Molly Worthen is an associate professor of history at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a freelance journalist. She received her PhD from Yale University. Her research focuses on North American religious and intellectual history. Her new book, Spellbound: How Charisma Shaped American History from the Puritans to Trump, comes out next spring and is available for preorder on Amazon. She has created audio and video courses for The Great Courses on the history of charisma and the history global Christianity since the Reformation, and both of those are available on Audible. Worthen writes regularly about religion, politics, and higher education for the New York Times and has also written for the New Yorker, Slate, the Atlantic, and other publications.
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
I'm Cynthia James, and this network is about changing lives,
one woman at a time. Hello, and welcome to Women Awakening.
I'm your host, Cynthia James, and I'm excited that every
week I get to come to you and bring you
(00:24):
a powerful woman, an extraordinary woman, a woman who has
found her niche in this world and is here to
make a difference. That's exciting to me because I think
it's the time for women emerging. I really believe that
the frequency on the planet could use more of our nurturing,
carrying kind self and so I believe that if we
(00:48):
can bring that energy up, you know, we will bring
more kindness and compassion and empathy to the planet. So
we do these every week. We're on all the platforms Spotify, iTunes, Iheartspreaker, Amazon,
We're on video YouTube. You can also go to Cynthia
James Dottnette. That's my website. You can join my private
(01:08):
community and there's gifts and all kinds of things, and
there's a lot going on in my life and I'd
love to share it with you today. I have a
guest that I actually met a few months ago in
an interview and it was just so easy to have
a big conversation because she's very good at what she does.
(01:29):
Her name is Molly worth It. She is an associate
professor of history at the University of North Carolina at
Chapel Hill. She's also a freelance journalist. She received her
PhD from Yale University and her research focuses on North
American religious and intellectual history. She has a new book,
(01:51):
it's called Spellbound, How Charisma Shaped American History from the
Puritans to Trump. It comes out next spring and it's
already available for pre order on Amazon. She's created audio
and video courses for the Great Courses on the History
of Charisma and the history Global Christianities since Reformation, and
(02:15):
both of these are available on audio. I just think
it's so cool that she's doing things that we can
all access. We're Gonner writes regularly about religion, about politics,
higher education for The New York Times and has also
written for The New Yorker, Slate, The Atlantic, and other publications. Molly,
(02:37):
thank you so much for being here.
Speaker 2 (02:39):
Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1 (02:40):
Well, I'm very excited to have this conversation because I
love talking with you for the other article. But first
of all, I want to start with, how did you
grow up? You probably didn't drop on the planet saying
that I'm going to be a professor and I'm going
to have religious studies as my focus. How are you
brought up?
Speaker 3 (03:01):
I grew up in the suburbs of Chicago, a town
about twenty miles west of Chicago called glenn Ellen, Gosh.
I grew up reading Greek mythology and history with my
dad especially, and I remember really loving history. In high school.
I had a passion for theater and forensics, debate, speaking
(03:26):
too big audiences, And so I guess in that is
a kind of glimmer of my future career as a professor.
It was really when I got to college and I
was taking all kinds of humanities classes, history, philosophy, literature,
and I began to see that for ninety nine percent
of human beings, religion is an incredibly important part of
(03:50):
the It is often the frame through which they understand
the world. And I had not grown up in any religion.
I mean just kind of cultural observe of Christmas at Easter,
but really not a religious household. But I became really
fascinated by both the role of faith, communities, and history.
But Also, I was meeting a more diverse range of
(04:12):
people in college for the first time. I was meeting
you know, really observant Jews and Orthodox Christians and you know,
people from all kinds of backgrounds.
Speaker 2 (04:19):
And I found myself.
Speaker 3 (04:21):
Kind of envious of the sense of community and connection
and the answers to the big questions about the universe
that they had. But I wasn't you know, I think
I was kind of uncomfortable just sort of approaching religion,
you know, doing the things that people who grew up
in those communities do. I didn't really understand the idea
(04:45):
of worship or what it would mean to try to
have like a relationship with the divine.
Speaker 2 (04:51):
That didn't compute.
Speaker 3 (04:52):
But what I did know was how to study, how
to read a lot of books. And I also became
increasingly interested in journalism, wrote from my college newspaper, had
a few summer internships at city metro papers. Loved having
an excuse to just interview interesting people. I mean, as
you said, this is how we met. I interviewed you
for an article about a spiritual community, you know well,
(05:15):
and so that became another way of just kind of
learning about humans. So religion has become kind of my focus.
But I'm really I'm really interested in the role that
ideas play in people's lives and where they turn to
for guidance about.
Speaker 2 (05:28):
Their big decisions. And so I've ended up with this.
Speaker 3 (05:31):
Sort of hybrid career where I'm based in a university.
I do as much freelance journalism as I can because
I love interviewing people.
Speaker 1 (05:39):
Yeah, and you're very good at it. Well, I want
you for the audience to tell us what is charisma
and from your point of view, how has it shaped
the history?
Speaker 2 (05:50):
Oh boy, I know it's a big topic.
Speaker 3 (05:53):
Yeah, of course, And I've spent the last few years
working on this. I've got this book coming out in May.
