The Power of Charisma in American History: An Interview with Molly Worthen
The origins of the term charisma are religious—used in the New Testament, “charisma” means “gift of grace” in Greek. When we speak of charisma today, we are generally not referring to this original sense, but maybe we should think about it more. This tension between religious charisma and the charisma wielded by political leaders is at the heart of historian Molly Worthen’s new book, Spellbound: How Charisma Shaped American History from the Puritans to Donald Trump. Forum Books, 2025. Pp. 464.
Worthen is the author of two other books, associate professor of American history at UNC-Chapel Hill, and a freelance journalist who has written for the New York Times, The New Yorker, and more.
***
What is charisma, and what can a historical study tell us about it?
Charisma is a relationship between the leader and followers. That relationship is based on telling a story. The leader brings followers into a compelling narrative that does a better job of making sense of their lives than whatever stories they were invested in before. But for people outside the story, who find no role in it (or find themselves cast as villains), it is baffling. Charismatic people are often not good looking, charming, or good public speakers. So the corollary of charismatic attraction is the revulsion that you feel if you’re watching a political rally or a sermon and you are not under the charismatic person’s influence.
Why did you write this book? What do you want readers to take away from it?
I was looking for a new way to investigate the relationship between religion and politics. In this age of secularization and the rising number of “nones,” the familiar institutional benchmarks like church attendance figures don’t tell us as much as they used to. I’m convinced that humans are fundamentally religious creatures. We seek a way to connect with a transcendent narrative that lends meaning to our puny mortal lives, and we look for something to worship. If that impulse doesn’t land in a church, it will land somewhere else. More and more, I suspect it lands on charismatic leaders.
Charismatic leaders craft stories that respond in a strategic way to the anxieties of their time, especially the success or failure of the era’s dominant institutions. Each period of American history has favored a particular “style” of charisma. That style can tell us a lot about what people fear and desire. But I want readers to see that the most successful leaders—like George Washington, Franklin Roosevelt or Martin Luther King, Jr.—made the strategic decision not to stick too closely to the charismatic style of their age. Instead, they saw how to adapt the style, riff on it, and combine it with other approaches to bring out the best in Americans without inflaming their worst instincts.
On a related note, we often use the word "charisma" in secular contexts, but your book emphasizes the religious origins of the word and argues that even in its modern secular settings, charisma can never fully be understood apart from religion. What do you mean by that? What does a study of religion tell us about charisma in American history?
The more I study history, the more I become convinced that human beings are not the empirically minded creatures we fancy ourselves to be. We focus on material evidence and deploy cold, calculating, logic more in the breach than as a habit. I don’t mean to suggest that we’re not “rational.” Rather, we base our reasoning on a lot of things that defy formal syllogism and material data. Faith is not the opposite of reason; it’s a framework for reason. Religious people and nonbelievers both rely on the logic of stories: We take the hard things we encounter in life, like suffering and injustice, and we slot them into a narrative that lends them meaning. So if you drive a hard wedge between religion and politics, you miss what charismatic leaders are doing when they draw in new followers.
At some level, we all intuit this. Even secular people resort to quasi-magical or religious or hypnotism metaphors when they talk about charisma. They use words like “mesmerize” and “magnetize.” They talk about leaders “casting a spell” and followers “converting” to a cause. Charisma is a concept we punt to when we can’t identify totally rational, material explanations for the relationship between a leader and followers.
The sociologist Max Weber saw this a little more than a century ago, when he adapted the word “charisma” from the field of biblical studies and repurposed it in the way we tend to use it now—to describe a kind of authority distinct from the authority of traditions or institutions, authority that has to do with a leader convincing followers that he or she has some amazing, superhuman power. Weber was trying to domesticate this theological term so that his secular-minded colleagues in the new social sciences would feel comfortable using it. But he could not resist using religious turns of phrase. He wrote that the leader and his “disciples” must “stand outside the ties of this world.” He warned that if the leader’s “divine mission” doesn’t prosper his followers, they will conclude that “he is obviously not the master sent by the gods.”
What were some of your key discoveries about charisma in American history? How does charisma operate—and what might explain a particular charismatic leader's appeal?
When I began this research, I thought I would be writing mainly about followers’ intense encounters with captivating leaders. I thought charisma was a force that you had to experience in person. My first big clue that this is not the case came in my research on Joseph Smith and the foundations of the Mormon church.
Smith was over six feet tall, with arresting blue eyes. Some early converts reported mystical experiences when they met him. One woman named Mary said that when she shook his hand, she “received the Holy Spirit in such great abundance that I felt it thrill my whole system.” Yet other people found him repellent; one skeptic said that Smith’s face “exhibits a curious mixture of the knave and the clown” and noticed that “his hands are large and fat.” Smith’s physical presence was polarizing, rather than universally appealing—and that’s true for most charismatic leaders. What’s more, a lot of early Mormons joined the church before ever laying eyes on Smith. Several thousand British and Canadian converts moved to Nauvoo, the Mormon settlement in Illinois, because they met a missionary or read the Book of Mormon. The core charisma lay in the story that Smith was preaching, not (or not primarily) in him as a person.
This means that communications technology is crucial to the story of charisma, since newspapers, radio, and later TV and the internet became mechanisms by which leaders and their followers spread their stories. But I think we 21st-century people tend to exaggerate how different we are from those who lived in earlier times. The truth is that human nature has not changed. Our basic needs and impulses are the same.
In every century I cover in the book, from the 1600s to the present, people have wanted the same basic thing: a role in a narrative that makes sense of chaos and suffering. They love to feel as if they have insider knowledge, that their leader has revealed secrets of the universe that no one else understands. Maybe this speaks to the heavy influence of Protestantism on all American culture: Americans of all ideological persuasions seem to crave a kind of personal conversion experience. They want the sense of power that comes with making the individual decision to join a movement, to move from a mindset of investigation and doubt to one of belief and action. The flip side of that is the sense of comfort that comes with knowing that a leader or a force wiser and stronger than you is ultimately in charge. Charismatic leaders in every era have provided this paradoxical combination of feelings.
Your book mentions Donald Trump in the title, and your book ends with a chapter on Trump. What do you think we can learn about Trump's popular appeal by situating it in a larger historical study of charisma? How does Trump's charisma compare to that of some of the other charismatic figures you studied?
Americans have voted for Trump for all kinds of reasons, and some have little to do with charisma. I’m thinking of people who vote Republican no matter who the candidate is because that’s their party identity; or those who will go along with almost any candidate as long as he stands for banning abortion; or those driven by frustration about the cost of eggs under Biden. That said, Trump’s charisma does activate his base, and it tugs on ambivalent supporters too. He’s what I call a “guru,” perhaps the apotheosis of the age of the gurus, which began in the 1980s. Gurus capitalize on Americans’ low trust in established institutions like the federal government, mainstream media, and churches. They capitalize on the cult of “authenticity” and the quest for personal liberation that got supercharged in the 1960s and 1970s. Gurus promise to pull back the veil on a new reality—a world, they claim, that the traditional elites have tried to prevent you from seeing.
From very early in his career—long before he entered politics—Trump was crafting a narrative of himself. He honed the persona of a self-made businessman constantly fending off jealous, dishonest rivals, ready to bring that experience and savvy to high office to defend America against internal and external enemies. It’s a story that turns being a victim into a kind of power, and he promises to do the same for his supporters. The behavior that troubles so many of his critics—his insulting comments about immigrants, racial minorities, veterans, and disabled people; his record of harassing women; his rambling, stream-of-consciousness approach to public speaking—comes across to his followers as authenticity, telling it like it is, and refusing to follow stupid rules of an unfair system.
Trump combines all this with an instinct for one of the country’s dominant spiritual traditions, the one he grew up in: the positive thinking prosperity gospel of Norman Vincent Peale, who preached that you can change reality with the right kind of thinking. Trump’s political charisma is woven together with the story of New Testament charisma, too. In Spellbound I situate recent American politics in the aftermath of the Toronto Blessing, the biggest revival in a generation, a movement of the Holy Spirit that fed the networks of independent charismatic pastors and activists who have proven so important to Trump’s political coalition.
Charismatic leaders always operate in a dialectical relationship with established institutions. Trump’s message resonates because so many Americans have lost trust in the federal government, the mainstream media, higher education, and the other institutions he views as fortresses of the enemy. He’s been able to capture the Republican Party because the party, as an institution, is so weak. In my book, each era of destructive leaders gives way to an era of building—charismatic leaders and followers who are more inclined to invest in institutions. I wish I could prophesy that we are on the cusp, now, of another course correction. But it’s always much easier to tear down institutions than to rebuild them.
Originally published in the spring 2025 Mere Orthodoxy print journal. To become a member and receive future issues, join today.
Daniel K. Williams teaches American history at Ashland University and is the author of The Politics of the Cross: A Christian Alternative to Partisanship. He is currently writing a history of Protestant Christian apologetics that is under contract with Oxford University Press.
You may also like...
Diddy's Legal Troubles & Racketeering Trial

