Spiritdoing stuff, at least, that's
what believers think. And Inarrate it and I. Do my best to
get into the heads of, you knowwhat people lying on the carpet,
(45:04):
you know, in Toronto in 1994 atthe, you know, inception of the
Toronto Blessing, this massiverevival with global implications
that we don't talk about enough.
And I kind of stay out of thequestion in the book of you know
what is happening? And I quoteone, one guy who was there who
said, listen, like our job atthis revival was to just create
(45:27):
a create a safe box for whateverGod is or is not doing. And he
says, you know, some of this isthe Holy Spirit. Some of this is
people working out their ownemotional issues. Some of this
might be demonic, not It's notup to us. We're just we're
trying to make sure no one getshurt. And I almost thought that
(45:47):
that's like the right attitudefor the historian to take. But
as a as a scholar of religion, Iwould say becoming a Christian
has has awakened me to the theobligation to take the
supernatural seriously in a newway. And there it's the process
by which you can do that in thesecular space, you know, so I
(46:08):
wrote about the problem of howto or whether one can prove
miraculous contemporary claimsof healing. Wrote about this for
the New York Times. And youknow, the process by which you
can engage a subject like thatin a secular newspaper is, is,
of course, different from if Iwere writing for a Christian
publication, but I have been, Idon't know, awakened to it as a
(46:29):
as an important scholarly lens,in a way that is, is different
from how I thought about thesethings before.
Joshua Johnson (46:38):
If you look at then Jesus, Jesus was a very
charismatic figure, and drewlots of people to him, found a
following, and it's a movementthat is still going on today
that he founded, and thisCharismatic Movement, what is
different in the story thatJesus is telling, than the
(47:00):
ideologies and the stories thateither political or religious
charismatic leaders have beentelling that were a little bit
off and got people off on thewrong track.
Molly Worthen (47:13):
I think that in some ways, Jesus Well, in every
way Jesus breaks these, thesecategories. I mean, in a sense,
in a sense, he's the, he's theTrue Guru, like he, you know,
he's making every guru sincethen has sort of made claims,
(47:35):
you know, messianic claims. Butif you're a Christian, you
believe, well, Jesus was makingthose claims because he was, he
was the Messiah. But, you know,maybe it's interesting here,
especially trying to, trying tomake that that legible for, you
know, non, non Christians whoare trying to engage with the
story of Jesus and are notconvinced of those claims. Maybe
(47:58):
it's interesting to engage withsome Trinitarian theology here,
and think about the way inwhich, yes, Jesus is making very
bold claims for himself. And heis, he is saying, You need to
see all reality through me. Andif you do that, I'm going to
turn it upside down, and thenyou will see the truth. But he
(48:21):
is, he is, he is the gateway toto the Trinity, to something,
you know, that we have to thinkof in in broader terms. And he
already, you know, in in Hisearthly ministry is also setting
up the beginnings, thefoundation stones of of an
(48:41):
institution and and, you know,roles for very flawed humans to
play, and that, you know, Ithink that is where my, you
know, I became a Christian,already very familiar with the,
(49:01):
you know, the way in which, likethe through line of the history
of Christianity, is one of thethrough lines is absolutely
human depravity and and, youknow, frankly, I was convinced,
convinced of the doctrine oforiginal sin long before I even
became a theist. And that maybedoesn't make any sense, but it's
true. And so I think that that,that Christian theological
(49:25):
claim, I mean, it's also, Ithink it's helpful for making
sense of, you know, what hasunfolded in the life of the
community that that Jesusfounded in the 2000 years since
then? I
Joshua Johnson (49:39):
have a few questions there, Molly at the
end, because we this has been afascinating conversation. I wish
I could talk to you longer andgo deeper, because this is I
love it. It's so good me too.
But what's one hope that youhave for the readers of
spellbound? What do you hopethat this book provides and
gives people?
Molly Worthen (49:59):
I hope it you. It provides a sense that while
there are certain features ofour current moment that are
unprecedented and weird and newto the human experience, those
features do not override thecontinuities that I think do
(50:25):
connect us, certainly with thepast four centuries of history,
but but also with deeperpatterns that just characterize
the way humans are as westruggle to live together in in
community and fight over what itmeans to flourish. Sometimes we
make too much of you know, therise of the Internet and social
(50:47):
media, and it makes us thinkthat we are more special in our
current age than we are, andthat, I suppose, can be both
comforting and depressing,right? Because in some ways it
means that the dynamics we'reseeing are deeply ingrained in
in, you know, who we are as aspecies. But there's also a
(51:08):
sense of kinship across theacross the eras. And I think
with that can come a kind ofself awareness that allows, I
hope, you know readers who arethemselves religious to see some
of the dynamics that can go awryin their own communities. And
(51:31):
readers who are secular can seethat there is not a firewall
between them and people whoidentify as religious, and that
actually in so many cases weare, we are living through
expressions of very similar, ifnot the same, dynamics and
tendencies. And so, you know,maybe that that chasm that we
(51:53):
can sometimes feel in oursecular culture between people
who are religious and people whoare not is not, is not as much
of a chasm as we make it out tobe. Yeah,
Joshua Johnson (52:01):
yeah, that's good. If you go back to your 21
year old self, Molly, whatadvice would you give
Molly Worthen (52:06):
make it a life habit to read long books? I'm so
worried about about that. Ithink, I think I've done okay at
that myself, but I, I happen to,I chose a line of work where
where it's privileged. Andthat's not true for most people,
I suppose too, I would say,don't think that you can learn
(52:30):
about a tradition withoutsubmitting to it. I think when I
was 21 i And for most of mylife, till recently, I was, I
was susceptible to the messagewe get from our culture that
spirituality is kind of asmorgasbord, and you can either,
(52:52):
you know, sort of make up yourown or you can get a sense of
what Buddhism is like, or, Youknow, Anglicanism or Eastern
Orthodoxy by sort of dippinginto it. And I don't think
that's how it works. And I Istill, I, my tendency is still
to put too much emphasis on kindof head learning. And I wish I
(53:15):
had begun to think earlier aboutthe need to recognize the limits
of your own understanding, andtake the time to just submit to
a community before you think youunderstand
Joshua Johnson (53:26):
it. That's really good. Anything you've
been reading or watching lately,you could recommend.