But you'll have to bear with me because I this
will be one of my first conversations about it. I
don't have my pet answers down. I mean, and I
became fascinated by charisma because it is one of these
terms that I think we hunt to when we are
witnessing a phenomenon. We're watching a relationship between a leader
(06:18):
and followers that we cannot make sense of by appealing
to straightforward material motivations. Something weird is going on, and
so we say it's charisma, but what is that, right?
Speaker 2 (06:32):
I mean, I think it is.
Speaker 3 (06:33):
This, this, this allure that gives a leader the power
to move a crowd, and I think the heart of it,
and this was this surprised me in my research. I
think I went into my research on charisma confusing it
with charm, confusing it with celebrity, and I found myself
(06:53):
writing about figures who often were not particularly charming interpersonally.
Often they weren't good looking, they weren't necessarily great orators,
they weren't spellbinding speakers. What they all had in common
is the ability to tell a compelling story, to tell
a story that invites potential followers into a role, into
(07:17):
a new understanding of themselves and their personal plot line.
I think humans are narrative creatures. We understand the world
in terms of stories. We're constantly looking to make sense
of our suffering and our chaos in some way, right like,
it has to all have a point, it has to
be going somewhere. And I think charismatic leaders are those
(07:40):
whose sense that the existing stories out there are not
satisfying some important subset of people. There's a hunger for
a new account and a need to be invited into
a new narrative, and so that is really the heart
of charisma.
Speaker 1 (07:55):
Well, you know what I love about what you just
said is what you just said is what makes an
incredibly successful speaker is that they can really tap into
a narrative of what that audience needs and deliver it
in a way that motivates people to change or shift
or grow. So I love what you just said because
(08:19):
we've watched it historically, right, I mean we've watched it
in politics and religious We've watched it historically. But does
it does the charisma circumvent rational thinking?
Speaker 3 (08:36):
Oh, this is a great question, and I don't want
it to become I'm glad you asked this because I
don't want it to become a diagnosis of a situation
that then gives you, the observer, an excuse to not
take people's arguments seriously. And I think this can be
a real hazard in our current political environment, when whatever
(08:57):
side you're on, the temptation is to view the other
side as just crazy, just not even worth reasoning with.
And so I think that just because we think in
terms of stories, it doesn't mean that those stories aren't
rooted in a reasonable assessment of our situation. I think
the key thing we have to remember when talking about
(09:19):
what it means to be a rational thinker is that
any system of reasoning depends on certain presuppositions, and if
you dig down into the foundations of any person's worldview,
you will eventually reach a set of bedrock presuppositions that
cannot necessarily be proven. They can't be empirically demonstrated, they
(09:44):
have to be assumed. And so humans with different presuppositions
may may both validly apply the process of reasoning but
reach very different conclusions because maybe there are assumptions about
you know, what constitutes a flourishing human life are different,
Maybe there are assumptions about whether there's a God or
(10:05):
not different, right, and so these have these have real implications.
But just because someone's presuppositions are different from yours, it
doesn't mean you can dismiss them as irrational.
Speaker 1 (10:17):
Right. I love that you said that well, And I
want to talk about the intersection of charismatic leaders politics
and religion because it seems to have all around the world.
It seems to have kind of intersected and interesting ways
(10:39):
that impact the whole.
Speaker 3 (10:45):
Part of what I found myself trying to do in
this book was find some way of understanding what has
happened to the human religious impulse as Western society has
become more secular. So, as you know, every year the
Polsters tell us fewer people are going to houses of
worship on the weekend, fewer people say that they believe
(11:08):
in God. Right, I mean, there's a sort of this.
It's not a cataclysmic decline, but it's a slow decline.
Institutions in general have less authority over our lives, and
they did a generation or two ago. But I firmly
believe that humans are religious creatures. And I think you
can make that argument about what humans are like regardless
(11:28):
of whether you yourself, as a scholar, are totally a
materialist who doesn't think there's any supernatural element, or if
you're religious, because of course, evolutionary psychologists who are themselves
atheists often have an account of why humans have evolved
to create ideas of the divine and religious practices. Right, So,
(11:51):
putting aside that question, I think the way humans behave
in the world, they're religious. They seek connection with something transcendent,
some source of greater meaning outside themselves. They seek objects
of worship and a community to do that worshiping in.
And we're at a point, those of us who make
our career studying religion, where the traditional ways of measuring
(12:15):
that aspect of human life don't work so well anymore
because fewer people show up to church on Sundays. So
the question is where is that impulse going? And I
think one place we can look for it is in
the relationship that people develop with charismatic leaders, And so
much of my book is, I mean, it's about kind
(12:35):
of the intertwining of what Americans look for in a leader,
and leaders who arise kind of outside of the ordinary
structures and institutions, with this charismatic storytelling ability, and how
that is actually intertwined with the history of charisma in
the sense that that word has used in the New Testament,
so in the sense of God's gifts of grace, speaking
(12:59):
in tongues, prophecy, healing, this tradition of connecting with the
supernatural and believing you can be filled with the Holy Spirit,
with with you know, God's charisma that is so potent.
Speaker 2 (13:12):
In American history.
