Bio
William L. (Scotty) McLennan, Jr. is an attorney and a Unitarian Universalist minister. He was the Dean for Religious Life at Stanford from 2001-2014 and the University Chaplain at Tufts University from 1984-2000. He was also a Senior Lecturer at the Harvard Business School for ten of the years he was at Tufts.
Rev. McLennan received a BA from Yale University in 1970 as a Scholar of the House working in the area of computers and the mind. He received MDiv and JD degrees from Harvard Divinity and Law Schools in 1975. In 1975 he was ordained to the ministry and admitted to the Massachusetts Bar.
From 1975 to 1984 McLennan practiced church-sponsored poverty law in the Dorchester area of Boston. He represented low-income people in the general practice of law, including consumer, landlord-tenant, government benefits, immigration, family, and criminal law. In the early 1980s he developed and directed the Unitarian Universalist Legal Ministry, which used largely non-adversary means of dispute resolution, attempted to see clients’ legal problems in relation to their whole life situation, and sought reconciliation with other parties.
At Stanford, Dean McLennan has taught undergraduate courses through the Ethics in Society Program (“Ethics and the Professions” and “The Meaning of Life”); Urban Studies, with the associate deans for religious life (“Spirituality and Nonviolent Social Transformation”); and the Graduate School of Business (“The Business World: Moral and Spiritual Inquiry Through Literature”). He has also taught in the Masters of Liberal Arts and Continuing Studies programs. His primary research interests are in the interface of religion, ethics, and the professions.
McLennan is the author of Finding Your Religion: When the Faith You Grew Up With Has Lost Its Meaning (HarperSanFrancisco, 1999) and Jesus Was a Liberal: Reclaiming Christianity for All (Palgrave MacMillan 2009). He is coauthor with Laura Nash of Church on Sunday, Work on Monday: The Challenge of Fusing Christian Values With Business Life (Jossey-Bass, 2001).