Introduction and Tribute to Dr. Bill Bradshaw

John Dehlin [00:00:00] Hello everyone and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories Podcast. I'm your host, John Dehlin. It is Friday, March 27, 2026, and today I'm giving an introduction to a rebroadcast of for sure one of my favorite Mormon Stories episodes of all time. It's of Dr. William Bradshaw. It was an episode that I released in November of 2010. At the time, it was a four or five part series and it talked about the life of one of the most important influences in my life. I absolutely believe there would be no Mormon Stories podcast and no Dr. John de Lynn without Dr. William Bradshaw. And I just want to make something clear and then give you a little bit of intro. I don't do these rebroadcasts because I don't have enough content to share. We've got content backlogged and I don't feel like I'm a lazy person. I know I recently did the Carolyn Pearson rebroadcast to help let y' all know about her new memoir that's coming up. But the reason why I'm doing this rebroadcast of Bill Bradshaw, other than the fact that it's one of my favorite episodes, I produced it, I guess now it looks like 16 years ago and so many of you haven't seen it. It's because this past week Bill Bradshaw passed away. And so I felt like in honor of him and his beautiful, wonderful life and also to let y' all know about it, and also to let y' all know his Funeral will be April 3rd in the Orem State Chapel at 11am I just felt like this week would be fitting to honor Bill Bradshaw and his life by rebroadcasting his episode. My biggest motivation, other than honor Bill is to introduce my newer audience to for sure one of my favorite interviews of all time, but also probably a top three most influential people in my life of all time. So let me just give you a little background before we kick off this interview. So I attended Brigham Young University starting in the fall of of 1987. And in my freshman year at BYU, I took an honors, I took a sorry, biology 100, I believe class with Barnes and Bradshaw. And William Bradshaw was the professor at the time, one of the two professors. And y' all will know that I was raised as a very orthodox Bruce. I'm a conkey like conservative Mormon. And I think it was my first semester, the fall of BYU in 1987 when I walk into the Joseph Smith Memorial Building, if my memory is correct, and I sit down in this class of eight or 900 people. And this professor comes out teaching biology. He's humble, he's brilliant, he's thoughtful, he's sensitive, but he's absolutely pro evolution and not afraid to talk about it. And one of the most shocking things he did was he, he. He was involved a lot in genetics, and he literally sacrificed a mouse in front of the class and isolated its DNA as a way to teach us all about how science works. And it was kind of a controversial thing at the time. And he was one of the most beloved, but also in some ways, one of the. One of the most controversial professors at byu. When Elder Holland was president of byu, Jeffrey R. Holland, the eventual apostle, students used to complain frequently to Elder Holland that there was an apostate, evolution promoting and believing professor at byu, which was ironic because Bill Bradshaw was a former mission president of the Hong Kong Mission. He served in bishoprics and stake presidencies, and to his dying day, he died a faithful, believing Mormon, although very liberal and nuanced. So after I took biology from Bill Bradshaw and served a mission, I took an honors religion class from Bill Bradshaw. I think it was called epistemology, but it was brilliant. And he talked about abortion and, you know, medical ethics and evolution and age of the earth and Noah, all those sorts of things. And so he introduced me to liberal, progressive Mormonism and to the world of science and ethics. So super important influence on me at byu. And then the influence didn't end there. He later, because his son Brett came out as gay, Bill Bradshaw, as a BYU professor, became one of the church's early LGBT advocates. And as I was trying to make sense of the LGBT stuff, of course, I was paying attention to. To Bill Bradshaw's advocacy for his son and for loving relationships between Mormons and LGBT people. I had him on Mormon Stories podcast early on in 2010. So that's quite early. One of my early video interviews, we did the interview at his house, but from there he ended up reaching out to me and knowing that I was getting my PhD in psychology, expressed an interest in doing research on the LGBTQ Mormon experience and specifically targeting reparative or conversion therapy, because at the time, 2010ish evergreen and conversion therapy and reparative therapy was still a huge deal in the world and in Mormonism. So I was thrilled to accept that invitation. And starting in 2010, 2011, I kicked off a massive research project with Bill Bradshaw and Renee Gallagher at Utah State University. And we ended up issuing a survey to 1612 current former Mormons who were LGBTQ and not only did that become the dissertation for my PhD, but Bill and Renee and I published somewhere between 10 and 15 scientific peer reviewed journal articles from the data from that one study. So Bill was my teacher. He was an advocate, an ally. We were both members of the Sunstone foundation board of directors when I used to work with Sunstone. But he was a research colleague, publishing colleague, and most importantly, just a dear friend. And so I am heartbroken to know that he died. But his wife survives him, his son Brett and his children and grandchildren survive him. But aside from just being really feeling tenderly about Bill Bradshaw and his influence on my life and how much I love and appreciate him, if any of you value Mormon Stories or me, I stand on his shoulders, among others. And most importantly, I just wanted to introduce my new generation of Mormon Stories viewers and listeners to one of the most amazing men I've ever met and to one of my favorite interviews ever on Mormon Stories podcast. It is a long one. It was five episodes. We're going to be combining those into one so that you can just watch them all in one sequence and not have to watch them one by one. But that's it. And again, the funeral for Bill Bradshaw will be April 3rd at 11am The Orem Stake Chapel. That's 365 South 900 east in Orem, if any of y' all want to attend and show your respects to Bill Bradshaw. But anyway, I hope you enjoy this episode. Love to the Bradshaw family. And Bill, I know as a believing Mormon, if things work out as you hoped, you're up there smiling down on us and telling us to follow the data. And he always reminded us that data are plural, not singular. But we love you, Bill. Thanks for all you've done for me and for all of us. And now, dear viewers and listeners, please enjoy my interview with Dr. William Bradshaw,

John Dehlin [00:08:23] May he rest in peace. Thank you for joining us today on Mormon Stories. I'm John Dehlin. Today we have with us a very special guest and someone who has meant a lot to me personally throughout my life, but especially during my time at Brigham Young University. His name is Dr. Bill Bradshaw. He was a biology professor for many years at byu and he was a biology professor while I was at byu. I'll never forget coming home from my mission and having Biology 100 with Dr. Bradshaw. He did several interesting and inventive things in class, including sacrificing a mouse in front of the class. And that may sound disrespectful, but actually it was done with much reverence and Maybe we'll talk a little bit about

John Dehlin [00:09:09] why he did that today.

John Dehlin [00:09:10] But more importantly, I was able to take several honors religion classes from Dr. Bradshaw at a time when I really needed some spiritual support and mentoring as I was struggling with stuff for my mission. And then, of course, some of you

John Dehlin [00:09:25] will remember when I wrote that letter

John Dehlin [00:09:26] to Elder Oaks about what happened on my mission, Dr. Bradshaw was kind enough to help me draft a kinder and a gentler and a more thoughtful letter that maybe would have a better chance of being received well by the authorities. So Dr. Bradshaw's teachings have been really important. Today we're going to cover several things. Dr. Bradshaw's life, his experiences as a teacher at BYU, his thoughts and feelings around the biology and evolution and science as it relates to faith and religious issues. We're also going to discuss homosexuality. Dr. Bradshaw has a gay son. And we're going to talk a little bit about his experiences with that. And then finally, we're going to talk about maybe some issues regarding reconciliation of faith and intellect. Dr. Bradshaw is a former mission president. He's a former member of a stake presidency, and he's just a dear man. So with that, Dr. Bradshaw, thank you for joining us on Mormon Stories.

William Bradshaw [00:10:31] You're very kind, John. It's nice to be with you again.

John Dehlin [00:10:35] How's that for an introduction? Did I embarrass you sufficiently?

William Bradshaw [00:10:38] Yes. And looks like the tables are turned now. I'm on the other side of the lectern, as it were.

John Dehlin [00:10:45] This is your exam.

William Bradshaw [00:10:46] Okay.

Early Life, Education, and Harvard Years

John Dehlin [00:10:47] All right. Well, Dr. Bradshaw, there's so much we want to cover, but I think a discussion about sort of your early years at Harvard and even before that and a discussion about some of your times at BYU would be in order. So let's just maybe ask you to start. Tell us a little bit about your early years as it relates to the church and maybe some of the meaningful milestones along the way that might be of interest to our listeners.

William Bradshaw [00:11:18] All right, please interrupt with questions when one comes up.

John Dehlin [00:11:24] Okay, I will.

William Bradshaw [00:11:26] Well, I'm approaching my 73rd birthday. I was born in Salt Lake City. I'm a brother to two younger sisters and a son of school teachers. My dad taught biology in high schools in the state. He was at West High for a very, very long time and came to East High when I was a student there.

John Dehlin [00:11:52] He defected.

William Bradshaw [00:11:54] He did. I suppose on the side he was a taxidermist and taught students how to mount specimens. In fact, one of the things he was allowed to do was to shoot a couple of seagulls. And make a replica of the top of the seagull monument. For a long time that was on display in Temple Square before new museum buildings were built. And in order to afford to teach school, my dad did construction work. So my father and I have spent lots of time together on roofs of houses putting on composition shingles. He worked for an insurance company and we repaired fire damaged homes. My mom was an elementary school teacher before she had her family. So it was really important at our house to do well in school. There was a dinner out for the family if you brought home straight A's and lots of pressure not to do otherwise. Our home was a very pleasant place for me as I remember it all. So I graduated from east high school in 1956. I tried to do well in school and I enjoyed athletics. I was a quarterback on my football team. Brag a little bit. We never lost a football game in three years of our school. Our class in school.

John Dehlin [00:13:38] This is East High.

William Bradshaw [00:13:39] At East High, Murray, 24 to nothing in the state championship as quarterback. Yes, three years. Quarterback. Well, one year as a senior quarterback.

John Dehlin [00:13:54] Not a bad year.

William Bradshaw [00:13:55] It was a good, great time for me. I didn't plan for college very well and I guess in an unspoken way assumed I would go to the University of Utah. You know, it was 10 minutes away by car. But during my senior year we had people come representing schools around the country, recruiters trying to interest people in applying. And I applied to several schools outside of the state and got accepted to all of them, surprisingly, and chose without much preparation or forethought to go to Cambridge and attend Harvard College. College.

John Dehlin [00:14:47] What's Harvard like for a wet behind the ears boy from Utah?

