John Grant McKenzie

John Grant McKenzie (1882–1963) was a Scottish Congregational minister, psychologist and academic.

John Grant McKenzie
Born	5 February 1882  Aberdeen
Died	17 May 1963  (aged 81) Edinburgh
Alma mater	University of Aberdeen
Occupation	Minister, psychologist, academic
Children	Michael Howard

McKenzie was born in Aberdeen on 5 February 1882[1] and studied at the University of Aberdeen,[2] winning the Dor Williams Divinity Scholarship in 1910. He became a Congregational pastor in Holywell Green Church, Halifax, in 1912, serving there until he moved in 1917 to Snow Hill in Wolverhampton where he was a pastor until 1921. He had been a delegate at the International Congregational Council in 1920.[1]

In 1921, McKenzie was appointed the first Jesse Boot Professor of Sociology and Psychology at Paton Congregational College in Nottingham. He remained there for thirty years, retiring in 1951.[1] According to his obituary in The Times, he was "a pioneer in the relationship of psychology and religion ... [who] helped many generations of theological students to understand the workings of the human mind".[2]

McKenzie died on 17 May 1963 in Edinburgh. He had married Margaret Ann Murray in 1912 and had a son, the comedian Michael Howard, and a daughter,[2] Dr Margaret Ross, who married Dr Frederic Laws and was mother to the judge Sir John Grant McKenzie Laws.[3]