Speaker 3 (13:14):
And I think that really, although sometimes they can seem
like wildly different phenomena. A political rally, you know, for
John F. Kennedy or Adlai Stevenson on the one hand,
as compared to Pentecostal revival, you know, under a tent
right on the end, they seem like very different things.
Speaker 2 (13:34):
I think there's.
Speaker 3 (13:35):
Less daylight between them than maybe first a parent, and
that they speak to related impulses they seek to. They
speak to a universal desire for connection with a transcendent story.
And part of our task as observers of American culture
(13:56):
in our current moment is to just get a little
more creative about how we study and keep track of that.
The way humans answer those big questions, you know, is
what's the transcendent frame of meaning in my life?
Speaker 2 (14:11):
You know? What are my objects of worship? Yeah?
Speaker 1 (14:14):
Well, and you know, I love that you're talking about this,
and I love what you're saying because I feel like,
if I stand back, I think people at the core
want the same things. They want to be loved, they
want to be safe, they want to be I feel
like they're important. They want to feel like they can
(14:35):
take care of their families. I mean, I think there
are some basic needs things, you know, like you know,
the hierarchy of needs.
Speaker 2 (14:41):
But I.
Speaker 1 (14:44):
Think that when you talk about a charismatic leader. If
some of those things aren't happening, and the charismatic leader
is talking about those things, then I drift over because
I think maybe this person has a message or an
answer for me to get there. So so my question is, though,
(15:07):
is like, because we've watched communities, family split apart because
one person's over here, people are over here, is there
a bridge to help us come back to, for lack
of a better word, loving one another.
Speaker 3 (15:25):
Hmm, Man, I mean, I guess if I had the
straightforward answer to that question, I would be able to
solve a.
Speaker 2 (15:34):
Lot of our problems. I you know, I think that
in so many ways human nature hasn't hasn't changed that much.
And we are.
Speaker 3 (15:44):
We are tribal creatures who have this abiding instinct and
you know, you can see it as the fruit of evolution,
you can see it as original sin, right, no matter
what your metaphysics. We have this instinct to draw boundaries
(16:05):
between ourselves and the other. And I think we're constantly
you know, we like to think about modern society as
a story of progress, and we're getting we are getting
so much better at coexistence in a flourishing way with
a kind of broadening range of people. One of my
(16:27):
colleagues talks about the widening circle of we, right, like
who counts as we? Certainly for most humans like that
the answer to that question has gotten bigger over the centuries.
But I often think that that tribal instinct to project
evil and problems on outside of myself and onto the
other it's like just there under the surface, and it
(16:49):
doesn't take a lot to kind of release it. I mean,
I guess, so that's like a thirty thousand foot reflection.
I think, on a practical level, the thing I do
whenever I'm interacting with someone with whom I know, I
have a lot of differences, whether it's someone I'm interviewing
for a research project or someone in my family. I
(17:12):
try to really just ask questions. And maybe it's because
maybe you know, the uncharitable way of describing that would
be to say I hide behind my interviewer in persona
a little bit, and there's maybe some truth to that,
But really I find it's it's always productive. It always
(17:33):
gets me, you know, a few millimeters closer to bridging
the gap to ask a person questions about their experiences
this week about you know, features of how they grew up.
I think we are. We're constantly overestimating how much we
really know about one another, even people we've spent most
(17:56):
of our lives with, right I mean, I think especially
maybe with close friends in the family, you get into
a groove and you're just very used to interacting in
a certain way, and it is scary to break out
of that groove. But maybe just asking that friend or
family member a set of questions that you haven't tried before,
(18:17):
and often that have nothing to do with maybe whatever
the issue is that you disagree about it can it
can create a new way of maybe gaining.
Speaker 2 (18:24):
A little bit of rapport.
Speaker 3 (18:27):
So that's that's the very basic conversational tac that I
find useful in times like this.
Speaker 1 (18:32):
Well, and you know, curiosity, I think is always an
opener for different things. I think it's what makes you
a great interviewer, is that you're curious about what the
other person's thinking, feeling, doing, operating as. So what do
you hope that this book is going to do? What's
the hope for Spellbound?
Speaker 2 (18:52):
Hmm? My hope is that.
Speaker 3 (18:58):
We pay more attention to the broad ways in which
humans have remained in many ways the same over the centuries.
I think sometimes as modern twenty first century people, we
adopt a rather condescending attitude towards the past. I mean,
(19:20):
human iq has really not changed very much over the
thousands of years, and I think, you know, we don't really,
we don't maybe consciously have the thought, oh, those people
who lived before the age of you know, anesthesia and
modern plumbing were stupid. But there's a way in which
we do condescend to them.
Speaker 2 (19:39):
And I think.
Speaker 3 (19:42):
A book that focuses on the way in which the
abiding questions and hunger that humans feel has really remained
rather consistent over the past four hundred years can erase
some of that condescension.
Speaker 2 (19:54):
I think two.
Speaker 3 (19:55):
I mean I went into my research, I suppose assuming
that the rise of the Internet and social media would
be this cataclysmic break in my narrative.
Speaker 2 (20:07):
You know, there'd.
