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Since his ordination in 1962, Spencer Lavan has served a Unitarian Universalist minister mostly by teaching in higher education. He taught "Religions of Islam and India" and was a dean to undergraduates at Tufts University (1969-79). He organized and chaired the Department of Medical Humanities at the University of New England College of Osteopathic Medicine in Maine (1982-88). Finally, he served as President and Dean of the Meadville/Lombard Theological School at the University of Chicago (1988-96). From 1984-88 he was editor of the Journal of Medical Humanities and Bio-Ethics. He is currently serving as a co-editor for the Dictionary of Unitarian Universalist Biography. He is the author of several books on religious subjects, a former president of the Unitarian Universalist Historical Society, and a founder of Collegium: Liberal Religious Studies.
Lavan is a graduate of Tufts University, Harvard Divinity School, and McGill University (M.A .in Islamic Studies and Ph.D. in Comparative Religion). He has received three honorary degrees: from the Protestant Theological Institute of Cluj/Kolosvar, Romania, the school preparing Hungarian-speaking Unitarian ministers for pulpits in Transylvania, 1995; from Meadville/Lombard Theological School, 1997; and from the University of New England, 1999. He is married to Susan Lavan. They are the parents of four adult children and reside in Harpswell, Maine.
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