Along with former Yale Chaplain and McLennan's mentor William Sloane Coffin,[3] McLennan is the real-life inspiration for the Doonesbury cartoon character Reverend Scot Sloan in his college roommate Garry Trudeau's Pulitzer Prize-winning comic strip,[4] which also was adapted into a film and nominated for an Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film.

After practicing church-sponsored poverty law in a low-income region of Boston for nearly ten years and founding the Unitarian Universalist Legal Ministry, he was appointed University Chaplain at Tufts University in Massachusetts, serving from 1984 to 2000, and senior lecturer at Harvard Business School, serving from 1988 to 2000.

As stated by the school, which was founded in 1891, "The Nominating/Awards Committee of the Alumni Board of Governors seeks candidates who have made significant contributions in their fields and earned the recognition of their peers on a national or international level".

[13] McLennan's first book, Finding Your Religion: When the Faith You Grew Up With Has Lost Its Meaning, was published in 1999 by HarperCollins.

[14] His second book, Church on Sunday, Work on Monday: The Challenge of Fusing Christian Values with Business Life, was co-authored with Laura Nash and published in 2001 by Jossey-Bass.

Other book events took place in Chicago, Minneapolis, Dallas, Greenwich, CT, Boston, New York City and Washington, D.C.[19] A nationally prominent speaker on religion and ethics, McLennan has been featured in major news publications, such as USA Today,[20] People Magazine,[21] The Huffington Post,[22] The Dallas Morning News,[23] and The Boston Globe,[20][24] as well as a guest on national and regional television and radio programs, including The CW Television Network, The O'Reilly Factor,[25] National Public Radio[26] and Sirius Satellite Radio.

[30] [31] During his tenure at Stanford, McLennan has hosted and publicly interviewed the Dalai Lama, a spiritual mentor, in 2005 and 2010 to discuss compassion and how to live a meaningful life.