Music mogul Sean 'Diddy' Combs was acquitted of sex trafficking and racketeering charges but convicted on transportation...
Thomas Partey Faces Rape & Sexual Assault Charges

Former Arsenal midfielder Thomas Partey has been formally charged with multiple counts of rape and sexual assault by UK ...
Nigeria Universities Changes Admission Policies

JAMB has clarified its admission policies, rectifying a student's status, reiterating the necessity of its Central Admis...
Ghana's Economic Reforms & Gold Sector Initiatives

Ghana is undertaking a comprehensive economic overhaul with President John Dramani Mahama's 24-Hour Economy and Accelera...
WAFCON 2024 African Women's Football Tournament

The 2024 Women's Africa Cup of Nations opened with thrilling matches, seeing Nigeria's Super Falcons secure a dominant 3...
Emergence & Dynamics of Nigeria's ADC Coalition

A new opposition coalition, led by the African Democratic Congress (ADC), is emerging to challenge President Bola Ahmed ...
Demise of Olubadan of Ibadanland

Oba Owolabi Olakulehin, the 43rd Olubadan of Ibadanland, has died at 90, concluding a life of distinguished service in t...
Death of Nigerian Goalkeeping Legend Peter Rufai

Nigerian football mourns the death of legendary Super Eagles goalkeeper Peter Rufai, who passed away at 61. Known as 'Do...