William Bradshaw [00:14:53] A different world to begin with. I didn't even look the same as the rest of them. That's an exaggeration. But there were lots of Brooks Brothers clothes from young people who'd gone to prep schools to Andover and Exeter. And I had yellow pants as I remember, and a red parka. Harvard was a great experience for me and I became close friends with two other of the my roommates. There were four of us in my freshman dormitory which was 30 steps away from where the subway emerged in Harvard Square. One was from Boulder City, Nevada. So I had a westerner as a friend to help me confront all of this preppy eastern elitism that I was being exposed to. I wasn't ready to compete academically. I've never been able to be against affirmative action because I always thought I was the recipient of that. I have to believe that I was Accepted because of some kind of regional quotas, or at least regional acceptances that would bring people from diverse parts of the country with different experiences to the Harvard freshman class. I was at Harvard for two years and then received a mission call to go to the Southern Far East Mission in Hong Kong.

John Dehlin [00:16:49] Let me stop real quick and ask a quick question.

William Bradshaw [00:16:51] Sure.

John Dehlin [00:16:52] What.

John Dehlin [00:16:53] What was the topography of your testimony up until the point of your mission call? Was it traditional, true believing, excited young kid? Had you had testimony struggles? Was there just certitude?

William Bradshaw [00:17:09] I didn't have struggles. I accepted the church, but without much thought. I did everything I was supposed to do. I. I got all the awards. I was an Eagle Scout. Our bishopric gave lovely books at the end of every academic year, at the end of every year to those who achieved so much attendance at meetings. Though I was 100 percenter, I think I began to give talks a little bit differently when I was in high school. I didn't just quote, sort of made up my own, My own words. And that was helpful because I began to seriously consider what I believed and what I didn't believe. But that was magnified enormously when I went to Harvard. I had a very important spiritual experience with the Book of Mormon when I was a freshman. So our dorm room had two bedrooms, bunk beds, top and bottom, for two, total of four in our room. And I remember starting to read the Book of Mormon, not because I was supposed to or I was going to get a prize, but because I decided I wanted to. And one particular evening I had a spiritual confirmation about the divinity of that book. And I remember, at least in part, the feelings that I had. And that was a very important. The beginning of a series of important kinds of spiritual confirmations for me that have kept me in the church.

First Mission and Spiritual Foundations

John Dehlin [00:19:20] Was there a particular verse or chapter that was a part of that?

William Bradshaw [00:19:24] Yeah, it was second Nephi. And it was Nephi after his father's death and the very personal and emotional tone of his own, coming to grips with his religious feelings. I remember putting the pages down and saying to myself, how could anybody else say something that so closely mirrored my own experience, my own sense of inadequacy?

John Dehlin [00:19:59] Is this chapter four?

William Bradshaw [00:20:00] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:20:01] A wretched man than I am.

William Bradshaw [00:20:03] Yes, exactly right. I think I arrived on a Tuesday. The way that I got from Utah to Massachusetts was that a friend of mine, a very close friend, our student body president was going to Yale. We looked in the newspaper. Somebody was advertising a need for drivers. So we drove to Springfield, Illinois with this fellow and then on to Washington and took the train to New Haven. And I stayed the night in the YMCA and took the bus the next morning to Boston. Got a taxi and was let out in Harvard Square with my East High letter sweater on and my portable typewriter and a small suitcase. And for the next two months had to pinch myself daily to realize that I was somewhere different than I'd always been in my life. But I think it was Tuesday, and so in the evening I went to find the church. So I walked down Brattle street to the Cambridge Chapel, and the place was alive. People were planting flowers and polishing the doorknobs and cleaning. And it turned out that this building had been. The construction had been through. Finished recently, and it was going to be dedicated the next Sunday. I was an usher at the dedication of the Cambridge Chapel. And David O. McKay came and dedicated that chapel. And that was the beginning of an important realization for me. I had never experienced how important the church was to other people who hadn't had all of the advantages of Utah Mormonism. If I walked slowly from the front door of my home in Salt Lake, I could be in my church in three minutes. And here these people had never had a chapel. And some of them had lived decades, and they had attended church in unfavorable circumstances. And they were. A minority, a strong minority. And missionary work in the New England Mission was tough. And this was their own building. And there were tears, and there was. I could see it all around me, how important this was. And. And that had a strong impact on me. I spent a lot of time at church. Interestingly, before I left, my teacher's quorum advisor was Duff Hanks. Elder Marion D. Hanks. He was a good friend, and he said something to me that. He gave me advice that would probably surprise people. He said, don't spend all your time at church. I think people would have expected a general authority to say, make sure you don't lose your testimony among all those terrible influences back East. And he gave me the opposite kind of advice. I would like to say that I visit Duff on occasion. Now he's incapacitated with Alzheimer's, seriously. And I go to the place where he's staying and visit for a few minutes. I'm uncertain that he recognizes me, although on occasion there's a glimmer that he might. And I read a few pages from the Book of Mormon to him and kiss him as I leave. I'm very grateful for him. But I did spend quite a bit of time at the Cambridge Chapel, and I went there Sunday and During the week. There were meetings for students and the Cambridge Chapel. The Cambridge branch at that time was a very interesting combination of local New Englanders, transplanted Western Mormons from several decades earlier and a whole lot of Mormons who were there for study. There were a lot of prominent people, people who became prominent in the church

John Dehlin [00:25:32] subsequently, people we'd know.

William Bradshaw [00:25:34] Yes, Truman Madsen was there in philosophy and subsequently in another discipline. And I used to hold street meetings on the Boston Common with Steve Covey. I should tell you a minute or

John Dehlin [00:25:51] two about that experience as missionaries or as just

William Bradshaw [00:25:58] Kavi was in the MBA program and he'd come from Ireland and sometimes on his mission in Ireland he was a one man show. And he'd go to a certain place in Belfast at a certain time on a certain day and people would be waiting. You have to understand that the, the British culture permits people to talk and argue with each other in public without taking on the appearance of being a kook. So Steve got permission from the New England mission president to hold street meetings. So we'd go down in his car, lift up the trunk, get out an old wooden rickety chair and sing. Was usually high on the mountaintop. One verse harmony. No, that's the only song Steve knows. Unfair but almost true. And, and then we'd take turns and we'd stand up on the chair. On Sunday afternoon in the Boston Garden and the Boston Common there are a lot of people. So the Garden is on one side of the street and those are where the duck boats are and Robert McCloskey's Matt make way for Ducklings book that I subsequently read to all the kids. On the other side of the street is the Common and there are thousands of people on Sunday afternoon enjoying the Garden and the Common. And people of various religions came and set up shop and talked to whoever would listen. So the Salvation army was there and Sam from Saugus was there who had established his own breakaway Protestant church and Father Feeney was there. Father Feeney was an apostate Catholic priest. He was a one time advisor, Catholic advisor to Harvard students. He had formed his own group. They were called Slaves to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. And at a certain time every Sunday they would begin a procession across the garden, across the street and pass right in front of Steve and I and proceed down the sidewalk aways. They were dressed in black. The men had big heavy black overcoats and the women dressed in a costume that was much like the Salvation army ladies costume of the day with a bonnet and cape, all black. And they had in the procession a crucifix and some other banners. And they would form a circle of 50 yards away from where we were. And immediately four or five squad cars of Boston policemen would pull up, get out of their cars and link arm to arm in a cordon around the stage. Slaves to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. This is heady stuff from this kid from East High School.

John Dehlin [00:29:30] Why were the police involved?

William Bradshaw [00:29:32] Well, you only had to listen to the first minute of the anti Semitic stuff that came out of the mouth of Father Feeney and his henchmen, his followers, to understand why this was potentially a dangerous circumstance. The Jews are the enemies of God. Look at that filthy Jew down there in the audience with the big nose. I mean, I had never been around anything like this. The Jews crucified the Xavier. The Jews are the enemies of God. Now, Norman the Mormon, alias Steve Covey down here, says that we should love our enemies. Steve would always come up with a particularly appropriate New Testament scripture about love when Father Feeney was passing. Well, that was my sort of quasi missionary experience on the Boston Common two or three times, I should say that the New England mission headquarters was in the Cambridge Chapel. And on occasion when missionaries working in the office, when one of them was ill, I was allowed to go, I guess, on splits is what we would say today, with one of the elders and had a chance to go with them while they were teaching investigators. One of the people that I remember teaching was legally blind. He could read a little bit. He had a large print copy of the Bible and a very large magnifier. Ryan Glassand. He was a devotee of Oral Roberts. Listened to the Oral Roberts Television evangelical program. A couple of weeks after I went, I got a letter from Oral Roberts greeting me as an associate in Christ. So I had a little taste of missionary work before. Before my call to Hong Kong.

John Dehlin [00:32:02] Real quick, I remember a story telling about a roommate coming home late from. From a party. Did that happen before or after your mission?

William Bradshaw [00:32:11] Before.

John Dehlin [00:32:13] Do you remember that story?

William Bradshaw [00:32:14] Oh, yeah.

John Dehlin [00:32:14] Are you comfortable sharing it and what. And what it meant to you particularly?

William Bradshaw [00:32:18] I'd be happy to. So I mentioned Will from Bowler City, Nevada, and Rob Coe was from the Washington, D.C. area and Al Grossman was from New York City. And Al was a very, very, very, very bright man. He wrote for the Harvard Crimson. I think he went to Bronx Science, which is about as good as you can get as a preparatory school at the high school level. And Al and I were roommates. Al wasn't very close with the other three of us. And he had close friends in another group. Al smoked, Al drank a lot. So one night I'm up studying at Saturday night. See, I thought the one advantage I have was that I, you know, I was a hard worker. Yeah. So all of the guys from Exeter and Andover could get by with all of their. Improved education, but I could stay up all night and sort of hang in there. I remember the first time I was up all night finishing a paper and I walked out into the Harvard yard. Every light in the place was on, everybody else was up. I had no advantage at all with respect to being a hard worker. So it was Saturday night and Al came home and he was, he was really soused and he was supported unsteadily at two friends, one on either side. He sort of waved incoherently and they dumped Al on the bottom bunk of his, of our bunk bed. So I don't know, 3 o' clock or something like that. I thought I'd go and get a couple of hours sleep before heading to priesthood meeting and went in and Al had recirculated all of the beverages from the night before and it was all over and it was a mess and it was awful and it smelled and I was irate and I closed the door and, and you know, how could, how could Al be so inconsiderate? You know, didn't Al know that if you turned down drinks when you were a Mormon youth in the beginning, a race, you were going to win the race because you honored your commitment to the word of wisdom? I mean, my self righteousness knew no bounds. And I don't know, a half an hour later something happened and I went in the room and got all the towels from the bathroom and cleaned up Al and cleaned off the floor and cleaned up the sheets and did the best I could and made, made multiple trips and washed it all out. And then it was time to go to church. And. Somehow the experience helped me to be a little less self righteous jettison a little bit of pride.