Molly Worthen (53:32):
I recently discovered a pair of novels that
were written in the 1990s thathave just blew my mind. These
are two, and I'm not a sciencefiction person. Ordinarily,
these are two science fictionnovels by an author named Mary
Doria Russell. The first iscalled the sparrow. The second
is called children of God, andit's about a Jesuit mission to
(53:55):
another planet and the speciesthat that the the team of
missionaries and lay people meetthere, and it is an amazing
transportation into anotherworld that grapples with the big
questions of the problem of eviland what makes us human and the
(54:15):
moral compromises that we makeas a society and don't even
think about until we have Amirror of something very
different held up against us.
It's also awesome. As a seriesof audio books, I can't
recommend it highly, highlyenough.
Joshua Johnson (54:29):
Awesome. You're the, you're the second person to
recommend that on the podcasthere. And so that's fascinating.
It is fascinating. I'm like,that's that's interesting.
That's really interesting. I'm Ihaven't checked it out yet, so I
really have to go and and readthem. Now, if you're the second
one, like, it's got to besomething. Yeah, I think the
(54:50):
Holy Spirit.
Molly Worthen (54:51):
I think the Holy Spirit wants you to at least
listen to the books on your nextroad trip or something. Yes,
Joshua Johnson (54:56):
yes. Molly, how can people go out and get
spellbound? And is. Or anywhereelse you'd like to point people
Molly Worthen (55:02):
to. I, you know the usual places, Amazon and
Barnes and Noble or your localbookstore, and I'm in the
process of getting a properwebsite up, probably be up by
the time listeners hear this. Myname is, luckily, not that
common, so if people GoogleMolly were them, they will find
me immediately Perfect.
Joshua Johnson (55:22):
Well, Molly, thank you for this conversation.
Thank you for diving into thehistory of charisma in America
and our both our political andreligious systems, and how we
are meaning making creaturesstory, creatures that really
want to follow some ideologiesand what people have found as a
story that is actually acontrast to the era that they
(55:45):
were living in, saying, We wantto make some meaning for people
that maybe have been on themargins, have been somewhere
that have not been included. Ireally find this fascinating,
and then our role in how do welive faithfully as followers of
Jesus in the midst ofcharismatic leaders and charisma
and ideologies and the shiftingwaves of the pendulum swings of
(56:08):
culture and stories and where wefind our meaning and how we
actually stay rooted andfaithful to Jesus as identity
and having him as an identitymaker for us instead Of all the
stories that we're trying to betold. So it was fascinating for
me, and I loved it. I thinkthis, this whole book would make
an incredible podcast series ofstories. It would be amazing.
(56:32):
Oh, I love that idea. That'sthat sounds like fun. It was
good. So thank you. It was afantastic conversation. Thank
you so much. You
We're storytelling and story seeking
(00:01):
creatures, and we're alwaystrying to plug our chaos into a
narrative that makes sense. Andthat's that's really what, what
I found to be the through line,all the way from, you know, the
Puritans of Massachusetts Bay toour modern you know, social
media, tick tock culture, youJoshua,
Joshua Johnson (00:31):
hello and welcome to the shifting culture
podcast in which we haveconversations about the culture
we create and the impact we canmake. We long to see the body of
Christ look like Jesus. I'm yourhost, Joshua Johnson, charisma.
It is a word we hear all thetime, but what does it really
mean? Why are some leaders ableto draw people in while others
push us away? I've beenfascinated by this for years,
(00:53):
wondering why we're drawn tocertain people, what makes us
follow and how charisma shapesour lives in ways we don't
always notice in a culture wherestories and leaders are
constantly competing for ourattention, understanding
charisma feels more urgent thanever. That's why I'm excited to
talk with Molly. Worthen Mollyis a historian and journalist
(01:15):
whose new book, spellbound digsdeep into the history of
charisma in America. She traceshow charisma is played out from
the era of the Puritans, theprophets, through conquerors,
agitators and experts, all theway to today's age of gurus and
influencers. Each era revealssomething about what we long for
and what we risk when we put ourtrust in charismatic leaders. In
(01:38):
this episode, we explore whatcharisma actually is, how it
both unites and divides, and howthese waves of charismatic
movements have shaped ourculture and our faith. We'll
talk about the stories that drawus in, the identities we build,
and how to stay grounded asfollowers of Jesus when
everything around us feels likeit's shifting, if you're trying
to figure out who to trust, howto stay rooted, or just want to
(02:01):
make sense of all the noise thisconversation is for you. So join
us as we dive deep into thehistory of charisma. Here is my
conversation with Molly. WorthenMolly, welcome to shifting
culture. Excited to have you onthanks for joining me. Thanks
for having me. I have beenfascinated with charisma for
(02:24):
about 10 years, so I'm reallyexcited to have you on to help
me get my head around this wholetopic where I really don't know
what to think. So you have thisbook spellbound. You take the
top of of charisma, you weave itin with politics, religion,
really, through the history ofAmerica. Can you just give me
(02:47):
why this project? Why have youopened this up for yourself and
spent so long on diving into thehistory of charisma?
Molly Worthen (02:55):
Right? I love that question. I suppose any any
book project, because you've gotto live with it for a while. My
first question is, will this bea vehicle for me to just learn a
lot of a lot of stuff? I don'tknow. And so really, it was that
for me, the opportunity to takea kind of bird's eye view of the
(03:16):
past 400 plus years of Americanhistory and think about the ways
in which religion and politicsare really never siloed off, but
but are always intertwined. Ithink, too for me, as a someone
who's been a student of religionmy whole adult life, I've been
noticing more and more, youknow, with every poll that comes
(03:39):
out and we see, you know, acrossat least most demographic
categories, rates of churchattendance declining. You know,
rates of people saying that theythey believe in God or identify
with a traditional religion tendto be in the decline. It has
seemed to me that most of thetools that scholars and
journalists have used to trackthe religious impulse that
(04:02):
humans have to try to understandhuman spirituality, those tools
are just not very usefulanymore. I don't think that just
because fewer people answer yesto those typical survey
questions, that means that morepeople are in a totally, you
know, materialist, naturalisticframe of mind, and have no
(04:25):
longer any desire for kind oftranscendent meaning. I don't
think that's the case at all.
It's just that that impulse andthat desire has gone somewhere
else, and scholars arestruggling to kind of catch up
to that and figure out a methodfor for studying it. And so for
me, the story of charisma is isone way into that. And I went
(04:46):
into the project with thishypothesis that that that
religious impulse, it to somedegree, might be landing in the
context of our relationship witha particular type of. Compelling
leader, and that that story isactually entwined with the story
of charisma in the New Testamentsense, in the sense of that Paul
(05:08):
describes it right, or that Lukedescribes it, and the human
hunger for direct contact withthe Divine and a sense of
anointing. So
Joshua Johnson (05:20):
then what is charisma? Take me back into into
maybe the Greek definition ofcharisma, and then what we
typically think of it now, maybeeven in the political sphere in
America, for
Molly Worthen (05:32):
really centuries, up until about 100 years ago,
the word charisma was a prettyspecialized theological term.
And as you say, originally, itcomes from the ancient Greek
Charis meant, you know, divinegift. And it had, in the context
of ancient Greek and Romanculture and society, a kind of
ambivalent meaning. It couldmean, you know, a gift that
(05:55):
brought with it strength andprivilege and supernatural
ability, but also it could comewith a sort of curse. Now, Paul,
in in in his letters, turns thisinto charisma. He adds the MA
suffix, which, in, in the KoineGreek, puts emphasis on the kind
of completed state and charismain the New Testament. I mean, it
(06:16):
has a range of meanings.
Sometimes Paul uses it todescribe the gift of grace that
that is core to his explanationof the gospel, and then in other
contexts, he uses it to describequite quite specialized gifts,
whether that's the gift oftongues or interpreting tongues
prophecy, this descent of theHoly Spirit that manifests In
(06:38):
the life of the believer in away that is is beyond the
believers control and and isthis sort of unpredictable force
in the life of the church thatthat is a gift, but a bit of a
scary one. Now, the wordremained kind of siloed in
Biblical Studies and theologyuntil the sociologist Max Weber
(06:58):
around the turn of the 20thcentury, picks up the term from
his colleagues in church historyand finds it a really
interesting way to begin todescribe some of the dynamics
that he is seeing in modernEuropean and American politics
and religion. And he does retainas he's using it and trying to
(07:20):
kind of coax his secularcolleagues in this new
discipline of sociology intousing this kind of weird
theological term, he retains areligious dimension to it. I
mean, he explicitly talks aboutcharisma as this, this quality
that a leader has in whichfollowers are persuaded that He
(07:41):
has a supernatural gift or setof powers, and he is able to
prosper his followers in someway that convinces them that
that he is, he is the chosenone. And, you know, Weber is a
little ambiguous, but, but he,you know, does he mean this
religious language as ametaphor, I don't think
(08:02):
entirely. I think he is graspingfor the word charisma to
describe something that eludesstandard materialist,
rationalist explanations. Andthis is, I think, why it has
become, you know, as it sort offiltered into, well, his works
were translated into Englishfrom the German, and it kind of
(08:23):
filtered into American academiaand journalism. And now it, you
know, it's become this popularterm that I think we still throw
around when we're not quite surewhat we are seeing. There is
some dynamic unfolding between aleader and followers. Usually
we're on the outside. We don'tquite get it, and it doesn't, it
(08:43):
doesn't line up along the linesof, you know, a quid pro quo
over over an attractive policy,or, you know, material wealth
changing hands or or militaryforce. There's something else
going on, and we're grasping forit, and we punt essentially to
that term charisma.
Joshua Johnson (09:07):
What is then going on is charisma. Then, if
we're throwing this term around,a lot of people would throw it
around with, I think, hype, withwith charm, maybe with, with
somebody that is magnetic insome way. What do you think that
we're trying to get at? When
Molly Worthen (09:26):
I started this project, I really thought I
would be writing a lot aboutinterpersonal charm and
celebrity. I thought that allthe subjects I would gravitate
to would be amazing orators andreally good looking, and have
sex appeal and be, you know,just the center of every party.
(09:47):
And I didn't find that to be thecase really at all. And indeed,
one of the patterns that camewith charisma, as I was
beginning to kind of suss it outfrom the 1600s to the present.
Is this flip side that is thetotal revulsion that people
often feel if they are outsidethe thrall of the charismatic
(10:10):
leader. And what accounts forthat, right? What accounts for
that quite polarizing quality?
So what I found was that whileSure, some some of the people I
write about in the book, youknow usual suspects, people like
you know John F Kennedy, MartinLuther King, Jr, that you know
what you might expect me to dealwith. Some of them certainly had
these, these, these qualities ofamazing rhetorical skills and
(10:34):
interpersonal magnetism. But thereal through line is the ability
to invite potential followersinto a story. I found that the
heart of charisma is thisinvitation to listen to this new
account of reality that totallychanges your perception of your
(10:55):
own situation, your ownsuffering, your own
frustrations, and offers you arole in a narrative going
forward that is more attractive,that gives you a greater sense
of personal agency, but also theprotection and sense of safety
that comes with knowing you arepart of now, a bigger force, a
(11:16):
bigger story you're turning oversome part of your responsibility
to this, this individual, thismovement and and what this
charismatic leader is offeringyou is is more compelling than
the other stories that are, thatare available in the culture.
And I really think that as ashumans, we're we're storytelling
(11:38):
and story seeking creatures, andwe're always trying to plug our
chaos into a narrative thatmakes sense. And that's that's
really what, what I found to bethe through line, all the way
from, you know, the Puritans ofMassachusetts Bay to our our
modern, you know, social media,tick tock culture. And I've
Joshua Johnson (11:57):
always thought that, because we are story
creatures, that's how we makemeaning. That's where we find
our identity. Is in the storiesthat we tell. And because I
think that our age that we'reliving in, and the age for a
long time in America, has beenan identity less age where we're
grasping for identities andthese stories where they compel
(12:19):
us to say, okay, I can find myplace there. I find meaning
there. It's okay. And it seemsto me, as as you start out in
your book, and you're you walkthrough the the Puritans and
Europeans coming into America,and then you just go through
each of these stages in America.
It seems to be a thinkingagainst the culture the
(12:40):
charismatic leader is giving youa different story than what the
predominant culture is at thetime. How does the relationship
between the the culture ofwhat's happening and then saying
you're outside of this? And I'mgoing to compel you into a
different story that actuallyincludes the person that is not
(13:04):
included in the culture that ishappening at the moment.
Molly Worthen (13:10):
Yeah, this is a this is a really interesting
dynamic. There's this sort ofdialectical relationship between
charismatic leaders and from themainstream threads in the
culture, and they can't be sodistant and weird vis a vis the
culture that they're in, thatthey are illegible. But on the
(13:30):
other hand, they they do haveto, they have to have some kind
of innovation and kind of cutleft when the culture is going
right, and this kind of thing.
And certainly, I found a kind ofacross the big span of American
history. I found in differentperiods, a kind of rise of a
particular type of charismaticleader who really a type of
story you could say that thatspeaks to the particular
(13:54):
anxieties of that era, and then,and then the kind of reactions
to that, and then a pen thependulum would swing again.
