Molly Worthen, 2020–21

Molly Worthen is associate professor of history at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a freelance journalist. She received her BA and PhD from Yale University. Her research focuses on North American religious and intellectual history. Her most recent book, Apostles of Reason, examines American evangelical intellectual life since 1945, especially the internal conflicts among different evangelical subcultures. Her first book, The Man On Whom Nothing Was Lost, is a behind-the-scenes study of American diplomacy and higher education told through the lens of biography. She also created an audio and video course for The Great Courses, “History of Christianity II: From the Reformation to the Modern Megachurch,” and recently released an audio course for Audible, “Charismatic Leaders Who Remade America.” During her time at the National Humanities Center, she is working on her new book project tentatively titled, Spellbound Nation: Charisma in American History.

Worthen teaches courses on North American religious and intellectual culture, global Christianity, and the history of ideas. She is a contributing opinion writer for the New York Times and has written about religion and politics for The New Yorker, Slate, The American Prospect, Foreign Policy, and other publications.

Selected Publications

• Worthen, Molly. “What Would Jesus Do About Inequality?” The New York Times, December 13, 2019.
• Worthen, Molly. “Can We Guarantee That Colleges Are Intellectually Diverse?” The New York Times, August 30, 2019.
• Worthen, Molly. ““The Anti-College is on the Rise.” The New York Times, June 8, 2019.
• Worthen, Molly. Apostles of Reason: The Crisis of Authority in American Evangelicalism. New York: Oxford University Press, 2014.
• Worthen, Molly. The Man On Whom Nothing Was Lost: The Grand Strategy of Charles Hill. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2005.