John Dehlin [00:36:25] What kept it from confirming your righteous indignation?

William Bradshaw [00:36:29] I don't know, John. It just. Something happened. I'll probably be fairly accurate by saying it was a gift from my heavenly Father. Al never said very much except that night stopped me and said, thanks Bill. We never became close. That may not have been particularly easy. We were quite different people and had different friends and different interests. And I should say that I know that a whole lot of parents send their Mormon kids to BYU hoping that they'll never have that kind of an experience. And I Don't. I'm not extolling that kind of experience from anybody else. But for me it was a great blessing and I'm grateful for it.

Mission Experience in Hong Kong

John Dehlin [00:37:40] So how was your mission experience?

William Bradshaw [00:37:45] Well, I was called for three years. The church in Asia had two missions. The Northern Far East Mission which was Japan and Okinawa and everything south was the Southern Far East Mission. Mission had been open three years. I arrived about a month and a half before the first missionaries who had been called and served their three year terms left to return home. My mission president was Grant Heaton. He'd been called at age 26 to preside over the mission. He'd served in Hong Kong in 1949 for about a year. In 1950 the Korean War broke out. Concern over the safety of missionaries resulted in those early missionaries there were only four of them. I think they were pulled out of Hong Kong, spent some time in Hawaii and then finished among Chinese people in San Francisco. Hong Kong was four and a half million people, plus or minus a million because it was full of refugees. People lived on the streets. People lived in unbelievable hovels on the sides of the hills. People were swimming across the board border into Hong Kong, dying sometimes from mainland China? Yes.

John Dehlin [00:39:27] Communist China.

William Bradshaw [00:39:28] Yes. So 1949 is when Mao sweeps down from the north and Chiang Kai Shek and the Nationalists go to Taiwan. And the single biggest. Group of unemployed people were ex Kuomintang generals and Nationalist generals in Hong Kong. My first real experience out away from the mission home. We stayed in the mission home for. For several days. This is truth, right? So I have to tell you that in Hawaii there were four of us who went. We surfed in Hawaii for a day and a half before our plane to Hong Kong. Two of my companions were from BYU and they'd been out in the sun. And it didn't matter whether I was out in the sun or not. I was white as a sheet. And after not being very thoughtful and lying on a surfboard on my belly after doing what was forbidden, which was to swim, I was terribly sunburned and so was one other of the four. And on the prop plane of 20 hours from Hawaii to Japan, we were in misery. And after my whole backside peeled off, two of the elders took me out to Hong Kong, to the real Hong Kong. To this day I don't know whether or not this was a put up job. They were probably. They were probably trying to show the greenhorn the worst possible place of the colony and get him to decide to go back home. Not me. We walked through this market it was incredible. There were thousand year old eggs, they call them. They'd been covered in soil for really long periods of time. Time. There's squids and there's betjedem or sea cucumber and there's pressed chickens and there's this whole wonderful smorgasbord of Chinese things to buy in the market. And I loved it and I loved the spell and loved the people and it couldn't have been more exciting. And I guess the two were disappointed that they didn't get me to react negatively. My mission was extraordinary. Up to the time when we arrived, or shortly before, missionaries had stayed in the mission home for a year learning the language. They were tutored every day by someone teaching them Cantonese. But they changed that system. It wasn't very effective. Elder Ewell was my first companion. We had a meeting at one of the branch chapels. We got on the bus. He told me how to say get on the bus, get off the bus. His language wasn't very good technically. So as you know, Chinese is a tonal language. You have to say things right or you say something wrong or embarrassing. So he taught me how to say get on the bus and get off the bus. And we sat there going to the apartment. He taught me how to say the Romanization for Joseph Smith and Jesus Christ and the name of the church and a little bit about the money. We got to the apartment. There was a young sister there. First word she taught me was cockroach and how to take a bath. There isn't time to tell you about her story, but she and her husband now are the temple presidents in Hong Kong. And before that mission president. And one day I went with her to her Methodist school because she'd been kicked out for joining the church. Tried unsuccessfully to talk to her headmaster, who was not sympathetic. It was a great start. My second companion, whose name was Larry Browning, knew more technically about Cantonese than anybody else. So the words that Elder Yule taught me, elderly Browning could reteach in terms of the correct tones. Loved the language.

John Dehlin [00:44:41] Did you guys experience much success in terms of baptisms and growth of the church?

William Bradshaw [00:44:48] The year I was there, the Southern Far East Mission was the most productive mission in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints on a per missionary basis.

John Dehlin [00:44:56] Nice.

William Bradshaw [00:44:57] And for three months we were told we had to stop proselytizing because people were in the church and we didn't know what to do with it. There wasn't anybody with any much experience in the church. And so we all had. All the missionaries had an assignment to try to do something to build up the organizational structure of the church. So my job was in the Sunday school. And John, some of the ideas I have now about teaching started to be formulated there. And advice we tried to give to teachers of Sunday school classes and primary classes. Something about how to try to teach people. The other thing about that experience at the time was that missionaries were very close to the members of the church. We knew the vast majority of the members of the church by name. They knew all of us. We were very close. But the best thing that happened on my mission was that I met my wife. Marge was lady missionary. We were actually in the same group in the Salt Lake mission home. We didn't arrive at the same time. She had to wait in the States for a month or something for visas, travel documents. But. She's a terrific lady and I knew that at the time that she went home. I was in the mission home working on a language textbook. I was an assistant to President Taylor. And before she left, I told him I was interested in her. When she left to go home, they went out of the mission home. He was taking her to the airport. And he said to her, now, Sister Gardner, take a last look at the mission home before you come back. With all the little Bradshaw, I could have killed them, man. It's terribly embarrassing. Anyway, My mission cemented my feelings for the gospel, my love for the scriptures. I found the woman that I fell in love with. Everything right happened to me.

Marriage, Family, and Faith Journey

John Dehlin [00:47:37] So how soon after coming home did you seek out? March.

William Bradshaw [00:47:46] During the time I was there, the mission call was changed from three and a half years to two. So I sort of split the difference. Came home in January of 1961. It was cold. Drove to Affton, Wyoming after. Just after I got home. It was our state conference. Harold B. Lee was the visiting authority. I was sitting in the audience. He said, elder Bradshaw has just returned from Hong Kong. Will you come up and bear your testimony in Cantonese? I did. After the meeting, my mom went with me and we drove to Afton in the cold and snow of mid January southeastern Wyoming. I went to the University of Utah for two quarters and then proposed to Marge out in the snow of the place that was once her family homestead. Almost dropped the ring in the snow, it was so cold. She said, yes. We got married in June. We served a mission to the Salt Lake Valley Chinese community. Went back to Cambridge in the fall. In the middle of that missionary summer, Gordon Hinckley came and we knew him from when he had visited Hong Kong. He invited Marge and I to his home. President Hinckley at byu a year before he passed away. Came and gave an unusual kind of devotional. It wasn't thematic. He didn't talk about doctrine. He talked about his experiences. And I knew an experience with him that he didn't talk about. And I shared it with students in my class that day. So Marge and I went up to the home and knocked on the door. And Elder and Sister Hinckley. Elder and Sister Hinckley greeted us. We sat down. She went back into the kitchen. He turned to us and turned to me and said, now I want to know what went on between you two in the mission field. Sister Hinckley comes roaring out of the kitchen. And she looks at him, Gordon, that's none of your business. You leave those two alone. He shut right up. It never came up again. Had a lovely meal. He never forgot Marge, because during the time he was visiting in a testimony meeting, one of her companions referred to her. She was the supervisor of the apartment. She. She was the Mother Superior of the apartment. We went back to Boston. He came to the state conference. We went up to say hello. He looked down and said, well, if it isn't the Mother Superior. An extraordinary memory. And. Well, I. Go on. Excuse me.

John Dehlin [00:50:56] No, it's okay. How'd you go from. Were there any other formative experiences at Harvard or in your graduate work that were important to the development of your testimony or faith? Any crisis of faith, for example, intellectually, or was it pretty smooth sailing between that and your time as a mission president?

William Bradshaw [00:51:24] John, I'm not exactly sure that I've ever had a crisis of faith. I've had a crisis. I've had a number of crisises. Crises of feeling inadequate and. Clearly not living to the standard that I espouse intellectually. Maybe what I should say, however, is that as I've matured, My perspective has changed somewhat. So I suppose as I look back in an earlier time in my life, after we were married, the first 10 years before we were called back when I was 33 to be a mission president, I probably thought I had it all figured out. Ask me some doctrinal question, I'll know the answer. Well, There are a whole lot of things that I don't know the answers to now. And the paradox is that with a recognition of. The depth of what I don't know and the number of questions that I don't know the answers to, there's been a greater faith. So I suppose at one time in my life, I suppose that I viewed faith as a sort of. As a commandment. Language of the 42nd section, the doctrine and Covenants. Have faith in Christ with the sort of. Because if you don't, something unfortunate follows, so you better do it. I have a different view. There's no alternative. It's not that God demands it of you because he's trying to see if you're obedient. There's no alternative in life, given our weaknesses, our uncertainties, our propensity to blow it, to fail. There's no alternative but to have faith in Christ. It's not an injunction. It's the best advice because it's the only advice. So Marge and I went back to Cambridge. We finished two years. I graduated in biology. I had always said I wanted to go to medical school. I applied for five graduate programs in Chinese and one graduate program in biochemistry at the University of Illinois. They answered first and said yes, and I said, okay. I've never been very thoughtful about. I've sort of fallen backwards into what I did in life and been fortunate that it turned out well, in large part.

John Dehlin [00:55:38] I remembered you in Washington for some reason.

William Bradshaw [00:55:41] Yes. So we lived in Cambridge, Urbana, Illinois, Seattle, Washington, Oak Ridge, Tennessee and Orem, Utah, in that order. And in the first five of those, we had a child at every stop.

John Dehlin [00:56:06] So five children?

William Bradshaw [00:56:07] Yes. Bill was born at the Boston Lying In Hospital in Boston, part of the Harvard Medical School, school complex. And you walk out the door and the nurse says, look down, and if you're standing on the stork that's presented in a mosaic tile, then you'll be back in a year. And a year later, Bart was born in Salt Lake. As we transitioned between Massachusetts and Illinois, I started in biochemistry at the University of Illinois. Was there two years. Becky was born, began research on the biochemistry of the embryonic pancreas. The man with whom I was working left and went to the University of Washington Medical School. We followed. I was there for three years, finished my PhD. Brett was born, went to Tennessee to do a postdoc at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Ben was born. I was, however old. I was a father with five kids and I never had a job. And we came to BYU as a professor? Yes.