Speaker 3 (20:08):
Be before Twitter and after Twitter essentially, and of course
social media, and you know, the way we're all kind
of enslaved to the glowing rectangles we carry around in
our pockets. This has had enormous effect on how we
interact and construct our identities and think of ourselves. But
I think there's a tendency in our modern moment to
(20:31):
blame everything on technology and use it as an excuse
to stop, to pull away from maybe deeper, more complicated introspection.
And in my research, I found that so many of
the trends that people comment on about our current political landscape,
it's polarization, it's it's vitriol. That these are trends that
(20:53):
pre date the major technological changes. I mean, you have
to go back a most immediately to the nineteen nineties
and the rise of shock jocks like Rush Limbaugh and
the kind of polarization that starts to happen in the media,
and really the trends are quite continuous from that point
(21:14):
to our own time. So there's a way in which
I suppose that urges us toward a longer view.
Speaker 2 (21:21):
And it's both.
Speaker 3 (21:22):
I mean, I often find being a historian it's both
encouraging and depressing because on the one hand, I feel
less alone. I study people in past eras who also
felt like their world was falling apart, right. I also
were questing for the meaning of life, and it makes
me feel as if I have friends across the eons.
(21:44):
But on the other hand, it can be very depressing
to think, gosh, we're still wrestling with those same questions.
We're not really any better at it, and this is
kind of the human condition. And I guess the last
thing I'd say is there's a way in which in
our current moment where we're very secularized, and often the
study and engagement of religion is sort of cordoned off
(22:07):
as a separate sphere. I'm really trying to make the
case in this book that you can't do that and
really understand what humans are like, that religion in politics
are totally intertwined and we have to think about them
as intertwined to understand American history and understand human nature.
Speaker 1 (22:26):
Yeah. Well, it's a fascinating topic and you just articulated
that beautifully. How do people find you and get your book?
Speaker 2 (22:36):
I am very googleable and I do.
Speaker 3 (22:39):
If you type in mollyworthon dot com, you will find
my website with all of my stuff that's sort of
collated and easy to get and read.
Speaker 2 (22:49):
And I can also be found pretty.
Speaker 3 (22:51):
Easily on the University of North Carolina History Department website,
but molliworthan dot com is probably the easiest way.
Speaker 1 (22:58):
Beautiful, and anybody who needs to write stuff down her
last name is spelled w O R t h e N.
Speaker 2 (23:06):
Just in case, Thank you, Cynthia.
Speaker 1 (23:09):
So I asked the same last question of every guest
on this show. The show is called Women Awakening. What
do you think is the most important thing about women
awakening at this moment on the planet.
Speaker 3 (23:27):
Why?
Speaker 2 (23:28):
I love how open ended that is?
Speaker 3 (23:32):
I I guess I answer this as as a historian,
as someone who is consistently having my eyes opened to
all I can learn from people who lived in periods
(23:54):
in the deep past, And I guess the vast differences
in the world women have found meaning and constructed their
lives and dealt with constraints, but done so in a
way that I don't think we should underestimate. Has made
me think that there's maybe a hazard, especially for younger
(24:15):
women today, in thinking in buying into the message that
you should be your own, untethered, totally free and unencumbered
individual and totally create your own meaning and your own
future and be as unburdened as possible by quote unquote
(24:39):
old fashioned ideas of what it is to be a woman.
Just think a lot of women have kind of gotten
that message from the culture, and then they get to
their thirties, their forties and beyond, and they realize actually
meaning comes out of your place in a commun unity.
(25:01):
And uh, there are trade offs that you make if
you buy into the message of relentless professional success at
the cost of relationships and family and possibly having children,
and that you are forced by our society and our
economy to make decisions really early in your life, especially
as a woman, that have consequences later on. Right, there's
(25:21):
a way in which our culture and the messages we
get from the culture are sort of out of step
with biology. Uh, to to the great consternation and frustration
of women. So you know, you can't you can't have
it all. You have to make sacrifices. And I think
that we shouldn't be too captive to the mess the
(25:45):
dominant message that are, you know, free market, Uh, you know,
by get as much money as you can to buy luxuries,
get all the fancy credentials that you can get. That
that that culture tells us we need to have a
broader view of what can yield human flourishing and not
(26:05):
be afraid to think beyond the twenty first century definition
of individual self actualization.
Speaker 1 (26:14):
I guess well, that was beautifully said you know, I
think that that so many of the people that I've interviewed,
and so many the people that are my clients have
talked about is like, what is the middle way? You know,
what is Can I bring my gifts? Can I be successful?
And at the same time, can I create community and
(26:36):
experienced love and family? So I think it was beautiful
what you just said. I'm so grateful that you've been here.
Thank you so much.
Speaker 2 (26:44):
Thank you for having me. I really enjoyed this.
Speaker 1 (26:47):
Yeah, you're quite brilliant and I love the conversation. All right, ladies,
let me say this first of all, you know, get
this book spell Bound How Charisma American history from the
Puritans to Trump, right, because I think it's just such
an interesting conversation and dialogue for us to enter into.
(27:10):
I want you to know that you're here for a reason.
