Dougan Clark

Born in 1828 and living until 1896, Dougan Clark was an American religious writer whose work grew out of the Quaker tradition. In The Theology of Holiness, he identified himself as an M.D. and as Professor of Systematic Theology and Church History at Earlham College in Richmond, Indiana.

That book, first published in the 1890s, is the work he is most clearly associated with today. Its title page also shows how closely he linked his writing to family and faith: he dedicated it to his parents, Dougan and Asenath Clark, whom he described as longtime approved ministers in the Friends' Church.

Later writers on Quaker history have remembered him as part of the revivalist and holiness-minded stream within American Friends. While many details of his life are not easy to confirm from readily available sources, the surviving record presents him as a teacher and preacher who tried to bring careful theology into everyday Christian devotion.