John Dehlin [00:57:28] So that's the only place you've ever really taught.

William Bradshaw [00:57:30] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:57:31] Outstanding.

William Bradshaw [00:57:33] I should tell you my Ernest Wilkinson story.

John Dehlin [00:57:36] Oh, please.

William Bradshaw [00:57:38] So we were in Seattle, and I got a call from the Dean of Biology at byu, Lester Allen, and he said, would you consider a faculty position at byu? And I said, that's very kind of you, but I want to do a postdoc. I'm at least two years away from accepting a academic position. He said, well, would you be interviewed anyway? I said, yes. He said, paul Dunn is going to be in Spokane next Sunday. Will you get on a bus and go talk to Elder Dunn? And I said, all right. So that was Friday and Saturday morning we got the Seattle paper and the headlines on the bottom half of the paper was, the headline was Spy Ring Disclosed at BYU University President. Attempts to Impose his Political Views on the Faculty. Something like that. So I take the newspaper and I take the bus to Spokane and I talk to Paul Dunn.

John Dehlin [00:58:53] What's he like? What are your memories?

William Bradshaw [00:58:59] Kind, gentle, honest, thoughtful. He made a believer out of me. So I said, elder Dunn, what's all this about? He hung his head and went. Was embarrassed, apologized multiple times. So the quick history, which many people know and I won't, most won't, actually. I won't take too much time. He was a conservative man. He, he was a conservative Republican. He was an anti government ideologue. He was an iron fisted kind of administrator. He took pride in coming home from Salt Lake late at night and running the red light at the intersection into BYU and then going the next morning and paying the fine. He did push UPS in front of the student body in forums. Interesting man. But he had personally set up a system where a group of students in various classes would target certain teachers and he wanted to find out what political views they were espousing in the classroom. Especially he wanted a response to a forum talk that he had given on political ideas. He was not a Keynesian economist. This happened. Ray Hillam was one of the targets. Russ Horiuchi was one of the targets. Two men became dear friends of mine. There were others. One of the students spilled the beans. It came out, you know, and it was BYU's Watergate. So what year is this? This is 62 or 3, because we went to Oak Ridge next from Seattle and I remember Kennedy's assassination clearly the following year. So, you know, Watergate is exposed during the time we were in Hong Kong presiding over the mission, but I'm sorry, it had some of the same elements. And Wilkinson Church tried to cover it up and tried to escape responsibility. And Elder Dunn said, no, it's true, he's behind it. I said, what's it going to be like if I go to BYU and teach? He said, I will try to promise you that it won't be like that, that the atmosphere won't be like that. There are people at BYU who believe I'm paraphrasing, but I'm awfully close. There are people. I'm speaking for Elder Dunn. There are people at BYU who believe they talk regularly with deity. Take Cleon Skousen and his historical books about the religious history of the. Of the pre Christian era. But Brother Skousen may not have it, all right? He may have said it in stronger ways than that. So he was encouraging, he was apologetic. I got on the bus and went back to Seattle and said, well, maybe I'll still think about going to byu. Everywhere we went, we added another child to the family and we were engaged in the church. Marge was in Relief Society presidencies everywhere we went. In Boston, she was a counselor to Ann Madsen in the Mission Relief Society. Truman and Ann had now been called as mission presidents. In New England, I was a counselor to Henry Eyring and the New England mission presence in the New England Mission MIA presidency. We did similar things in. I bought Elder Eyring's suit at the Relief Society bazaar. I don't have it anymore. If I still had it. No, it wasn't a swap. If I still had it, he could get in it and I couldn't get in it. He. He could still get in it. He was at the Harvard Business School at the time in Seattle. I was the elders quorum president in the student ward. There were 100 families, 98 elders and two high priests who got called to be counselors to Bishop Ellis. There were a lot of pressures on those families. Seemed like a third of the members of the ward were in dental school. But the men, I don't think any of the women were students, but the men were in graduate school. They were in Spanish or dental school or medical school or philosophy or something. And the women were at home with one and a half kids and no money and living in subsidized housing and going to hearing Relief Society meetings, presentations about what to do to gladden the home for Thanksgiving and Christmas and remembering how their mother, others did it up and they couldn't do it that way. None of us could do it that way. A lot of strains, Marital strains, concerns about unrealistic expectations, and especially. A need that was not always met for husbands and wives to share intellectually. You know, you're off in graduate school and as a man, and it may be hard, but there's also. It's ego boosting. I've never seen anything ego boosting about cleaning poo poo diapers. Women can talk all they want about. I don't want to Be misunderstood. I think women are terrific mothers, but you do what you have to do and it's not glorious and it. I don't think. And you have to be loyal and you have to do a lot of things you otherwise wouldn't have to do. And if somehow you can feel that that's spiritually enriching, well, God bless you and good for you. But it's not that way for a lot of people. So to stop meandering quite so so much. Here I was in a church position where I began to see some of those tensions and began to be a little bit more realistic about what living the gospel might mean and how challenging it might mean.

Reflections on Women, Motherhood, and the Church

John Dehlin [01:07:28] And that which you just spoke about women and mothers is to say that maybe we don't grasp how difficult motherhood could be sometimes and it merits special appreciation. Is that kind of the sentiment that you're trying to convey?

William Bradshaw [01:07:44] You can say that marriage is a partnership and it should be, but making it a partnership is not easy. And. My extraordinary wife is more responsible than anyone else that I know of for the fact that the Hong Kong mission became a stake. A year and a half after we left, we applied, we went through the process of putting in an application and we worked very hard to shift responsibility entirely to the local saints. And we had a district council and presidency that were fully functional. But Marge had Relief Society bazaars and she worked with the sisters and. She had five little kids and one of the. We never converted. Very many couples, husbands and wives didn't join the church together. The people who joined the church in Hong Kong were 12 to 23 year old single people. And we decided if we were going to have Mormon families, we were going to have to make them. I married 14 couples while I was a mission president and we had a dance festival and it was on the grounds of the mission home where the Hong Kong temple now is. And Marge made little simple costumes for all the girls. Just a bandana kind of cap and a neckerchief or a sash around the waist or something. And I taught round dancing and square dancing and shottish and. And I got the MIA dance program. That's what I was when I was called as a mission president. I was the dance director of my Orem 25th Ward. That was my ecclesiastical preparation for being a mission president.

John Dehlin [01:10:02] That was a calling, huh?

William Bradshaw [01:10:03] Now I don't want to lose the point about my wife and about women. If you read Lanny Britch's book about the church in Asia, you'll see my name and you'll see what happened during the time when President Bradshaw presided over the mission. Nothing about Marge, and that's not unique to us, that's not right. That perpetuates in the church a failure to fully recognize the contributions of women. And that's hurt my wife. She has some. Justifiably. She has some feelings about personally for herself and more broadly, for the church at large. And you can say that men and women are partners in a marriage and in the family, and they should be. But making it happen in a way where there is mutual satisfaction and recognition fails a lot, I'm afraid. End of sermon.

John Dehlin [01:11:34] So it's something we should try and be more cognizant of and sensitive to and creative about.

William Bradshaw [01:11:40] Yes, sir.

Serving as Mission President in Hong Kong

John Dehlin [01:11:45] So you served, which was the mission you were mission president over again, The Hong Kong.

William Bradshaw [01:11:52] It was the Southern Far east mission of the church and became the Hong Kong Mission at the time Marge and I were called. And we had responsibility for Hong Kong and for the church in South Vietnam. Okay, 1971-74.

John Dehlin [01:12:08] So this is when the Vietnam War is under Nixon, raging post Lyndon Johnson.

William Bradshaw [01:12:15] It's still. It's still raging. But at the time we arrived, there had been a decision to reduce. To draw down. We were drawing down. We were sending people home. It was incredibly difficult to keep LDS servicemen groups going because out of the blue, one of the members of the district presidency would get orders. Pack, you're going home tomorrow. Be at Tan Son Nh Nh Nut Air Base in Saigon at three in the afternoon. So, yes, the fighting is still going on. People are dying, but we are drawing down. In January of 1919 73, Elder Hinckley sends me a letter because our government announces that in March all US Military ground troops would be pulled out of the country. And the letter says, president Bradshaw, what are you going to do with the church in Hong Kong when the servicemen are gone? We. We had a branch in Saigon. There were a few dozen local members. I went to Saigon shortly thereafter and was trying to decide how to reply to Elder Hinckley. There's an old French hotel in Saigon. I don't know if it's there anymore. The Hotel Caravel. There were two or three remnants of the French occupation of French Indochina. There was French bread and French onion soup and the Hotel Caravelle. And President Hinckley had dedicated Vietnam for missionary work for the church. From the top floor. There was a restaurant on the top floor. And you could go outside on a balcony and up a few steps to the roof proper. And I did that and looked out over the city. And had an experience whose impact was similar to the one I've described back in my top bunk bed in my freshman dorm room and around what types

John Dehlin [01:15:01] of feelings or thoughts?

William Bradshaw [01:15:04] The question is, what were we going to do?

John Dehlin [01:15:06] Oh,

William Bradshaw [01:15:09] and. I don't mean to make it overly dramatic, but the personal impact on me, John, was very profound. And I left feeling that Heavenly father was telling me things were going to be okay. You go ahead and do what you think you should do. There were no voices. This was a inner perception and inner impression, but it was very real. So on the plane back home, I said, I'm going to tell President Hinckley I want to send missionaries. So I got home and I wrote a two or three page letter address to Elder Hinckley. I said, I want to send missionaries. We've got a building. There's a refrigerator. Lester Bush is in Saigon. He's a physician. I didn't say. And he can administer plague shots if necessary. I left that out of the letter. I sent it off. And then I wrote a formal one to the first presidency in the quorum of the 12 in the same vein. And less than 10 days, I got a letter back from Elder Hinckley. And he said, I have read your letter to the First Presidency of the Quorum of the Twelve, and you will be allowed to send four missionaries from Hong Kong to Saigon. And I made some kind of noise. I mean, I yelled or bellowed or cried out with happiness. And the elders in the office came around, running in, see if I was hurt.

John Dehlin [01:17:07] This is before the war had ended?

