Clark Carlton was born in Cookeville, Tennessee in 1964 and reared as a Southern Baptist. He earned a B.A. in philosophy from Carson-Newman College in Jefferson City, Tennessee. While studying as a Raymond Bryan Brown memorial Scholar at the Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, North Carolina, he converted to the Orthodox Faith and was chrismated at the St. Gregory the Great Orthodox Mission in Raleigh. The story of his conversion, "From First Baptist to the First Century," was published in The Christian Activist (Volume 10, 1997).
Mr Carlton earned a Master of Divinity degree from St. Vladimir's Orthodox Theological Seminary in Crestwood, New York in 1990. his senior thesis, under the direction of Fr. John Meyendorff, was entitled "The Humanity of Christ According to St. Maximus the Confessor."
In 1993, he earned an M.A. in Early Christian Studies from the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. At present he is working as an adjunct instructor of philosophy at Tennessee Technological University in his home town while completing his Ph.D. dissertation on the dogmatic and ascetically theology of St. Mark the Monk (5th c.).