In Spellbound: How Charisma Shaped American History from the Puritans to Donald Trump (Convergent, May 2025), historian Molly Worthen examines how charismatic leaders, in the public square or the pulpit, amass followings. Drawing from research spanning four centuries, Worthen finds throughlines between religious and political figureheads and the people devoted to them.
What inspired you to write Spellbound?
In 2016 I was trying to understand how half the country could adore a presidential candidate who the other half of the country found totally abhorrent. And I was trying to figure out what was happening to Americans’ religious feelings at a time when fewer and fewer people were going to church or claiming their religious affiliation. I wanted to examine the way religion and politics are tangled up. I hit on charisma as a way into that.
You discover charisma has nothing to do with outward appearance. What are the inner characteristics most charismatic people have?
This was one of my biggest surprises. When I started my research, I confused charisma with personal charm and celebrity, which are related, but they’re quite different phenomena. I thought all charismatic leaders would be great public speakers. I did not find this to be true. I became persuaded that charisma resides in the story they tell. All charismatic leaders have an instinct for the right balance of skepticism and desire to believe. They have a sense for how the stories of the status quo are no longer working for some subset of people and what new narrative might be more satisfying. Whether we’re talking about Andrew Jackson, Marcus Garvey, the Guru Maharaj Ji, or Donald Trump, they all saw how the current stories about the world were failing people and what story would be more persuasive.
What makes charisma dangerous?
There’s a paradox in charisma. On one hand, it’s a very tenuous, fragile form of power, but on the other hand, it provokes a particular terror in people who are outside the bounds of the movement. Charisma is not a respecter of institutions and laws; sometimes it can be, but it has this unpredictable—and to outsiders, inexplicable—quality. There’s a sense of fear and panic that comes with watching a movement build and not being able to account for it through material analysis. So many of these figures, while they provoke great devotion in their followers, provoke an incredible degree of disgust and abhorrence among outsiders. It’s very hard to see clearly if you’re looking through the mists of your own revulsion.
Why is it important to recognize the potentially dangerous power of charisma today?
We’re at a point in American culture where political allegiances and cultural practices become supercharged with emotion and dogmatism to the point where they feel religious, even as the authority of traditional religious institutions is eroding. Americans need more tools for understanding what’s happening. I’m trying to provide a lens to the deeper history of our current moment of confusion.