I want you to know that your presence on the
planet at this time is important, and that you don't
have to follow any certain rules. You get to open
and say what works for me, what supports me, what
lifts me, what heals me, and how can I be
(27:31):
a beneficial presence on the planet. I'm so grateful and
honored that I get to be with you. I love you,
and i'll see you next time.
I'm Cynthia James, and this network is about changing lives,
one woman at a time. Hello, and welcome to Women Awakening.
I'm your host, Cynthia James, and I'm excited that every
week I get to come to you and bring you
(00:24):
a powerful woman, an extraordinary woman, a woman who has
found her niche in this world and is here to
make a difference. That's exciting to me because I think
it's the time for women emerging. I really believe that
the frequency on the planet could use more of our nurturing,
carrying kind self and so I believe that if we
(00:48):
can bring that energy up, you know, we will bring
more kindness and compassion and empathy to the planet. So
we do these every week. We're on all the platforms Spotify, iTunes, Iheartspreaker, Amazon,
We're on video YouTube. You can also go to Cynthia
James Dottnette. That's my website. You can join my private
(01:08):
community and there's gifts and all kinds of things, and
there's a lot going on in my life and I'd
love to share it with you today. I have a
guest that I actually met a few months ago in
an interview and it was just so easy to have
a big conversation because she's very good at what she does.
(01:29):
Her name is Molly worth It. She is an associate
professor of history at the University of North Carolina at
Chapel Hill. She's also a freelance journalist. She received her
PhD from Yale University and her research focuses on North
American religious and intellectual history. She has a new book,
(01:51):
it's called Spellbound, How Charisma Shaped American History from the
Puritans to Trump. It comes out next spring and it's
already available for pre order on Amazon. She's created audio
and video courses for the Great Courses on the History
of Charisma and the history Global Christianities since Reformation, and
(02:15):
both of these are available on audio. I just think
it's so cool that she's doing things that we can
all access. We're Gonner writes regularly about religion, about politics,
higher education for The New York Times and has also
written for The New Yorker, Slate, The Atlantic, and other publications. Molly,
(02:37):
thank you so much for being here.
Speaker 2 (02:39):
Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1 (02:40):
Well, I'm very excited to have this conversation because I
love talking with you for the other article. But first
of all, I want to start with, how did you
grow up? You probably didn't drop on the planet saying
that I'm going to be a professor and I'm going
to have religious studies as my focus. How are you
brought up?
Speaker 3 (03:01):
I grew up in the suburbs of Chicago, a town
about twenty miles west of Chicago called glenn Ellen, Gosh.
I grew up reading Greek mythology and history with my
dad especially, and I remember really loving history. In high school.
I had a passion for theater and forensics, debate, speaking
(03:26):
too big audiences, And so I guess in that is
a kind of glimmer of my future career as a professor.
It was really when I got to college and I
was taking all kinds of humanities classes, history, philosophy, literature,
and I began to see that for ninety nine percent
of human beings, religion is an incredibly important part of
(03:50):
the It is often the frame through which they understand
the world. And I had not grown up in any religion.
I mean just kind of cultural observe of Christmas at Easter,
but really not a religious household. But I became really
fascinated by both the role of faith, communities, and history.
But Also, I was meeting a more diverse range of
(04:12):
people in college for the first time. I was meeting
you know, really observant Jews and Orthodox Christians and you know,
people from all kinds of backgrounds.
Speaker 2 (04:19):
And I found myself.
Speaker 3 (04:21):
Kind of envious of the sense of community and connection
and the answers to the big questions about the universe
that they had. But I wasn't you know, I think
I was kind of uncomfortable just sort of approaching religion,
you know, doing the things that people who grew up
in those communities do. I didn't really understand the idea
(04:45):
of worship or what it would mean to try to
have like a relationship with the divine.
Speaker 2 (04:51):
That didn't compute.
Speaker 3 (04:52):
But what I did know was how to study, how
to read a lot of books. And I also became
increasingly interested in journalism, wrote from my college newspaper, had
a few summer internships at city metro papers. Loved having
an excuse to just interview interesting people. I mean, as
you said, this is how we met. I interviewed you
for an article about a spiritual community, you know well,
(05:15):
and so that became another way of just kind of
learning about humans. So religion has become kind of my focus.
But I'm really I'm really interested in the role that
ideas play in people's lives and where they turn to
for guidance about.
Speaker 2 (05:28):
Their big decisions. And so I've ended up with this.
Speaker 3 (05:31):
Sort of hybrid career where I'm based in a university.
I do as much freelance journalism as I can because
I love interviewing people.
Speaker 1 (05:39):
Yeah, and you're very good at it. Well, I want
you for the audience to tell us what is charisma
and from your point of view, how has it shaped
the history?
Speaker 2 (05:50):
Oh boy, I know it's a big topic.
Speaker 3 (05:53):
Yeah, of course, And I've spent the last few years
working on this. I've got this book coming out in May.
But you'll have to bear with me because I this
will be one of my first conversations about it. I
don't have my pet answers down. I mean, and I
became fascinated by charisma because it is one of these
terms that I think we hunt to when we are
witnessing a phenomenon. We're watching a relationship between a leader
(06:18):
and followers that we cannot make sense of by appealing
to straightforward material motivations. Something weird is going on, and
so we say it's charisma, but what is that, right?