William Bradshaw [01:17:09] Not yet. Well, I'll explain the chronology in a minute, but this is January. This is February ish of 19, or maybe early March of 1970. So it's maybe a day or two after all of the military have formally gone. There are lots of Americans still there, and the South Vietnamese are still fighting the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese. The war is still raging, but we're out of it in terms of U.S. ground troops. And for the first time in the history of war, we were taking the armaments off the battlefield. In NHA Trang, there's this big deep water harbor, and it was filled with big freighters and these big. Whatever they're called, these big cargo boxes that you can put on a ship and then put on a truck and wheel it away. Thousands of them everywhere. And we were taking things back home. So. You will be permitted to send four elders. You must write their parents and get their parents permission. I picked out four. I sent the letters Home. Colin Van Orman's father from Lethbridge, Canada, writes and says, well, we read in the Reuters news reports every day about the intensity of the fighting, but we trust the Lord. So, President Bradshaw, you can send Colin to Saigon. And I got four of those. So on April 6, we thought that was an auspicious day to do something like that. On April 6, I took four elders from Hong Kong to Saigon and we started full time missionary work. And we were greeted by the local saints. We had this lovely meal, and the next morning at 8 o', clock, the elders started to learn Vietnamese from a woman who spoke Cantonese and English and Mandarin and Vietnamese and tutored them half in Cantonese and half in English. And for a year before we left, the missionary effort by those four and a few others who joined them rivals Wilford Woodruff at John Benbow's farm. I don't back away from that at all. And they baptized and they baptized families. And we worked our tails off in Hong Kong trying to get husband and wife to join the church. And it very rarely happened. And it happened nearly every time in Saigon

Missionary Work in South Vietnam

John Dehlin [01:20:28] were the people just more humble?

William Bradshaw [01:20:29] And in a year we had a branch of 200 people. And I got a letter saying, well, what's the. Give us a progress report for how the church is doing in Saigon. I made a recording of the kid saying, I am a child of God in Vietnamese. And I sent it and said, this is how we're doing. That was my report. And we had a Vietnamese branch president and first counselor. I set apart Lester Bush as the second counselor. And when I set Lester apart, that's another experience where I have to testify that there was divinity involved. And Lester and Yvonne Bush did as much for the growth of the church in South Vietnam as was possible. And their kindness and their devotion and their sensitivity was extraordinary.

Lester Bush and the Race and Priesthood Essay

John Dehlin [01:21:33] Real quick for the benefit of some of my listeners, a lot maybe not know who Lester Bush was, but I remember him to be the man who wrote that Dialogue article outlining the history of blacks in the priesthood, uncovering the fact that Joseph had given the priesthood to Elijah Abel and maybe a few others. And many credit that as being an important historical work that might have led to President Hinckley seeking a revelation about blacks in the priesthood a few years later. Would he have been writing that while he was in Vietnam with you?

William Bradshaw [01:22:08] Yes. So I can tell that I'm smiling and there's a big story here. And I don't know how much time we have to devote to details, but I'll try to be Brief.

John Dehlin [01:22:22] This is a good one.

William Bradshaw [01:22:27] Lester's parents joined the church. Lester's father worked for the CIA. Lester's mother would have been a stake president except for her gender. She was devoted to the Book of Mormon. Lester went to medical school in Virginia, came to Salt Lake to intern. Always had a historical bent. Got access to church historical records, sort of before the doors got closed and padlocked, and found every single scrap of paper that he could that had any reference to African Americans and Mormonism. And that was the basis for that dialogue piece. And he was negotiating with Bob Reese, who was the editor of Dialogue at the time, to see that it got published. And he wrote to the church and said, I'm. This is the manuscript that I intend to publish. He had to go from Saigon to the US to shepherd, an alcoholic member of the State Department, back home. While he was in Salt Lake, he met with Elder Packer and with Joseph Anderson, the journalist. Lester Bush met with them about his dialogue piece. I took Marge to Saigon a couple of times, and one time she got off the plane and had a dialogue in her hands. And Lester was flabbergasted. You guys read that? Yes, we do. And that was part of the bond between us. It was. We were intellectual kin. So when Lester got back, I visited again. He told me details about his visit with Elder Packer. That story is recorded in the Journal of Mormon History. I don't remember the year. Maybe 85ish. So for a year, the missionaries proselytized. This is how they got people to teach. They stood on a corner, two of them, with a map of Saigon, and tried to look lost. And within two minutes, somebody would come up and say, can I help you? And they would say, yes, we're trying to find such and such a street they already knew about. The man or woman would walk with them in the direction of their alleged destination, and they had a cottage meeting arranged. You know, I make it sound like it was without concern. There was a lot of concern. When I would go to Saigon and drive from Tan Son Nhut Air Base to our building. I would go through the red light district of Saigon and there were brothels everywhere in big neon lights. There were little children. And a large proportion of them were. Were black Asian children. And they were anathema to the Vietnamese. A little child with Negroid blood was not accepted. And you would go to the black market in Saigon and get and buy, if you wish, Black and Decker electric tools stolen off the quays off the harbor, sides from equipment sent from the United States to Help the war effort or to help build the Vietnamese economy. There were little kids with both of their legs blown off wheeling themselves around on a little corner cart with wheels selling cigarettes. And not everybody in Saigon loved America. And I'm sending four 20 year old kids to mind. Maybe mission presidents don't know everything that happens to their missionaries. And I've learned a whole lot of interesting things in subsequent years. And maybe they were thinking that happened to them in Saigon. Threats that I don't know about, but I'm not aware of any serious threat to their safety. They built the church, we taught. The missionary program at the time was this loose leaf with pitchers. They wanted to have me use the, the English version pictures. And I said, over my dead body. We're having pictures of Vietnamese people in the Vietnamese flip chart. And elder Christiansen was a terrific photographer and he made duplicates of all of the scenes with Vietnamese people. And there was a Vietnamese convert couple paying tithing in Vietnamese money to a Vietnamese Vietnamese branch president. All right, so it went really well for a year and we had 200. Then Marge and I went home. A new mission president came. It lasted for another year, so almost two years to the day from when I brought those first four. You have that remarkable picture of the helicopter lifting off the roof of the US Embassy with people hanging on the rope ladder trying to get away. Before that happened, we evacuated the missionaries, destroyed all the records. We were afraid of what ultimately did happen in some instances, and that is that the Vietnamese members of the church would be targeted by the North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong when they came came into Saigon because of their association with Westerners, with Americans. President Tay, there was a meeting on Sunday. He took the whole branch to the airport. They got through Ted Tuttle's. Theodore Tuttle was a member of the first quorum of 70. His son worked in the White House. They got a transport plane for the Mormon Vietnamese branch. They all got on the airplane. There were other people. President Th learned that other people had gone to the branch building, were waiting for him. He went back, brought them back to the airport. He couldn't get in his family and the rest left. He left on the plane out of Saigon. He was left. He was put in a re education camp, suffered terrible deprivation for two years. Got out, managed to get on a little fishing boat and leave Saigon for Bangkok with bullets whizzing over his head.

John Dehlin [01:30:24] Is he an American or Vietnamese?

William Bradshaw [01:30:26] Vietnamese. He's now here with his family. He sent a letter from the Re education camp to his wife. It came To March and I. We went down to find his wife in a mobile home on Centre street in Provo on the west side of I15. And she read this letter. It was essentially, I may never see you again, and I love you and I love my children, and I don't know if I'm going to survive. We translated the Book of Mormon in Vietnamese. I'm laughing because I did not have the best of relationships with the people. With one of the people who ran the church translation office. We butted heads over several issues like the translation of the Doctrine and Covenants in Chinese and the translation of the Book of Mormon in Vietnamese. And we got a draft finished. A wonderful woman who was an heir to the royal family of Vietnam was the primary translator. He said, well, send us the translation and we'll review it in Salt Lake. Who will review it for you, Brother Coombs? Well, our staff. Does your staff know Vietnamese? We'll take care of it. Well, I came to Hong Kong. I made 40 Xerox copies. I didn't tell him about it. I made 40 Xerox copies, sent the manuscript to him to review, took the 40 Xerox copies back to Saigon. And I'm sure it was filled with problems. Didn't matter. People read it. People believed. People joined the church. Members of the church had the Book of Mormon. It took us decades to do it in Hong Kong. Well, do you want to switch the direction of the conversation just for fun?

The Church in Vietnam Then and Now

John Dehlin [01:32:49] What's the church like today in Vietnam? Do we know?

William Bradshaw [01:32:54] There are church service missionaries, couples who perform humanitarian service. I got a letter three or four years ago from. From a woman in Hong Kong who, with her husband, were serving missions as attorneys. They were trying to recreate the history of the legal relationship between the church and the Vietnamese government. At the time. We were there to see if we could normalize relationships. There's something a little bit more going on now than that, but I'm not privy to the details. Okay.

John Dehlin [01:33:37] And the hope is that somewhere there's still some families who have maintained the testimony and the convictions that were gained.

William Bradshaw [01:33:47] Most of them left. Most of them left on that plane. The rest left one family at a time. Later, some of them remain. So I don't think the church will rebuild on a foundation of the earlier group.

John Dehlin [01:34:04] Was it hard to build something so beautiful? To see it must have been terrible,

William Bradshaw [01:34:11] John. It was extraordinary. I was in. We had three military districts. There was Saigon. It was NHA Trang, sort of in the middle of the country. And then there was Da Nang. Which is just below the demilitarized zone. I was in all of those places. When we resumed bombing of Hanoi and the Ho Chi Minh Trail. The airfield at Da Nang was like o' Hare at the busiest time of the busiest day of the year. I was having to wait there to get transport around the country. You would see the fighter planes in, in tears, landing every 40 seconds. You'd see helicopters everywhere and big transport planes and these weird planes that I'd never seen anything the like of before. And they were probably spy planes. They were getting information, they were intelligence gathering vehicles. So it was extraordinary. And then Watergate was unraveling and the only time we'd hear anything much about I'd read something in the stars and stripe the military newspaper when I was there and a little bit in the home Hong Kong English newspapers. But when we came home in 1974, Marge and I had to re educate ourselves to the whole thing. I went with the LDS branch president in Nha Trang out to a place where there was a 30ft screened fence between the fishing village on one side and the American base on the other side. I would see these little plastic packets. I'd kick them as we walked along. What are those, President? Oh, those are packages that contained heroin. There was a, there was a big barracks there where American GIs were undergoing cold turkey withdrawal from heroin addiction because they wouldn't admit to their addiction before they left the country. The rule was if you own up, we take care of you, we hospitalize you, we help you get over this. If not, we throw you in this room and you do it on your own own. And it was filled with people. And they called this place the meat market. And American GIs would line up on one side of the fence and women from the fishing village on the other side. And a man would go by and say, I want that one and I want this. It was the meat market. The single most frequent comment by people in Vietnam was how short are you? Meaning how many days do you have left in this hellhole before you have to go, before you get to go home?

