Elizabeth Jane Dempsey Douglass[3] (born 1933) is an American Presbyterian theologian and ecclesiastical historian.
[6][7] She received her Doctor of Philosophy degree from Harvard in 1963 following the submission of her thesis The Doctrine of Justification in the Preaching of John Geiler of Keiserberg.
[14] In the same year, she delivered the Warfield Lectures at Princeton Theological Seminary in a series titled Christian Freedom in Calvin's Theology, which led to the publication of her book Women, Freedom, and Calvin in 1985.
[15] A Christian feminist,[16] Douglass challenged the dominant interpretation of John Calvin's view of the role of women, identifying certain aspects of his thought as protofeminist.
[13] She is commemorated by the American Society of Church History with the Jane Dempsey Douglass Prize, awarded annually to the author of the year's "best unpublished essay on some aspect of the role of women in the history of Christianity".