Speaker 2 (06:32):
I mean, I think it is.
Speaker 3 (06:33):
This, this, this allure that gives a leader the power
to move a crowd, and I think the heart of it,
and this was this surprised me in my research. I
think I went into my research on charisma confusing it
with charm, confusing it with celebrity, and I found myself
(06:53):
writing about figures who often were not particularly charming interpersonally.
Often they weren't good looking, they weren't necessarily great orators,
they weren't spellbinding speakers. What they all had in common
is the ability to tell a compelling story, to tell
a story that invites potential followers into a role, into
(07:17):
a new understanding of themselves and their personal plot line.
I think humans are narrative creatures. We understand the world
in terms of stories. We're constantly looking to make sense
of our suffering and our chaos in some way, right like,
it has to all have a point, it has to
be going somewhere. And I think charismatic leaders are those
(07:40):
whose sense that the existing stories out there are not
satisfying some important subset of people. There's a hunger for
a new account and a need to be invited into
a new narrative, and so that is really the heart
of charisma.
Speaker 1 (07:55):
Well, you know what I love about what you just
said is what you just said is what makes an
incredibly successful speaker is that they can really tap into
a narrative of what that audience needs and deliver it
in a way that motivates people to change or shift
or grow. So I love what you just said because
(08:19):
we've watched it historically, right, I mean we've watched it
in politics and religious We've watched it historically. But does
it does the charisma circumvent rational thinking?
Speaker 3 (08:36):
Oh, this is a great question, and I don't want
it to become I'm glad you asked this because I
don't want it to become a diagnosis of a situation
that then gives you, the observer, an excuse to not
take people's arguments seriously. And I think this can be
a real hazard in our current political environment, when whatever
(08:57):
side you're on, the temptation is to view the other
side as just crazy, just not even worth reasoning with.
And so I think that just because we think in
terms of stories, it doesn't mean that those stories aren't
rooted in a reasonable assessment of our situation. I think
the key thing we have to remember when talking about
(09:19):
what it means to be a rational thinker is that
any system of reasoning depends on certain presuppositions, and if
you dig down into the foundations of any person's worldview,
you will eventually reach a set of bedrock presuppositions that
cannot necessarily be proven. They can't be empirically demonstrated, they
(09:44):
have to be assumed. And so humans with different presuppositions
may may both validly apply the process of reasoning but
reach very different conclusions because maybe there are assumptions about
you know, what constitutes a flourishing human life are different,
Maybe there are assumptions about whether there's a God or
(10:05):
not different, right, and so these have these have real implications.
But just because someone's presuppositions are different from yours, it
doesn't mean you can dismiss them as irrational.
Speaker 1 (10:17):
Right. I love that you said that well, And I
want to talk about the intersection of charismatic leaders politics
and religion because it seems to have all around the world.
It seems to have kind of intersected and interesting ways
(10:39):
that impact the whole.
Speaker 3 (10:45):
Part of what I found myself trying to do in
this book was find some way of understanding what has
happened to the human religious impulse as Western society has
become more secular. So, as you know, every year the
Polsters tell us fewer people are going to houses of
worship on the weekend, fewer people say that they believe
(11:08):
in God. Right, I mean, there's a sort of this.
It's not a cataclysmic decline, but it's a slow decline.
Institutions in general have less authority over our lives, and
they did a generation or two ago. But I firmly
believe that humans are religious creatures. And I think you
can make that argument about what humans are like regardless
(11:28):
of whether you yourself, as a scholar, are totally a
materialist who doesn't think there's any supernatural element, or if
you're religious, because of course, evolutionary psychologists who are themselves
atheists often have an account of why humans have evolved
to create ideas of the divine and religious practices. Right, So,
(11:51):
putting aside that question, I think the way humans behave
in the world, they're religious. They seek connection with something transcendent,
some source of greater meaning outside themselves. They seek objects
of worship and a community to do that worshiping in.
And we're at a point, those of us who make
our career studying religion, where the traditional ways of measuring
(12:15):
that aspect of human life don't work so well anymore
because fewer people show up to church on Sundays. So
the question is where is that impulse going? And I
think one place we can look for it is in
the relationship that people develop with charismatic leaders, And so
much of my book is, I mean, it's about kind
(12:35):
of the intertwining of what Americans look for in a leader,
and leaders who arise kind of outside of the ordinary
structures and institutions, with this charismatic storytelling ability, and how
that is actually intertwined with the history of charisma in
the sense that that word has used in the New Testament,
so in the sense of God's gifts of grace, speaking
(12:59):
in tongues, prophecy, healing, this tradition of connecting with the
supernatural and believing you can be filled with the Holy Spirit,
with with you know, God's charisma that is so potent.
Speaker 2 (13:12):
In American history.
Speaker 3 (13:14):
And I think that really, although sometimes they can seem
like wildly different phenomena. A political rally, you know, for
John F. Kennedy or Adlai Stevenson on the one hand,
as compared to Pentecostal revival, you know, under a tent
right on the end, they seem like very different things.