Maybe one particularlyinteresting example is, is
Joseph Smith, the founder of TheChurch of Jesus Christ, of
Latter Day Saints, who, you knowit, was born shortly after the
turn of the 19th century in inNew England, and in this context
(14:16):
of sort of frustrated, down ontheir luck, post Puritan New
England Protestantism, and Ithink a great deal of his his
genius is, is this ability tocombine and also sense the
weaknesses of the kind ofprevailing political and
religious culture. So there's athere's a way in which the the
(14:41):
revelation that he reveals, thatbecomes the foundation of the of
the Mormon Church. It It answersthese, these uneasy paradoxes in
traditional kind of OrthodoxChristianity, express,
especially as expressed in thekind of Calvinistic strain.
Machine that is so influentialin New England. So, you know, in
(15:01):
in traditional Christianity,there is this tension between
human free will and divinesovereignty, you know,
especially in the morepredestinarian version. Well,
you know, Joseph Smith's, youknow, faith is one that is. It's
the ultimate free will.
Religion, it absolutely, youknow, enables the believer to
(15:25):
take the reins and and, youknow, through declaring faith
and going through the steps thathe lays out to really achieve,
you know, the heights ofcelestial exaltation in a way
that I think is absolutelyempowering and appealing to this
kind of pioneer Class of, youknow, sort of New Englanders who
(15:50):
are looking for a new life, youknow, many of whom are sort of
frustrated with theirsituations, you know, as they've
inherited them from theirparents generation. And there
also is this kind of dynamicthat I think is often left out
of our understandings of thefoundation of the Mormon Church,
which is the degree to whichit's intertwined with this
mission to evangelize and joinwith and sort of supersede the
(16:14):
indigenous people of the NorthAmerican continent. I mean, the
the first edition of The Book ofMormon, you know, has on the
title page, you know, this is amessage to the Lamanites, which
is, you know, the kind ofancestor people, and Joseph
Smith's, Joseph Smith's kind ofcosmology of modern day Native
Americans. And is, you know, sothere's a way in which all, you
(16:38):
know, you kind of Europeanextracted Americans are thinking
about their relationship to thenative people of the continent.
And that's that's a broaderstory, but it is absolutely
baked into this vision for kindof conquering the continent
with, with divine authority, andindeed, the first Mormons. And
(16:58):
this is where New Testamentcharisma kind of gets bound up
with with political charisma.
The first Mormons spoke intongues all the time. So this is
another thing that we forgetabout about Mormons, because
later on in the church'shistory, they put the kibosh on
that. And initially, a lot ofthis, these manifestations of
tongues, are in the Mormonunderstanding something like
indigenous languages meant forthis, this vision of a of a new
(17:21):
kind of American spiritualitythat I think speaks to the
anxiety of European Americanswho are sort of wrestling with
this Calvinistic heritage, andalso wrestling and feeling
uncertain about their place, visa vis the Native people of the
continent. And Smith, you know,packages all of this in a way
(17:42):
that, you know, as if you readthe Book of Mormon, you know,
it's, it sounds like the KingJames language, right? It sounds
like the King James Bible. Andso he's, he is, he is using the
idiom of, of kind of Protestant,biblical, scripturally based
Christianity. But he's he'sinnovating it. And, I mean, I
will say, too, he was a greatcase study for me to get at the
(18:06):
question of the role of theindividual charismatic leader,
and how important he is, ascompared to the message. Smith
is remembered as this incrediblymagnetic presence, like, quite
tall for the age, electric blueeyes. But I found other, you
know, records from people whomet him in person saying, Ah, he
(18:27):
was an absolute charlatan and acreep, and he had these weird,
fat hands and, like, Why? Whydoes anyone follow this guy?
Right? And then the moststriking kind of data point for
me was thinking about the 1000sof new LDS converts, whom Mormon
missionaries made in Britain andCanada, who moved to Nauvoo,
Illinois, right? Which was thenthe Mormon sort of base of
(18:51):
operations, without ever layingeyes on this, on this guy,
Joseph Smith, right? So there issomething about the story Smith
is absolutely important. Don'tget me wrong, but it's really
the Mormon story that speaks tothat early republic moment in a
powerful way. Why
Joshua Johnson (19:09):
do you think some people then with these
charismatic leaders or thesecharismatic movements that
happen? Why do you think thatsome people are often repelled
by them, and some people are soattracted to them. What did you
find in these things where thosetwo dynamics are at play at the
same time? I
Molly Worthen (19:29):
think this is where, you know, as a as a
historian, I always have toremember that, you know, there's
this, there's this mandate rightto make sense of history and
look for these big patterns. Butbut the caution is always that
history is a story ofidiosyncratic individuals. And
so I think to really get intothe the anatomy of these
(19:52):
movements, and why is it thatthey they divide families. I
mean, whether you're talkingabout the 19th century
spiritualist. Trance speakerswho, you know, these, these
women who, who come into anauditorium in a state of trance,
supposedly, and and some peoplehear them and think, Wow. You
know, the the spirit of BenjaminFranklin is really speaking
(20:13):
through this 16 year old girlright now. And the person
sitting next to them, you know,it thinks this is all absolute
humbug, you know, all the way tothe 1970s and I got really into
the story of of the thefollowing of the Guru Maharaji
and the Divine Light mission,and these kind of former
activists who are who gravitateto him, to the horror of their
(20:34):
friends who have the same story.
I mean, I think you, you haveto, you have to dig into the
biographies of of individuals,and perhaps the you know, one,
one pattern that is important,whether we're talking about the
17th Century or we're talkingabout today, is an individual's
relationship to institutions andsources of Traditional
(20:58):
authority. And I suspect thatthose of us who have been let
down, disillusioned, hurt insome way by those frameworks,
you know that that we've we'vebuilt as humans to to give us a
narrative to plug into thatleaves us perhaps in a in a
frame of mind where we are, weare more interested in in
(21:21):
alternatives, whereas those ofus who have found homes in those
other forms of intellectualauthority, perhaps look askance
at challenges to them. It's so
Joshua Johnson (21:34):
interesting how one person and family could say
yes, the other person says no.
That is just it divides people.
And of course, we're seeing thattoday in with Trump, like you
have families divided all thetime. You have churches divided.
You have, you know, communities,everybody's divided. Is this a
(21:56):
new phenomenon where we saythere's such polar opposites
that we're so diametricallyopposed. One is repulsed by it,
the other is not. Is it new? Isit or is it something that we
could actually learn from whathas happened in the past?