Counseling Soldiers and Ministry During the War

John Dehlin [01:37:37] I seem to recall you being able to counsel some of the soldiers.

William Bradshaw [01:37:45] Yes.

John Dehlin [01:37:46] Are you comfortable sharing maybe a story or two about what it was like for those LDS kids to be participating in that war?

William Bradshaw [01:37:54] Well, it's a story in contrast. So I think for the overwhelming majority of LDS men in the military, the experience. May not have been good for them, but they survived. It strengthened in a moral way. For others. It was weakened in a moral sense. There was sexual Promiscuity. There was drug addiction in my first. I went to Saigon as GS17, the equivalent of a brigadier general because I was the president of the church in Vietnam. In Da Nang, we had this conference meeting. The men came in and put their rifles, leaned them up against the back wall and went in to prepare the sacrament. One of the branch presidents was the mortician. First time I ever saw body bags. And the testimony meetings at these places were unbelievable. Aaron Milligan got permission to dye his garments green so he could wear them instead of military standard issue underwear. He lived with the hamlet chiefs. He spoke Vietnamese. He asked to go back to Vietnam. He loved the people, they loved him. He didn't know whether he'd go home and see his wife and their second newborn child. When you hear Aaron Milligan bear your testimony, it's not the same as some of the sort of frivolous expressions. I don't mean to put down anybody's attempt to bear testimony in a testimony meeting. But sometimes it's less meaningful than others. And Aaron Milligan's testimony was as meaningful as they come. At the end of that meeting, I had several interviews. The first was with a young man I'd met before the meeting started. He was at the back of the hall. He looked sick. He was sick. He was going through heroin withdrawal. His brother, a returned missionary from England. His brother was a pilot who'd been shot down and killed weeks before. The second was an LDS guy who'd married an English woman in the church. And during his military service she'd been unfaithful to him. He had not much left of any kind of self respect. And I'm sitting there trying desperately to find some words of instruction and comfort. The next is a young kid who looks like he's 15. He plays the piano for the meetings. He comes in and tells me that on his R and R back home two months before, he went to bed with his girlfriend's mother. Well, We can get ourselves in unbelievable conditions of trouble. And so I had some experience trying to help people like this in Saigon. There was a kid whose hair was long and he had all the beads. He could have been walking the streets of San Francisco during the same time, but he was in the military and his buddy had taken an AK 47 round right in the forehead. Two days earlier. He was dying in the hospital. This kid had two older. This young man had two older brothers who had gone AWOL from the army. They were in Canada. He was holding on to the church by the ends of his Fingernails. He'd read a talk that Duff had given and it was printed in the ensign. The talk was about inclusion and diversity, and he was clinging to that. Had a girlfriend in St. George, and between her letters and what little he could find that helped him in church magazines, he was still with us.

John Dehlin [01:43:10] What do you tell a soldier who's struggling with the realities of having to kill as part of his duties, yet he's believing in the Prince of Peace?

William Bradshaw [01:43:28] I don't know, john. People, Latter Day Saints and otherwise have to deal with that. And people deal with it in different ways. And when they deal with it as honestly as they know how, I think you have to honor their response no matter what it is.

Career as a Scientist and BYU Professor

John Dehlin [01:43:55] Well, Dr. Bradshaw, now that we've talked about bit about your early years and your time as a missionary and as a mission president, I'd love to turn our discussion a bit to your time as a professor at byu. I can't imagine feeling more fondly about my experiences at BYU in terms of how rigorous I felt like the academics were, the quality of the professors that I had, and specifically my experiences in the honors program, taking honors religion classes from you, and my honors colloquium classes with Ted Lyon, who I've interviewed for this podcast and others.

John Dehlin [01:44:38] So

John Dehlin [01:44:41] I want to touch on that a bit before we talk about some other things, but before that, maybe share some stories or reflections on. On going back from your mission to teach at BYU and what it was like leading up to those Holland and then haven years.

William Bradshaw [01:45:00] Biology at byu, as you know, is housed in the Widtsoe building. And my tenure at BYU coincides with that building. So my first year here in 1970 was the year that that building was open for business and a new building has been approved and the WITSO building is coming down in a year or so.

John Dehlin [01:45:25] That's the one with the pendulum in it?

William Bradshaw [01:45:27] No, that's the eye ring. Science for physical science and chemistry and geology, biological related disciplines are in the witsobo. So when I first came, I joined the zoology department. Before that it had been entomology and zoology. And when I told a friend that I was coming to byu, he said, well, you know, the biologists at BYU all count insects, legs, and they're all looking to find something more than six, but they've never succeeded. A sort of sarcasm, sarcastic commentary on classical descriptive biology, cataloging of the living things of the world. So my training is in biochemistry. I taught the first cell biology course, biology at the level of cells and molecules that had been taught at the university Our college has gone through reinvention and reorganization and I ended as a member of the Department of Microbiology and Molecular Biology. Well, I have found students at BYU to be in general, dedicated, interested, competent students. I would say that they share with students throughout the country the sort of unfortunate background of being accustomed almost entirely to an academic program of memorize, do well on multiple choice sorts of examinations. And the life span, the half life of that kind of education isn't very great. And that's an oversimplification and there are very important exceptions to it. But from the beginning I have been interested in how one might improve the ability of students to think analytically, to problem solve and to practice science intellectually as well as introduce the practice of science in the laboratory to the extent that that's possible. And it's difficult to do that in a very extensive fashion because it's very money intensive. One of the interesting experience I had was a period of time when I served as an associate dean of the Honors program and encountered some of the diversity of opinion that exists in the BYU community about what the real function of the university ought to be. I have always held to the sort of idealistic vision of a university in the liberal arts tradition. Yes, a university education ought to prepare a person for a secure future. Yes, it's important to leave a major with sufficient information so that one can be employable and find secure work. But all of this against the more important broad background of being informed, learning how to use one's mind, participating in the life of the mind in ways that are not going to be possible again. When you leave the university, life closes in pretty fast. And there's car payments and there's children and runny noses and colds and paying mortgages and all the rest of it. And the university years are uniquely free and open for exploring who one is and what the world is and what you can make of it. And that's always been an important vision of school for me. So one anecdote. I served for a while under Dee Lamar Jensen, a professor of history, and later under Jim Curl, professor of Economics. And when Jim was dean, we provided a meeting for incoming freshmen and their parents and families. A matriculation event. It was held in the Marriott Center. Those of us participating on the program wore academic regalia. We honored those coming in. Jim gave a great talk and it featured books. It featured wonderful illustrations of extraordinary books, medieval tomes with these illuminations, these wonderful colored hand drawn pictures. You know, I think everybody's thinking, wow, Harvard's Widener Library, the Library of Congress. He shows a number of these and then at the end says, and you know what? All of these are in the Harold B. Lee Library at byu. And the library is a great place and books are wonderful and we're so pleased that you're here to enter into the life of the mind and so go out there and enjoy BYU and its opportunities for intellectual growth. That meeting had a lifetime of one session never held again. And there were voices at the university who were not pleased with it. In its place they would have had a meeting that emphasized spirituality, religious commitment. I don't disagree at all with spirituality or religious commitment, but the university is a place where one develops the ability to think well. And at byu, in the context of our commitment to the Gospel, during about a 10 year period of time, from maybe 1985-95 roughly, I taught Biology 100, the University General education required course for non majors. It met in the Joseph Smith building, old and new, a large auditorium, 900 students at a time, sometimes, sometimes three of those in a semester. When someone hears that, it's automatic to think, oh, what a terrible experience that must have been. An impersonal large enrollment experience where students are numbers and nobody knows your name. Well, of course that's the challenge. But we tried hard to eliminate or reduce the negative aspects of that. So I love to roam up and down the aisles, to wedge myself in between students knees and walk along an aisle and encounter people on a one to one basis and carry a microphone and have an exchange. And it was important, I thought in that course to deal with the big conceptual issues in biology. We had four of them. And in each of those four divisions of the course we concluded with at least two class periods devoted to gospel related or social related or ethical related issues. In the section on embryology and cells we talked about issues like in vitro fertilization. The third of the four sections was biological evolution. Evolution is the foundational principle for biology. If you choose to teach biology in the absence of reference to evolution, you miss the point. I can't tell you how many people would say to me, well, do you teach evolution at byu? And so we don't need to sort of rehearse the background for the fact that in our culture this has been a controversial issue, not unique to us, but it's certainly there in the history of Mormon thought. Well, The issue could arouse strong emotions. I remember in the Joseph Smith Auditorium having students stand up waving the little blue booklet from Brother Bankhead of the religion department and denounce what I was saying in my attempts to persuade students that our religious faith and our understanding of the science were compatible and that one need not fear the science. And more than that, evolution is one of the extraordinarily interesting, provocative, lovely ideas that mankind has arrived at. I hold Darwin in great reverence. What a wonderful, thoughtful, sensitive, brilliant, insightful man. As an aside, for 10 or 15 years, every semester, once a year at least, every other semester, sometimes twice a year, usually in October, in the fall semester, I found an evening when there was a room free. I put up posters saying I was going to talk about LDS theology and biological evolution. Invited anybody to come if they wanted to hear my two bits worth, which was a totally positive brief look into why evolution is a great idea and why it fits with my own vision of religious principles. Well, it turns out that one of the sad experiences of my tenure at BYU was when I was blackballed by the College of Religion for continuing to teach religious classes. So John, this would have been a period shortly after you and I were studying together. The circumstance was that a talk was given in an all BYU stake fireside on a Sunday evening by Elder Packer. It was part of a Book of Mormon symposium celebration. And for, for reasons not clear to me, Elder Packard chose to focus on the issue of evolution in his talk. And he gave a pretty strongly worded unequivocal denunciation. Well, that was Sunday night. Monday morning at 9, I'm back in the Joseph Smith Auditorium with three sections of 700 people. And the hands start going up before the bell rings. And some of the students responses were sarcastic and uncivil. Well, Dr. Bradshaw and Dr. Barnes, I guess that puts you in your place, doesn't it? Now there were only a few who responded in that way, but some students. We were in the middle of our evolution section. Some of the students got up and walked out in the middle of the hour. Subsequent to that, when I was no longer part of the administration of the Honors in General Education program, I received a memo from Dean Millett saying that I would no longer be approved to teach religion courses. John, over the course of 10 years I tried without success to talk to Brother Millet personally about this. In fact, I asked two, three deans of Religious Education if they would try to mediate a conversation. And Bob would not agree to this. But subsequently I found out from Dean Robert Matthews that some student in the class at this time had come to the Dean of Religion complaining that Brother Bradshaw had borne testimony in class on, on a certain day that he knew that what Brother Packer had said in the fireside was not true. John, I never said anything like that. I don't believe that. I'm not so politically inept to have said it. Had I believed it. I don't believe it. But on the basis of that I was designated as Persona non grata and was not allowed to teach well, Apart from the personal unhappiness that that caused for me and my family. That's not the way for people of goodwill to behave to one another. It's not the way that Latter Day Saints are taught to behave toward one another in the face of some disagreement. But unfortunately it's not an isolated incident on our campus when agreements of this sort are not faced openly and with candor and with sensitivity. But someone with an axe to grind makes some sort of an end run to some person in authority and then events of this sort take place. One correction, John. It was a rat, not a mouse, whose head I cut off that day in class when we removed the liver and isolated DNA and then on another animal subsequently delivered litter of rat pups Caesarean. But I wanted students in the course to understand, for example, in the context of extreme controversy over using laboratory animals, which controversy was just beginning at the time we were in class together, but has grown even, even larger since, that there's an issue about how one answers questions. I tried to make the case that the appropriate use of animals was justified and provide examples of what important advances in medicine and other related fields have come from those kinds of experiments. And at the same time to make it clear that there are guidelines and there are policies that are based on ethical principles and that there are issues like this in the world and they deserve our attention and they deserve our thoughtfulness. And that's part of what we're trying to teach at BE byu. One other example, and I won't remember the date with precision, but a wonderful sculpture exhibit came to byu, the work of Rodin. And there were a number of pieces. Earlier I had seen the Rodin Garden at Stanford. It's an outdoor patio, a lovely place. And there are pieces by Rodin there. And it's just the right sort of thing for a university to provide for students and staff and faculty and members of the community. Rodan exhibit came to byu. Two of the pieces suffered the same fate as I did. They were blackballed and they were taken out of the exhibit. And the most famous one is the Kiss. Rodin's the Kiss shows this romantic erotic embrace between a man and a woman and. And they're in full fledged kiss. I'd seen pictures of it before and it was removed from the exhibit ostensibly because it would offend the tender sensibilities of some members of the community. Well, the day after that announcement was made, I wrote a two or three paragraph letter. I sent it to the. Curator of the museum and then I read the letter in my biology class. I read it nearly every semester to every other class I ever taught at BYU and explained why I thought that was an unfortunate decision. In part, I explained how often I had seen on the fingers of BYU students their choose the right rings. I had just come back from a sabbatical leave in Boston and I got to be the CTR teacher in primary. It was one of the great church experiences of my life. Come to BYU and we will help you to continue to choose the right will teach you the difference between the truly wonderful and the trashy in art and help you learn to be thoughtful about making the distinctions. And I wish the kiss had been left in the exhibit. I ended my little letter by saying that on a lot of days I came home from my office at byu. John, you've been in my office and it's still as cluttered now as it was when you were around. Maybe some of the papers are still under the piles. Tired out, exhausted. A lot of the to do list that I began with in the morning, left undone, come home, see my extraordinary wife, give her a kiss. And that helped to lift a little bit of life's drudgery. And I said to the students, if you ever have that feeling about somebody that you love, I recommend that and you ought to pursue that kind of a kiss. Well, I have never felt. Intimidated. Maybe I've not always been wise about statements I've made to students on issues like this, but I'm glad I did that at byu. Were I still there, I would continue to do the same during my experience at byu. In hindsight, the sort of golden years were those when Jeff Holland was the president of the university and Jay Baliff and Elliot Butler were the associates. Those men knew what the university should be like and they articulated a hope for byu. And I believe that we as a faculty bought in to their hopes and their aspirations and they captured our loyalty and we were trying to make the place better in all ways. We were not in any way abandoning the spiritual roots of byu. We were trying to help people in addition to committing to lifetimes of faithful Latter Day Saint activity to teach people to make a difference in the world because of what they knew and how they could think and how they could solve problems. Some of that spirit didn't continue. I'm sad about that. I remember when Bruce Hafen was the provost of the university. He gave a talk in the fall opening meeting and said that he had made a presentation to the board of trustees that was monumental, that was going to give a wonderful new direction to byu. But he didn't say what the presentation was about. I found out later that he had made a presentation in which he looked at universities that began through support of religious organizations. So that included many of the Ivy League schools, schools like Notre Dame, SMU and others. The presentation bemoaned the fact that these institutions in their contemporary form had lost their religious moorings. They'd been secularized. And so we better watch out or BYU might follow down this unfortunate path. Well, If I would have had a chance to talk to Brother Hafen, I would say, bruce, come walk around byu. Let me show you what BYU is like. I don't see this. I don't think this is a threat. I think you find here committed Latter Day Saints who believe in this enterprise and are doing their very best. But what followed for several years then was a sort of dampening of the enthusiasm that I had felt earlier. While I greatly appreciate the efforts of President Bateman and Samuelson in, in leading the university, and I can't possibly imagine the kinds of personal sacrifices that are involved in that kind of service, it would be my hope that in the future BYU presidents would be chosen who are not necessarily general authorities of the church. I think it would become easier for that kind of a president to be a more visible advocate for the faculty, to be freer in having a vision of the liberal arts commitment of byu, of bringing the concerns related to that to the board, and perhaps not feel constrained by either real or imagined concerns that the board might have about the administration of the university. I don't have a very good perspective anymore. Given my retirement circumstance, I'm not in a position to speak for younger members of the faculty. But I remember those times under the administration of President Holland. And remember that I believe the university was making great and important strides. I'd like to see that same kind of spirit return.