Speaker 2 (13:34):
I think there's.
Speaker 3 (13:35):
Less daylight between them than maybe first a parent, and
that they speak to related impulses they seek to. They
speak to a universal desire for connection with a transcendent story.
And part of our task as observers of American culture
(13:56):
in our current moment is to just get a little
more creative about how we study and keep track of that.
The way humans answer those big questions, you know, is
what's the transcendent frame of meaning in my life?
Speaker 2 (14:11):
You know? What are my objects of worship? Yeah?
Speaker 1 (14:14):
Well, and you know, I love that you're talking about this,
and I love what you're saying because I feel like,
if I stand back, I think people at the core
want the same things. They want to be loved, they
want to be safe, they want to be I feel
like they're important. They want to feel like they can
(14:35):
take care of their families. I mean, I think there
are some basic needs things, you know, like you know,
the hierarchy of needs.
Speaker 2 (14:41):
But I.
Speaker 1 (14:44):
Think that when you talk about a charismatic leader. If
some of those things aren't happening, and the charismatic leader
is talking about those things, then I drift over because
I think maybe this person has a message or an
answer for me to get there. So so my question is, though,
(15:07):
is like, because we've watched communities, family split apart because
one person's over here, people are over here, is there
a bridge to help us come back to, for lack
of a better word, loving one another.
Speaker 3 (15:25):
Hmm, Man, I mean, I guess if I had the
straightforward answer to that question, I would be able to
solve a.
Speaker 2 (15:34):
Lot of our problems. I you know, I think that
in so many ways human nature hasn't hasn't changed that much.
And we are.
Speaker 3 (15:44):
We are tribal creatures who have this abiding instinct and
you know, you can see it as the fruit of evolution,
you can see it as original sin, right, no matter
what your metaphysics. We have this instinct to draw boundaries
(16:05):
between ourselves and the other. And I think we're constantly
you know, we like to think about modern society as
a story of progress, and we're getting we are getting
so much better at coexistence in a flourishing way with
a kind of broadening range of people. One of my
(16:27):
colleagues talks about the widening circle of we, right, like
who counts as we? Certainly for most humans like that
the answer to that question has gotten bigger over the centuries.
But I often think that that tribal instinct to project
evil and problems on outside of myself and onto the
other it's like just there under the surface, and it
(16:49):
doesn't take a lot to kind of release it. I mean,
I guess, so that's like a thirty thousand foot reflection.
I think, on a practical level, the thing I do
whenever I'm interacting with someone with whom I know, I
have a lot of differences, whether it's someone I'm interviewing
for a research project or someone in my family. I
(17:12):
try to really just ask questions. And maybe it's because
maybe you know, the uncharitable way of describing that would
be to say I hide behind my interviewer in persona
a little bit, and there's maybe some truth to that,
But really I find it's it's always productive. It always
(17:33):
gets me, you know, a few millimeters closer to bridging
the gap to ask a person questions about their experiences
this week about you know, features of how they grew up.
I think we are. We're constantly overestimating how much we
really know about one another, even people we've spent most
(17:56):
of our lives with, right I mean, I think especially
maybe with close friends in the family, you get into
a groove and you're just very used to interacting in
a certain way, and it is scary to break out
of that groove. But maybe just asking that friend or
family member a set of questions that you haven't tried before,
(18:17):
and often that have nothing to do with maybe whatever
the issue is that you disagree about it can it
can create a new way of maybe gaining.
Speaker 2 (18:24):
A little bit of rapport.
Speaker 3 (18:27):
So that's that's the very basic conversational tac that I
find useful in times like this.
Speaker 1 (18:32):
Well, and you know, curiosity, I think is always an
opener for different things. I think it's what makes you
a great interviewer, is that you're curious about what the
other person's thinking, feeling, doing, operating as. So what do
you hope that this book is going to do? What's
the hope for Spellbound?
Speaker 2 (18:52):
Hmm? My hope is that.
Speaker 3 (18:58):
We pay more attention to the broad ways in which
humans have remained in many ways the same over the centuries.
I think sometimes as modern twenty first century people, we
adopt a rather condescending attitude towards the past. I mean,
(19:20):
human iq has really not changed very much over the
thousands of years, and I think, you know, we don't really,
we don't maybe consciously have the thought, oh, those people
who lived before the age of you know, anesthesia and
modern plumbing were stupid. But there's a way in which
we do condescend to them.
Speaker 2 (19:39):
And I think.
Speaker 3 (19:42):
A book that focuses on the way in which the
abiding questions and hunger that humans feel has really remained
rather consistent over the past four hundred years can erase
some of that condescension.
Speaker 2 (19:54):
I think two.
Speaker 3 (19:55):
I mean I went into my research, I suppose assuming
that the rise of the Internet and social media would
be this cataclysmic break in my narrative.
Speaker 2 (20:07):
You know, there'd.
Speaker 3 (20:08):
Be before Twitter and after Twitter essentially, and of course
social media, and you know, the way we're all kind
of enslaved to the glowing rectangles we carry around in
our pockets. This has had enormous effect on how we
interact and construct our identities and think of ourselves. But
I think there's a tendency in our modern moment to
(20:31):
blame everything on technology and use it as an excuse
to stop, to pull away from maybe deeper, more complicated introspection.