Molly Worthen (22:12):
I think, in broad terms, it's not, it's not new,
and that this is a, this is aresponse that communities have
to every single charismaticleader I write about in the
book, from the Puritan hereticas she was deemed, Anne
Hutchinson, who, you know,divides the community of Boston
in the 1630s as you say, all theway up to Donald Trump. Seems to
(22:35):
me that what has made thepolarization feel more, more
pungent, more more kind of allconsuming in our own time, is
the way in which our reaction toto these figures is embedded in
a in a broader context ofmultiple kinds of polarization.
(22:56):
So, you know, to take theopposite example, you know, a
generation or a bit more ago,the Democratic Party and the
Republican Party both were hometo people who would call
themselves conservatives andliberals of a certain type,
right? So that mean they bothparties had their more
conservative wings. They hadthey had internal disagreement,
(23:18):
and because of kind of thesorting that's happened since,
really, the 1970s although youcould trace it back to the 40s,
if you like, we've seen a, youknow, a much closer alignment in
our own time between the sort ofpartisan identity and and these
ideological categories in a waythat that lends the ideological
(23:39):
polarization more power. Andthis has happened at the very
same time that we've seen thedecline of Americans affiliation
with traditional forms oforganized religion. You know
what people commonly refer to assecularization, although I would
say that term secularization, itreally just describes our
eroding relationships with allinstitutions, not just, not just
(24:02):
religion, but, you know, I thinkit absolutely is the case that
humans seeking the thing thatthat a generation ago, more of
us got in the context of ofreligion, a sense of
transcendent meaning, of, youknow, a tribal identity that was
at least a bit attenuated by theUniversalist claims of
(24:22):
Christianity. You know, when,when Christians live them out,
more and more people are bereftof that, and they find it in in
politics, which has has lentthis kind of religious, you
know, fundamentalist fervor tosome of these, some of these
Thanksgiving tableconversations, I would love
Joshua Johnson (24:41):
for you to just walk us through in broad brush
strokes this history ofcharismatic leaders and
charismatic movements. And youknow, in your book, you go
through five different movementsthat you title, what happened
and how was the the next era, aresponse to the. The the first
era that they were respondingto, and these charismatic
(25:03):
leaders and movements werehappening so as talking through
prophets and conquerors and soon and so, yeah, great.
Molly Worthen (25:10):
I Well, the book really, it begins in in the
aftermath of the Reformation.
And there's this way in which Isee this story as a, as a, as a
an outworking of the long tailof the Reformation in in the
American context, whichsupercharged some of the kind of
the democratic, you know,schismatic energy of the of the
(25:34):
Reformation that the era of theprophets, which I begin in the
early 1600s and that takes usup, really, to the Revolutionary
period. Is a time when thecategories and practices and
identity of old world religiousgroups, they still have a fair
(25:55):
amount of purchase on theEuropean Americans who've begun
to settle the eastern part ofthe United States and the
prophets, are these figures whobegin to challenge those
categories. And sense, I think,perhaps ahead of, you know, the
people who are kind of in chargeof the culture, so to speak,
(26:19):
they sense the the new situationthat is the case in the
colonies. This even, you know,even in Puritan Massachusetts, a
degree of of institutionalweakness and decentralization
that is different from, youknow, what, what these kind of
hierarchies and institutionswere set up to deal with in in
(26:41):
the old world, and what I what Idetected in that early moment,
and this became a, really acategory that I found myself
carrying along, you know, intothe later centuries, is what the
Puritans would call the thequest For the desire for
assurance, the desire for apersonal, confirming, visceral
(27:02):
sense that I am one of theelect, that I am one, you know,
whom God has chosen to save, andthat, you know, there's this
tension, of course, in inChristianity And the Puritans
are deep in this tension betweenthe the conviction that you are
saved by grace, and it is freegrace, and it is not up to you
(27:26):
on one hand, on the other hand,if you are, if you are a
Christian, the Holy Spirit hashas planned works for you to do
right like this is what Paulsays in Ephesians. And so it
ought to show there ought to besome proof, but, but be careful
not to let that become worksrighteousness and and the
Puritan magistrates kind of livein that tension and and see
(27:48):
correctly that you need thattension if you want to create a
governable, peaceful society,really from scratch. And
Hutchinson sees that in thecontext of the of the, you know,
unex, unexpected, constantthreat of of um, of mortality,
especially for women, you know,facing this, and every time you
(28:10):
know they're they are expectinga child, and just the the
general kind of challenges ofcolonial life, I think she sees
the desire for a direct line tothe Holy Spirit, so to speak.
And I think that that Americansin later periods hunger for some
version of that. I mean, theymay not, they may be wholly
outside the categories oftraditional Christianity, and
(28:32):
not call it divine assurance,but but one, one way of
describing what charismaticleaders offer is, is as that as
a kind of assurance that you areon the you are on the right side
of the cosmic story. But the theera of the prophets who are kind
of throwing stones at Old Worldinstitutions, provokes a
(28:56):
backlash, certainly a desire to,you know, set up laws and
institutions that that corralthese, these threats and and
also we see, you know, in as weget into the Revolutionary
period and the early 19thcentury, a desire to build, to
to conquer. And so I call thatsecond period the age of the of
(29:19):
the conquerors. And I so, I meanit not just in the sense of
someone like Andrew Jackson andyou know Napoleon, who,
although, of course, he's notoperating in the American
context, he he is the referencepoint for what a leader should
be. I mean it also in the senseof metaphysical conquest. And so
I got really interested in inthe spiritualists and in this
(29:40):
kind of optimistic vision ofprogress that starts in this
world but doesn't end with deathand and it is a kind of, you
know, it got tied up with allkinds of progressive political
ambitions as well, you know, so,so many spiritualists who were
interested in in communicationwith. Spirits in the in the
hereafter were also, you know,involved in the abolitionist
(30:02):
movement and women's suffrageand so forth. So this, and this
is kind of in the context, too,of the aftermath of the Civil
War, when the country isliterally rebuilding. But I then
I carry, I carry the story tothe third period of of the what
the group I call the agitators,who are kind of kissing cousins
(30:22):
to the prophets, and that theyare, they are anti
institutional. Their impulse is,is to to challenge, if not
destroy, in the face of thiskind of encroaching presence of
institutions and federalgovernment power in the lives of
Americans. So I write, I write,and I write about the
Pentecostals in this context,and the rise of of charisma as a
(30:44):
term that begins to enter thediscourse. I do think that Max
Weber is thinking about charismaand what he's observing in the
tension between sort of theencroaching what he calls iron
cage of modernity, right, thebureaucracies of the 20th
century and his kind ofambivalence about that, and the
(31:04):
Pentecostals reactions againstoverly rationalistic, modernized
Christianity, their desire fordirect power. So the stories are
intertwined. This takes us up toWorld War Two and the agitators
kind of paving the way for therise of fascist demagoguery that
is, is, you know, one of themain plot points of World War
(31:28):
Two, and I think that's whatallows the the backlash that
comes in the in the 50s and 60s,which I call the age of the
experts, just Really the onlyperiod in American history when
Americans have been inclined togrant to enter into a
charismatic relationship withnerdy eggheads. It is the sort
(31:49):
of apogee of, you know,technocrats. It's the brain
trust of JFK. Even someone likeMartin Luther King Jr is so
effective because he's able,he's able to kind of blend the
cool rationality, you know, thesort of Boston University PhD
vibe he could give off when hewanted, with that prophetic
(32:10):
black Christian tradition. Andthere's this sense, because the
experts sell this story to theAmerican people, that technology
and scientific discovery and thethe growth of higher education,
this is all in service of ofAmericans writ large. This is a
this is a juggernaut that'sgoing to carry all of us forward
(32:32):
as citizens. And it's a storythat that Americans buy for a
time, but I think, for reasonsthat have to do partly with
broader social factors, and thenalso a degree of sort of self
sabotage on the part ofacademics that really undermines
the credibility of universities.
