author
Asa Mahan
1799–1889
A minister, educator, and reform-minded college leader, he helped shape early Oberlin into a school known for moral seriousness and bold social commitments. His long career linked revivalist religion, abolitionism, and higher education in 19th-century America.
1 Audiobook
Doctrine of the Will
by Asa Mahan
About the author
Born in Vernon, New York, in 1799, Asa Mahan studied at Hamilton College and Andover Theological Seminary before becoming a Congregational minister and teacher. He is best known as the first president of Oberlin Collegiate Institute, later Oberlin College, where he served from 1835 to 1850.
At Oberlin, Mahan was part of the circle that gave the school its unusually strong reforming spirit. He supported the college's evangelical mission and was associated with causes including abolitionism, helping make Oberlin an important center of religious and social activism in the years before the Civil War.
After leaving Oberlin, he went on to serve as the first president of Adrian College. He spent part of his later life in England and died in Eastbourne in 1889. Mahan also wrote widely on religion, philosophy, and Christian perfection, leaving behind a body of work that reflects the intense moral and theological debates of his era.