And in my research, I found that so many of
the trends that people comment on about our current political landscape,
it's polarization, it's it's vitriol. That these are trends that
(20:53):
pre date the major technological changes. I mean, you have
to go back a most immediately to the nineteen nineties
and the rise of shock jocks like Rush Limbaugh and
the kind of polarization that starts to happen in the media,
and really the trends are quite continuous from that point
(21:14):
to our own time. So there's a way in which
I suppose that urges us toward a longer view.
Speaker 2 (21:21):
And it's both.
Speaker 3 (21:22):
I mean, I often find being a historian it's both
encouraging and depressing because on the one hand, I feel
less alone. I study people in past eras who also
felt like their world was falling apart, right. I also
were questing for the meaning of life, and it makes
me feel as if I have friends across the eons.
(21:44):
But on the other hand, it can be very depressing
to think, gosh, we're still wrestling with those same questions.
We're not really any better at it, and this is
kind of the human condition. And I guess the last
thing I'd say is there's a way in which in
our current moment where we're very secularized, and often the
study and engagement of religion is sort of cordoned off
(22:07):
as a separate sphere. I'm really trying to make the
case in this book that you can't do that and
really understand what humans are like, that religion in politics
are totally intertwined and we have to think about them
as intertwined to understand American history and understand human nature.
Speaker 1 (22:26):
Yeah. Well, it's a fascinating topic and you just articulated
that beautifully. How do people find you and get your book?
Speaker 2 (22:36):
I am very googleable and I do.
Speaker 3 (22:39):
If you type in mollyworthon dot com, you will find
my website with all of my stuff that's sort of
collated and easy to get and read.
Speaker 2 (22:49):
And I can also be found pretty.
Speaker 3 (22:51):
Easily on the University of North Carolina History Department website,
but molliworthan dot com is probably the easiest way.
Speaker 1 (22:58):
Beautiful, and anybody who needs to write stuff down her
last name is spelled w O R t h e N.
Speaker 2 (23:06):
Just in case, Thank you, Cynthia.
Speaker 1 (23:09):
So I asked the same last question of every guest
on this show. The show is called Women Awakening. What
do you think is the most important thing about women
awakening at this moment on the planet.
Speaker 3 (23:27):
Why?
Speaker 2 (23:28):
I love how open ended that is?
Speaker 3 (23:32):
I I guess I answer this as as a historian,
as someone who is consistently having my eyes opened to
all I can learn from people who lived in periods
(23:54):
in the deep past, And I guess the vast differences
in the world women have found meaning and constructed their
lives and dealt with constraints, but done so in a
way that I don't think we should underestimate. Has made
me think that there's maybe a hazard, especially for younger
(24:15):
women today, in thinking in buying into the message that
you should be your own, untethered, totally free and unencumbered
individual and totally create your own meaning and your own
future and be as unburdened as possible by quote unquote
(24:39):
old fashioned ideas of what it is to be a woman.
Just think a lot of women have kind of gotten
that message from the culture, and then they get to
their thirties, their forties and beyond, and they realize actually
meaning comes out of your place in a commun unity.
(25:01):
And uh, there are trade offs that you make if
you buy into the message of relentless professional success at
the cost of relationships and family and possibly having children,
and that you are forced by our society and our
economy to make decisions really early in your life, especially
as a woman, that have consequences later on. Right, there's
(25:21):
a way in which our culture and the messages we
get from the culture are sort of out of step
with biology. Uh, to to the great consternation and frustration
of women. So you know, you can't you can't have
it all. You have to make sacrifices. And I think
that we shouldn't be too captive to the mess the
(25:45):
dominant message that are, you know, free market, Uh, you know,
by get as much money as you can to buy luxuries,
get all the fancy credentials that you can get. That
that that culture tells us we need to have a
broader view of what can yield human flourishing and not
(26:05):
be afraid to think beyond the twenty first century definition
of individual self actualization.
Speaker 1 (26:14):
I guess well, that was beautifully said you know, I
think that that so many of the people that I've interviewed,
and so many the people that are my clients have
talked about is like, what is the middle way? You know,
what is Can I bring my gifts? Can I be successful?
And at the same time, can I create community and
(26:36):
experienced love and family? So I think it was beautiful
what you just said. I'm so grateful that you've been here.
Thank you so much.
Speaker 2 (26:44):
Thank you for having me. I really enjoyed this.
Speaker 1 (26:47):
Yeah, you're quite brilliant and I love the conversation. All right, ladies,
let me say this first of all, you know, get
this book spell Bound How Charisma American history from the
Puritans to Trump, right, because I think it's just such
an interesting conversation and dialogue for us to enter into.
(27:10):
I want you to know that you're here for a reason.
I want you to know that your presence on the
planet at this time is important, and that you don't
have to follow any certain rules. You get to open
and say what works for me, what supports me, what
lifts me, what heals me, and how can I be
(27:31):
a beneficial presence on the planet. I'm so grateful and
honored that I get to be with you. I love you,
and i'll see you next time.
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