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By Kim Barry (MALD '00) Batman and Superman may not really exist, but Reverend Scot Sloan of Doonsbury fame does. Tufts Chaplain Rev. Scotty McLennan, the model for the idealistic, activist comic strip character, recently released his first book, Finding Your Religion: When the Faith You Grew Up With Has Lost its Meaning. Doonsbury creator Garry Trudeau--McLennan's college roommate--wrote the introduction.
Although he admitted to not knowing "beans about God," Trudeau said McLennan had always been in command of a "maddening functionality," even back at Yale. "What the rest of us learned to pass exams, Scotty put right to use," whether spiritually, or "cross-referencing potential dates with big weekends," he said. "It's [McLennan's] humanity that is at the core of this book," Trudeau added. However, Trudeau also admitted to perhaps not being in "hollering distance of the book." "What if everyone climbed the mountain, found what they were looking for and simply sat down?…there would be a whole bunch of people saying, 'No, please, after you,'" he considered. Nevertheless, the celebrated cartoonist and Tufts 1998 Commencement Speaker saluted the effort of his longtime friend. McLennan said one of his main concerns at Tufts is that many students tell him they are spiritual, but not religious. He urged them to couple spirituality with religion. "Religion is the parent of spirituality," he said. Coffin, who, as a former civil rights and anti-war activist, resembles Doonsbury's Scot Sloan himself, had a far more pessimistic view of academia and religion. "We have graduated too many students who want to succeed rather than be valuable, who want to make money rather than make a difference," he lamented. As a remedy, Coffin encouraged the reintroduction of wonder, anger and love on college campuses and in academic religious curriculums. In addition to his Chaplain duties, McLennan teaches religion, law and medical ethics at Tufts and a business ethics class at the Harvard Business School. Comments? Write us at letter@fletcherledger.com |
Finding Your Religion
outlines six stages of religious development that McLennan asserts
all people experience, regardless of their religious background
(see sidebar). Spiritual searchers are encouraged to progress on a
spiritual path rather than try to find their own way. The book
likens the search to climbing a spiritual mountain, claiming that
searchers should find the path up that is best for them rather
than bushwhack. To illustrate, the book documents the religious
searches of fifty anonymous Tufts faculty, students and alumni.