They set themselves up for afall and land us where we are
(32:55):
now, which is what I call theage of the gurus, which is a
period of really unprecedentedinstitutional weakness and and
power accruing to individualswho are in that tradition of the
prophets and the agitators. Theyare generally destroyers, but
(33:16):
they have far more influencethan those earlier epochs
because our institutions are soweak right
Joshua Johnson (33:22):
now, it feels like, you know, if, if Trump is
a guru and follower in the timeof gurus, feels like it's a
destroying type of thing, likewhere we're trying to destroy
some of the governmentalinstitutions at the moment and
remake it something new, butit's also hearkening back to the
(33:46):
1950s of like, let's, let's goback to some of that. How does
the how do you see that rightnow play into his rhetoric? Of
like, let's go back into some ofthese things. But then let's
actually tear down a lot ofwhat's happening as well. Yeah,
Molly Worthen (34:05):
that's, that's a really perceptive question,
because there is this nostalgiain in in the in the rhetoric of
Trump and his supporters. Butthe area they are harkening back
to is is an era of, you know,unprecedented federal investment
in higher education and and, youknow, fairly secure cultural
(34:28):
authority for a small number ofmainstream media outlets that
sought explicitly to, you know,give give justice to both sides
and aim for somethingapproaching scientific
objectivity, right? And so itall. There's so many important
features to that period that arequite at odds, I think, with the
(34:48):
vision that that Trump is isadvocating now. And I think
there's a desire to to totallyuntether, you know, one piece of
that era. From the reallyimportant, but perhaps less
obvious, structural, structuraldynamics. So, you know, I don't
(35:09):
know that you can, you can dothat right, that that what you
know, what, what makes an era,what gives it its its overall
cultural integrity, has to dowith the interaction between
between those two things, but Ithink I'm really worried about
civilization. I mean, I, I thinkI, I'm, I'm, I'm struggling to,
(35:30):
I don't want to sound like acomplete pessimist, but I do
think I mean, for some of thereasons that you identify that
that have to do with the way weconstruct our identity as as as
humans and and how atomized weare. We there. There in a
healthy kind of culturalecosystem you have. You have
(35:52):
charismatic leaders who are, whoare challenging institutions and
other forms of authority. Butyou then also have robust
institutions and forms of kindof family and local and and
organizational connection. Andso it's an ecosystem that has a
certain balance, and I thinkthat balance is completely
(36:14):
broken right now. And so we'rewe're not, we're not really
equipped to to learn and engagewith these, these charismatic
leaders in a way that I thinkcan, can, in principle, be
healthy if you also have theseother sources of information and
ways to judge you know whetherthe story you're being told
resembles reality or not.
Joshua Johnson (36:34):
So how do we know what reality is when we're
in an age where reality is beingquestioned. But I do think that
there is this, this, you know,spiritual age. And I think
people are being wooed by God,that people are finding faith
and spirituality and a lot ofdifferent things, but the
reality is being shifted. Wedon't know what to stand on. Can
(36:58):
we have a healthy relationshipwith charismatic leaders and
movements. If it still is at anage where everything seems
untethered, I just think thatreality and everything is
untethered at the moment. If Ithink we're untethered, that
means that man, I the culturecould shift very quickly which
(37:19):
it has right, and it shiftsquickly into following one
charismatic leader. And if we'rein the era of gurus, like we're
going, Oh, this guru didn'tactually give me everything I
needed. So I'm going to gofollow another guru really
quickly, and I'm going to goover here. It feels like we're
untethered. How do we tetherourselves? How do we ground
(37:40):
ourselves so that we could havea healthy relationship with
charisma and charismatic leadersand the ideologies and stories
they're trying to sell us.
Molly Worthen (37:50):
I hear in what you're saying two really
important questions. One is, Ithink, how do we how do we
maximize our chances of havingan accurate picture of the
world. And the second is, how dowe have a an accurate, how do we
accurately understand our ownimpulses and desires, right?
(38:10):
Because part of the trouble isthat, especially since the 1960s
although I, you know, I thinkthis is a strand in American
thought that goes back at leastto Ralph Waldo Emerson and the
transcendentalists. And this,this, this sense of self
reliance and kind of connectionwith with reality that is
located just in your individualexperiences. We we've made a
(38:33):
kind of cult of of personalauthenticity. And you know, the
as if, as if there is in each ofus like this, this little flame
that we're born with. And thedefinition of a meaningful life
is the is the cultivation ofthat flame into a kind of
bounded conflagration. And thatis, that is, you know, self
(38:54):
expression. And we and we neverpause to ask, you know, where,
where have I gotten this idea ofwhat, what authenticity is like,
who, who taught me to, you know,for example, elevate, you know,
sexual fulfillment and desire aslike the mainframe of who I am
as a person, right, that has athat has a history, and we, and
(39:16):
we don't interrogate it enough,and then, And then there is this
problem of the way charismaticgurus have maximized our very
atomized media landscape, andwe're all kind of at sea. We're
in our we're in our own mediasilo. I think the key question
to to pose, you know, when youfind yourself lending more and
(39:39):
more authority to a particularindividual is to say, is this
individual acting as a gatewayfor me into a broader tradition
and a broader community withwith structures and a sense of
its own history and a system foraccountability? Or is this
leader saying, I am, I am theWAY and the TRUTH and the LIFE?