Navigating Difficult Moments at BYU

John Dehlin [02:14:09] May I ask you a few questions about that?

Courage, Integrity, and the Church

William Bradshaw [02:14:11] Go, John.

John Dehlin [02:14:13] Some of my generation are trying to get up to speed on the history of, let's even say, your predecessors and maybe what led to the possibility of those years between 85 and 95. And we've learned about BH Roberts, for example, or Lowell Bennion or Leonard Arrington or Henry Eyring or Widstow or Talmadge. And then, you know, we learn of Eugene, England and the Dialogue years and then the Sunstone years. And some of us see that as a glorious. The term has been used, Camelot, of an emergence of strong thinkers or even a tradition of strong thinkers to balance out also a commitment to the gospel and the faith. And it seems like the 80s, as they built up to that mid-90s time, something really significant and almost special was going on, even though it clearly had its. And it clearly had its dark side. But by the time I got to BYU after my mission and my audience will have heard about my mission experience, I was in a really dark place, just because of disillusionment about what I expected mission leadership to be like and what it turned out to be. And so I came to BYU with a really dark place in my heart, trying to figure out how this could be the church that I was told it was, when such violent or frustrating things sometimes would happen organizationally. So I fell into your class where you would openly talk about evolution and in vitro fertilization and bioethical issues with fear and with courage. I think it was van de Graaff who once said that a testimony should be like a jackhammer, not a soap bubble, that it should divide things asunder, not be guarded carefully in the palm for fear of it popping. And whether it was through your class or through your honors religion classes where we. Where we talked about any and all of the most controversial and difficult topics to my Honors colloquium classes with Ted Lyon and Lynn England and Clayton White and others. It was almost like sunstone, a sunstone like experience in the Maeser Building. It was beautiful. And you guys left me with this hope that you could be faithful, committed, but also completely courageous and committed to the intellect. And so we sort of tried to carry that out in our efforts post graduation. But we haven't been blind to what happened to the September 6th. We haven't been blind to some of the administration things that went on when Gail Houston and Cecilia Farr and David Knowlton and others were let go and academic freedom was in question at byu. And, you know, if you look at the strain of courage as it relates and courage and confidence as it relates to academics and then contrast with, let's say, a strain of leadership within the church that is suspicious and fearful of science and the intellectual. The types of statements that the great enemies to the church are intellectuals and feminists and homosexuals, statements that not all things that are true are useful, and other types of efforts to clamp down and to marginalize

John Dehlin [02:18:15] thought.

John Dehlin [02:18:19] Some of us would look at who won that battle, just like you could ask when Joseph Fielding Smith and BH Roberts went at each other on evolution. It kind of seems like Joseph Fielding Smith won that battle in the end, partly because he lived longer. If we look now at the church and where it is, and we ask ourselves who's won that battle, It seems like it's not the courageous ones with confidence in the intellect and with science and with academics. And then when things like Proposition 8 happen, which we'll talk about later, it leaves a lot of us wondering why those things are allowed to happen. And how can we retain confidence in leadership when leadership would allow something like that to happen to you or to others? And I don't say this to set you up for a difficult question. I don't say this to embarrass or to put anyone on the spot or even to denigrate anybody. But there's a lot of us just wondering, sort of how do we retain confidence in those who guide the ship when things like September 6th or Cecelia Farr or Gail Houston or Bill Bradshaw or others continually seem to win the day? So I guess I don't know how you're. That's not really a question, but it's an expression. And, you know, I'm often eager to hear encouraging words to help some of us through some of these feelings that we're having.

William Bradshaw [02:19:58] Well, pretty heavy statement, John.

John Dehlin [02:20:03] Am I too much hyperbole? Am I inaccurate?

William Bradshaw [02:20:06] No, no, no, no. I'm just saying you've brought a lot of things to think about, and they're profound. I don't have enough wisdom or understanding to provide much by way of satisfaction to the expression you've made. But I'll say a couple of words. I didn't think I could stand in front of students and. Advocate a certain perspective on the world or a certain scholastic approach to important issues if I couldn't be something of a role model for that kind of an approach that I was advocating. And at the time of my service at byu, I found that there were a number of my colleagues who had a very similar outlook on their role as members of the faculty and who were most admirable men and women in the conduct of their personal lives and in their pursuit of solutions to difficult issues, some of which impacted church related matters directly and some of which only indirectly. I never felt fearful that those investigations would not be in the best interests of my students. I was not so naive as to believe that some wouldn't be troubled, that some wouldn't call their parents or complain perhaps to a church authority. And some of those were directed at me. And they would come down the chain of authority from a parent somewhere in the church to the president of the university, and they'd get funneled down to me. But I was never, Was never told what I could say or what I could say. I was never subject to restraints in how I would conduct my class. I think that's probably because people had confidence in me as a committed Latter Day Saint. For me and my generation, for you and your generation, for the generation of my children and my grandchildren. I don't think we need to be afraid of ideas. There's one bit of advice that would help us a lot, and that is in recognition of our profound ignorance about spiritual matters as well as secular matters. Most of the time, it's best to withhold judgment and especially to learn how to treat with civility and sensitivity people who disagree with us. If we could learn to do that as a community of Latter Day Saints, we'd move a lot further in the direction I believe, that the Savior would have us. That doesn't answer very much of what you brought up, John, but it's a modest expression of my optimism and my hope that we can learn to do better and that that will will include being willing to listen to a diversity of points of view, not being afraid of open discussion of issues, and especially refraining from condemnation of other people.

