Professor Molly Worthen

Professor Molly Worthen

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Experience

  • Associate Professor, Department of History, University of North Carolina, July 2018 to Present
  • Assistant Professor, Department of History, University of North Carolina, Fall 2012 to June 2018
  • Lecturer, Toronto School of Theology, University of Toronto, Fall 2011 to Spring 2012
  • Instructor, Yale University, Spring 2010

Education

  • PhD, American Religious History, Yale University, Awarded with Distinction, 2011
  • MPhil and MA, American Religious History, Yale University, 2008
  • BA in History, Yale University, Magna cum Laude, Awarded with Distinction in the Major, 2003

Awards

  • Research Fellowship, National Humanities Center, 2020-2021
  • Manekin Family Award for Teaching Excellence in Honors Carolina, 2017
  • Faculty Fellowship, Institute for Arts and Humanities, University of North Carolina, Spring 2017
  • Religion Newswriters Association Nonfiction Book Award, First Place, 2015, Prize for best nonfiction book of the year pertaining to the study of religion
  • Theron Rockwell Field Prize, 2011, Yale University-wide award for “best poetic, literary, or religious work of scholarship”

Molly Worthen is an 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 created an audio and video course for The Great Courses, “History of Christianity II: From the Reformation to the Modern Megachurch.” She recently released an audio course for Audible, “Charismatic Leaders Who Remade America.”

 

Worthen lectures widely on religion and politics and 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. She is currently writing a book about the history of political and religious charisma in America.

My Courses

Second-Wave Feminism

by Professor Molly Worthen

$75.00
Youth Movements

by Professor Molly Worthen

$75.00
Religion in the 1960s

by Professor Molly Worthen

$75.00
Why we love teaching history
Q: Why do you love teaching religion and politics?

A: I love teaching the history of religion and politics in America because there is no better way to shed light the confusing culture wars of our own time. Plus, this history lets us explore the spiritual practices and philosophies that different Americans have used to impose some kind of order on the chaos of life—and I think its our passion for ideas, for sweeping theories about good and evil and the meaning of existence, that make us human.
Professor Molly Worthen

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Q: Why do you love teaching national defense?

A: I am first and foremost a historian, but I also like for students to see how much the past is constantly influencing what we do in the present. This is true in many aspects of our past (and present), but it is often strikingly visible in national defense and security issues. In one sense, I’m using the students’ awareness of and interest in the present to awaken an interest in the past.
Professor Watne Lee

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill