Was Jesus a Liberal?

Guest: Scotty McLennan

Scotty McLennan is the Dean for Religious Life at Stanford. His duties at Stanford include providing spiritual, moral, and ethical leadership for the university, teaching, encouraging a wide spectrum of religious traditions on campus, serving as the minister of Memorial Church, and engaging in public service.

Dean McLennan received a B.A. from Yale University in 1970 as a Scholar of the House working in the area of computers and the mind.  He received M.Div. and J.D. degrees from Harvard Divinity and Law Schools in 1975.  In 1975 he was ordained to the ministry (Unitarian Universalist) and admitted to the Massachusetts bar as an attorney.

At Stanford, Dean McLennan has taught undergraduate courses through the Ethics in Society Program ("Ethics and the Professions" and “The Meaning of Life”), the Masters of Liberal Arts Program ("The Meaning of Life"), Urban Studies, with the associate deans for religious life ("Spirituality and Nonviolent Social Transformation"), Continuing Studies ("Exploring Liberal Christianity"), and the Graduate School of Business ("The Business World:  Moral and Spiritual Inquiry Through Literature").  His primary research interests are in the interface of religion, ethics and the professions.

Dean McLennan  is the author of Jesus Was a Liberal:  Reclaiming Christianity for All  (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009);  Finding Your Religion: When the Faith You Grew Up With Has Lost Its Meaning  (Harper San Francisco, 1999);  and co-author with Laura Nash of Church on Sunday, Work on Monday:  The Challenge of Fusing Christian Values With Business Life  (Jossey-Bass, 2001).