(40:00):
Life and everything, everythingstops with me, and I personally
am pulling back the veil foryou. And don't listen to those
other you know, those othervoices, right? So I think if
it's the latter, that that isthe sign of a poisonous
relationship, I am encouraged bythe beginnings of signs we see
(40:22):
of the of the RE engagement, atleast among college educated
younger men with traditionalreligion. You know, Catholicism,
with established Protestantchurches, with orthodoxy. I
mean, that movement is reallyinteresting. And part of what's
encouraging to me about that isthat it's, you know, it's, it's
(40:43):
putting these, you know, lonely,atomized individuals, especially
young men, who've been told bythe culture that they are toxic,
right? That there's no, there'sno healthy way to be a young
man. It's putting them intocontact with these, with these
broader communities andinstitutions that have these
long traditions of how to thinkabout the classic human
problems. So that's that thathas the beginnings of a kind of
(41:07):
a correction to the, you know,perhaps the attraction of of
internet gurus, of, you know,Andrew Tate or, I mean, I think
Jordan Peterson is a reallyinteresting cultural figure who
is proving, for manyindividuals, a kind of gateway
to organized Christianity,traditional Christianity. I
(41:29):
think it probably is a problemif one stays, you know, just
listening to Peterson as anindividual, as as your, as your,
as your, you know, guide for alllife questions.
Joshua Johnson (41:39):
So I want to how did this affect your faith as
you studied charisma and thehistory of charisma and
charismatic leaders, andespecially leaders within
Christianity and spirituality asthey're guiding in in different
ways and being affected by thecultural aspects of what is
(42:00):
happening in the world, andlike, how did that affect your
faith, and how does thatintertwine between your faith
and what you think of thebroader culture?
Molly Worthen (42:12):
It's something I'm still thinking about. I
became a Christian in 2022 whenI had written about two thirds
of this book. So it really myown personal spiritual process
really kind of interrupted my mymy scholarly work. And you know,
on the one hand, the book isabout the religious impulses
(42:34):
that we all have and and the theways those impulses mutate and
where they land, absent thenormal landing places of
organized religion. And I havealways thought my whole career
as a agnostic, you know, raised,raised totally secular,
historian and journalist, I'vealways thought of religion in
(42:55):
this way, as this likefundamental component of what it
is to be human, so that that isnot like an epiphany that I came
to after, you know, coming toChrist myself. But, you know,
there's a way in which, when Istep back and look, look at my,
my path, I think, well, why? Whydid I think I would be exempt,
(43:16):
in a sense, from this, thisthing that I think is a
fundamental to humans like I, Itoo, have had this tropism
toward toward transcendentmeaning, right? And so, you
know, it's, it's, it's helpedme, I think, see the way in
which every historian, I mean,I'm not some like, you know, I
(43:37):
don't go in for, like, the postmodern nonsense about how
there's there's there's, there'sno truth, and like none of us
can be, you know, of course,none of us can be perfectly
objective. There's no view fromnowhere. But I do. I I certainly
think it's possible to and mosthistorians, every every
historian who studies religion,has some kind of personal
(43:58):
relationship to it, right? It'sjust that there's a bit of a
there's a bit of a doublestandard, I think we think about
those scholars who are, youknow, personally devout, as
being incapable of, ofdisconnecting themselves enough
from their own, you know, theirown, their own location, vis a
vis the religious community thatthey're studying, compared to
(44:22):
atheist or agnostic scholarswho, who also have, you know,
have a set of convictions. Andcertainly, certainly I did, and
I, you know, I probably was notpressed to interrogate those
enough by the culture in a waythat I now feel I am, I would
say, you know, I followed in thebook the conventions that
(44:43):
professional historians follow,and that includes historians who
are personally believers in thesupernatural and those who are
not, which is to say, a lot ofthe book is about crazy stuff,
right? Like the Holy Spiritdoing stuff, at least, that's
what believers think. And Inarrate it and I. Do my best to
get into the heads of, you knowwhat people lying on the carpet,
(45:04):
you know, in Toronto in 1994 atthe, you know, inception of the
Toronto Blessing, this massiverevival with global implications
that we don't talk about enough.
And I kind of stay out of thequestion in the book of you know
what is happening? And I quoteone, one guy who was there who
said, listen, like our job atthis revival was to just create
(45:27):
a create a safe box for whateverGod is or is not doing. And he
says, you know, some of this isthe Holy Spirit. Some of this is
people working out their ownemotional issues. Some of this
might be demonic, not It's notup to us. We're just we're
trying to make sure no one getshurt. And I almost thought that
(45:47):
that's like the right attitudefor the historian to take. But
as a as a scholar of religion, Iwould say becoming a Christian
has has awakened me to the theobligation to take the
supernatural seriously in a newway. And there it's the process
by which you can do that in thesecular space, you know, so I
(46:08):
wrote about the problem of howto or whether one can prove
miraculous contemporary claimsof healing. Wrote about this for
the New York Times. And youknow, the process by which you
can engage a subject like thatin a secular newspaper is, is,
of course, different from if Iwere writing for a Christian
publication, but I have been, Idon't know, awakened to it as a
(46:29):
as an important scholarly lens,in a way that is, is different
from how I thought about thesethings before.
Joshua Johnson (46:38):
If you look at then Jesus, Jesus was a very
charismatic figure, and drewlots of people to him, found a
following, and it's a movementthat is still going on today
that he founded, and thisCharismatic Movement, what is
different in the story thatJesus is telling, than the
(47:00):
ideologies and the stories thateither political or religious
charismatic leaders have beentelling that were a little bit
off and got people off on thewrong track.
