A third-generation UU, Rev. Scot was raised in the Maryland suburbs by a family of government bureaucrats. His first church experiences were at Cedar Lane UU in Bethesda — as the story goes, Unitarian Universalism was the only church his Quaker grandfather and Methodist grandmother could agree on.

He attended the University of Maryland in College Park, where he was so taken with “Life’s Big Questions” that he decided to pursue a Ph.D. in Philosophy. Life (and mounting debt) eventually intervened. His first “real job” was teaching others how to use and manage computer networks.

Over the next 20 years, Rev. Scot became a public speaker and technology evangelist in the field of Internet security. He became a business development expert, coached and developed start-up businesses, led cross-functional organizations in large and small companies, wrote a book (and a lot of articles), taught seminars, and coached sales professionals and IT executives on how to lead and succeed.

Rev. Scot left this career to attend Meadville-Lombard Theological School pursue lifelong interests in comparative religion, theology, and Buddhist philosophy — a return to those “Big Questions” he’d left behind in grad school. He was welcomed into Ministerial Fellowship by the Unitarian Universalist Association in September of 2019 and Ordained to the Ministry in February of 2020. He is currently pursuing a Doctorate in Public Theology at the United Seminary of the Twin Cities, focusing on the classic “The Problem of Evil”.

Aside from collecting books about religion and theology, Rev. Scot loves science fiction and fantasy novels and has famously bad taste in movies (a judgment that he cheerfully disputes). To “practice writing”, he started a blog in 2009, focusing on a hobby his older brother used to pursue back in the 1980’s: the practical mystery of hi-fi stereo systems. Over the next decade, Rev. Scot turned his hobby into a full-time media outlet that still reaches millions of readers a year, worldwide.

In ministry, Rev. Scot looks to history, science, and pop culture for inspiration on how to engage, how to create meaning, and how to reimagine a better future, and he views “justice work” as an expression of faith.

Though he thinks of himself as a Religious Humanist, Rev. Scot draws significant inspiration from the Buddhist, Christian, and Jewish traditions. His vision of church is “theologically inclusive” of and informed by those sources.