Molly Worthen (47:13):
I think that in some ways, Jesus Well, in every
way Jesus breaks these, thesecategories. I mean, in a sense,
in a sense, he's the, he's theTrue Guru, like he, you know,
he's making every guru sincethen has sort of made claims,
(47:35):
you know, messianic claims. Butif you're a Christian, you
believe, well, Jesus was makingthose claims because he was, he
was the Messiah. But, you know,maybe it's interesting here,
especially trying to, trying tomake that that legible for, you
know, non, non Christians whoare trying to engage with the
story of Jesus and are notconvinced of those claims. Maybe
(47:58):
it's interesting to engage withsome Trinitarian theology here,
and think about the way inwhich, yes, Jesus is making very
bold claims for himself. And heis, he is saying, You need to
see all reality through me. Andif you do that, I'm going to
turn it upside down, and thenyou will see the truth. But he
(48:21):
is, he is, he is the gateway toto the Trinity, to something,
you know, that we have to thinkof in in broader terms. And he
already, you know, in in Hisearthly ministry is also setting
up the beginnings, thefoundation stones of of an
(48:41):
institution and and, you know,roles for very flawed humans to
play, and that, you know, Ithink that is where my, you
know, I became a Christian,already very familiar with the,
(49:01):
you know, the way in which, likethe through line of the history
of Christianity, is one of thethrough lines is absolutely
human depravity and and, youknow, frankly, I was convinced,
convinced of the doctrine oforiginal sin long before I even
became a theist. And that maybedoesn't make any sense, but it's
true. And so I think that that,that Christian theological
(49:25):
claim, I mean, it's also, Ithink it's helpful for making
sense of, you know, what hasunfolded in the life of the
community that that Jesusfounded in the 2000 years since
then? I
Joshua Johnson (49:39):
have a few questions there, Molly at the
end, because we this has been afascinating conversation. I wish
I could talk to you longer andgo deeper, because this is I
love it. It's so good me too.
But what's one hope that youhave for the readers of
spellbound? What do you hopethat this book provides and
gives people?
Molly Worthen (49:59):
I hope it you. It provides a sense that while
there are certain features ofour current moment that are
unprecedented and weird and newto the human experience, those
features do not override thecontinuities that I think do
(50:25):
connect us, certainly with thepast four centuries of history,
but but also with deeperpatterns that just characterize
the way humans are as westruggle to live together in in
community and fight over what itmeans to flourish. Sometimes we
make too much of you know, therise of the Internet and social
(50:47):
media, and it makes us thinkthat we are more special in our
current age than we are, andthat, I suppose, can be both
comforting and depressing,right? Because in some ways it
means that the dynamics we'reseeing are deeply ingrained in
in, you know, who we are as aspecies. But there's also a
(51:08):
sense of kinship across theacross the eras. And I think
with that can come a kind ofself awareness that allows, I
hope, you know readers who arethemselves religious to see some
of the dynamics that can go awryin their own communities. And
(51:31):
readers who are secular can seethat there is not a firewall
between them and people whoidentify as religious, and that
actually in so many cases weare, we are living through
expressions of very similar, ifnot the same, dynamics and
tendencies. And so, you know,maybe that that chasm that we
(51:53):
can sometimes feel in oursecular culture between people
who are religious and people whoare not is not, is not as much
of a chasm as we make it out tobe. Yeah,
Joshua Johnson (52:01):
yeah, that's good. If you go back to your 21
year old self, Molly, whatadvice would you give
Molly Worthen (52:06):
make it a life habit to read long books? I'm so
worried about about that. Ithink, I think I've done okay at
that myself, but I, I happen to,I chose a line of work where
where it's privileged. Andthat's not true for most people,
I suppose too, I would say,don't think that you can learn
(52:30):
about a tradition withoutsubmitting to it. I think when I
was 21 i And for most of mylife, till recently, I was, I
was susceptible to the messagewe get from our culture that
spirituality is kind of asmorgasbord, and you can either,
(52:52):
you know, sort of make up yourown or you can get a sense of
what Buddhism is like, or, Youknow, Anglicanism or Eastern
Orthodoxy by sort of dippinginto it. And I don't think
that's how it works. And I Istill, I, my tendency is still
to put too much emphasis on kindof head learning. And I wish I
(53:15):
had begun to think earlier aboutthe need to recognize the limits
of your own understanding, andtake the time to just submit to
a community before you think youunderstand
Joshua Johnson (53:26):
it. That's really good. Anything you've
been reading or watching lately,you could recommend.
Molly Worthen (53:32):
I recently discovered a pair of novels that
were written in the 1990s thathave just blew my mind. These
are two, and I'm not a sciencefiction person. Ordinarily,
these are two science fictionnovels by an author named Mary
Doria Russell. The first iscalled the sparrow. The second
is called children of God, andit's about a Jesuit mission to
(53:55):
another planet and the speciesthat that the the team of
missionaries and lay people meetthere, and it is an amazing
transportation into anotherworld that grapples with the big
questions of the problem of eviland what makes us human and the
(54:15):
moral compromises that we makeas a society and don't even
think about until we have Amirror of something very
different held up against us.
It's also awesome. As a seriesof audio books, I can't
recommend it highly, highlyenough.
Joshua Johnson (54:29):
Awesome. You're the, you're the second person to
recommend that on the podcasthere. And so that's fascinating.
It is fascinating. I'm like,that's that's interesting.
That's really interesting. I'm Ihaven't checked it out yet, so I
really have to go and and readthem. Now, if you're the second
one, like, it's got to besomething. Yeah, I think the
(54:50):
Holy Spirit.
Molly Worthen (54:51):
I think the Holy Spirit wants you to at least
listen to the books on your nextroad trip or something. Yes,
Joshua Johnson (54:56):
yes. Molly, how can people go out and get
spellbound? And is. Or anywhereelse you'd like to point people
Molly Worthen (55:02):
to. I, you know the usual places, Amazon and
Barnes and Noble or your localbookstore, and I'm in the
process of getting a properwebsite up, probably be up by
the time listeners hear this. Myname is, luckily, not that
common, so if people GoogleMolly were them, they will find
me immediately Perfect.
Joshua Johnson (55:22):
Well, Molly, thank you for this conversation.
Thank you for diving into thehistory of charisma in America
and our both our political andreligious systems, and how we
are meaning making creaturesstory, creatures that really
want to follow some ideologiesand what people have found as a
story that is actually acontrast to the era that they
(55:45):
were living in, saying, We wantto make some meaning for people
that maybe have been on themargins, have been somewhere
that have not been included. Ireally find this fascinating,
and then our role in how do welive faithfully as followers of
Jesus in the midst ofcharismatic leaders and charisma
and ideologies and the shiftingwaves of the pendulum swings of
(56:08):
culture and stories and where wefind our meaning and how we
actually stay rooted andfaithful to Jesus as identity
and having him as an identitymaker for us instead Of all the
stories that we're trying to betold. So it was fascinating for
me, and I loved it. I thinkthis, this whole book would make
an incredible podcast series ofstories. It would be amazing.
(56:32):
Oh, I love that idea. That'sthat sounds like fun. It was
good. So thank you. It was afantastic conversation. Thank
you so much. You
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