John Dehlin [02:25:22] And in your heart and mind, the church has nothing to fear, nothing significant to fear from science or research or thought?

William Bradshaw [02:25:39] No, I don't see any reasons to fear. I. I think in those explorations, our understanding is going to shift sometimes our understanding, But nothing, in my opinion, that leads us to abandon the centrality of the atonement of the Savior and our efforts to try to understand him better and follow his teachings.

A Son's Coming Out and the Family's Response

John Dehlin [02:26:25] You have a gay son?

William Bradshaw [02:26:26] Yes.

John Dehlin [02:26:28] Would you mind sharing with us your earliest recollections of Brett as it relates to his development in this issue?

William Bradshaw [02:26:41] Well, Brett's always been an extraordinary son. As a youngster, mischievous. He and his friend Danny used to drive their grade school teachers to the brink of exasperation because they were so smart and so clever and so incorrigible. To some extent, Brett's an extraordinary, handsome man. He's 62 and very good looking. He was the seminary president at Orem High School. He was the most preferred man, more than. We had girls in this living room, friends with Brett on all kinds of occasions during his high school years, Brett went to the University of Chicago. In the middle of his university of education, he served a mission in Brazil and came back and graduated in public policy. Policy. I'm not sure exactly when Brett determined his homosexual identity, but I think there was a period of acceptance and reconciliation of that during his early college years. Brett may be somewhat of an exception among gay Latter Day Saints because. There was relatively little angst as he accepted who he was. Now, I may not know the full extent of that. I know there was angst in coming out. I know how difficult it was for him to come and tell his parents about it.

John Dehlin [02:29:05] What was that like for you? Do you remember?

William Bradshaw [02:29:08] Oh, I remember very well. It was Christmas, and he came out to his brothers and sister first, all of whom have been wonderfully accepting, wonderfully accepting. And he told his mom first. She left the next day to go to Arizona because our daughter Becky was giving birth to twins. He told his dad the next day, Marge and I were separated by 650 miles and didn't have a chance to come compare notes or decide how we felt. Not too long after that, we left to go on sabbatical leave back to Cambridge.

John Dehlin [02:29:52] Did you have progressive thoughts on the topic at the time he told you?

William Bradshaw [02:29:58] I was about as ignorant a person as you would find on this issue, John. I had. I'm not proud of that, but seems like I had a lot of things to devote my time to, and understanding homosexuality wasn't one of them.

John Dehlin [02:30:16] So you must have been appalled and

William Bradshaw [02:30:18] disgusted and disappointed and not appalled, not disgusted. When Brett first talked to me, I wondered why he hadn't felt that he could come and talk to me earlier about it. I suppose I did that because I thought, well, Brett, if you'd have come to me earlier, maybe we could have worked it out. I probably had some naive sense that maybe he could be changed. But the most important thing that happened when Brett and I talked in the bedroom upstairs in this house that night was at the end. I put my arms around him and kissed my son and said, I love you. And that will never change, ever. I love you, my son, and you will always be my son. And this is not going to make. This is not going to be a barrier between us. And so that launched Marge and I on a program of study and understanding and trying to become informed. When we were in Boston for those 15 months, we attended meetings of PFLAG, this is the National Organization for Parents and Friends of Gay and Lesbian Children. And we met in the basement of a Unitarian church in Arlington and met gay people and met their parents. The majority of them were Catholic families. And there were some interesting parallels between the Catholic family response and the Mormon family response in general. Deep concern about violation of religious rules, for example. But, you know, it turns some of your expectations upside down. Would we ever. We're never going to have a grandchild with Brett, was our thought. You know, what does this mean for families are forever? How do we fit this in? Well, We read and we talked to people and we came back to BYU and found Family Fellowship, which is a support organization for parents of gay and lesbian Latter Day Saint children. Marge and I are currently the. Chair people for the group. We entered into friendship with the most wonderful group of people through this organization. And we share in common gay and lesbian children. And the children are extraordinary and the parents are extraordinary. And our lives have been enlarged and enriched and blessed by the association of these people. And most of the myths are washed away by these personal associations.

John Dehlin [02:34:06] Which ones do you mind sharing them with? Some of the myths

William Bradshaw [02:34:12] that gay people are that way because they. That sexual orientation is a choice and that people who are gay decide to be that way. That. People who are homosexual are perverse. That homosexual people are living lives of desperation and anguish and are incapable of being productive, happy, normal people. Those are some of the unfortunate untruths that circulate in the LDS community and in many other communities.

Faith, Identity, and Gay Membership in the Church

John Dehlin [02:35:13] What did Brett do with his membership in the church and his testimony of the church as he struggled with deciding what to do with his life?

William Bradshaw [02:35:23] Brett is not active in the church. Brett is unhappy with church policies regarding people who are gay. Brett continues, however, to be active in efforts to bridge. To create bridges of understanding between gay people in and out of the church and Mormonism. Brett met his then partner, Jeff Jackenitz, at the University of Chicago. They came here on their way to California where both of them were enrolled in the Teach for America program. Brett spent two years teaching fourth grade in Pasadena. Jeff spent two years similarly teaching grade school children in Houston. They returned to California and soon after had a commitment ceremony. It was an extraordinary occasion. It was held at the chapel on the Presidio in San Francisco. A gay pastor that they knew from Texas came and performed the commitment ceremony. Brett and Jeff's friends from all over the world came to that meeting. They had couples from Europe come to be with them. Some members of our family were there in support. Brett's siblings were there with their families and and grandchildren. In the reception afterwards, there was a Break in the dancing and a little program and I gave a tribute to Brett and Jeff and our little grandchild. Kate snuck up behind me and came and grabbed hold of my hand while I was talking. I'll never forget the occasion, which was sweet and full of family. And there were men dancing with men and women dancing with women and grandpas dancing with grandchildren. And everybody was dancing with everybody else. And. I never anticipated in my life going to a reception like that. And I went and it was wonderful. I don't think my father in heaven was displeased with the spirit of that occasion and with the feelings of love and respect that were extended subsequently. Brett and Jeff went to Austin, Texas to school. Brett was in a master's program in public policy at the LBJ's School of Government at the University of Texas. Jeff was a graduate student in English. These two young men are terrific looking, handsome, intelligent men. They make friends very easily. Both gay friends and probably the majority of their social contacts or heterosexual friends. A woman who was a graduate student in English and friend of Jeff's came to them once and said, I've known you two for some time now and I know that you've talked about having a family. If you want to have a baby, I'll be a surrogate for you. Now you have to stop and think about the magnitude of the generosity of that kind of an offer. Well, they thought about it for months. They explored it with the legalities of it, Sought the experience of other people who had become parents. And they went ahead. One of the two men is the biological father of our granddaughter Madeline. We don't know which one. Madeline's 10 now. Brett and Jeff live in Oakland. Jeff is a fundraiser for University of California at Berkeley, works in the development office. Brett has been involved in national school reform efforts for a decade. He works now for an organization seeking equality in the schools of California in the Bay Area, where the effort is primarily on racial equality in a community that's extraordinarily diverse in terms of ethnic and racial background. They have a house, they're paying off the mortgage. They try to make sure that Madeleine doesn't work. Papa and Daddy off against one another too often in an inequitable way. She's a sweet little girl. When the whole family gets together, we're all a family. Jeff is my son in law. Brett and Jeff are legally married. Their marriage is legally validated in California during that interim between the revocation of the California statute and the Prop 8 election in the fall. In the words of one of The Women in Family Fellowship. Who's just a sweet, dear, devoted, committed Latter Day Saint. Every mother deserves to have a gay son. She's right. Rhett never misses a birthday. Always on the phone with his mother, always sensitive. He's not only very intelligent and well read and politically astute, he is kind and thoughtful. So having this wonderful son that I have has opened up to me the opportunity to become informed and to shed some of the ignorance that I had before I knew that I had a gay son. Interestingly enough, the issue had come up professionally at BYU in the context of biology, where the issue about causation and the biological role in sexual orientation is a fairly common question to be asked by students. It was also true that I developed, I think, somewhat of a reputation for being non judgmental. And I had faculty members call me up and sent to me gay students who wanted to talk and needed to try to find some advice. BYU is not a particularly friendly place if you're a gay Latter Day Saint. So I have learned quite a bit about the literature, the published literature, on two big issues. The first is the cause of sexual orientation. And not to belabor the point, the evidence is extraordinarily strong that orientation is the result of biochemical influences during the latter weeks of gestation in humans and the very early weeks postpartum. The conventional wisdom that homosexual sexuality is caused by inept parenting finds no basis of fact. Men are not gay because their fathers were distant or uncaring or their mothers were stifling and overprotective. The evidence does not support the view that homosexuality is caused by sexual abuse in childhood or early sexual exploitation or experimentation. The brains of gay people and straight people are not the same. And we know a lot about some of the hormonal effects. And the catalog of evidence is extensive. It extends to studies of brain structure and brain function. It includes evidence from PET scans and from hormone measurements and from enzyme measurements and from demonstrated differences in the hearing function of gay and straight people. It comes from studies of things like finger length and a whole host of similar evidence. I've cataloged those and written about them. The issue of cause is much more controversial. Well, I don't know if it's more controversial. In the Latter Day Saint community, there are strong sentiments that people can change. To cut to the core, there are probably some people, some homosexual people who. Reside in the middle of the scale between totally homosexual on one end and totally heterosexual on the other. In other words, there are bisexual people with some capacity for romantic interest in people of both gender. Who can function in a heterosexual marriage by finding ways to emphasize that one romantic attraction of the two that they're capable of. But although the evidence is hard to come by. The experience of most therapists and social scientists, psychologists, psychiatrists who have dealt with people across the country, the experience is that change at best is very, very, very, very rare. And that in fact efforts for people to change unwanted sexual attraction often results in serious harm. Depression, suicide, loss of religious faith. If you're a Latter Day Saint and you're told by your mission present,

Understanding the Origins of Sexual Orientation

John Dehlin [02:48:17] Sam,

William Bradshaw [02:48:18] go home, get married. When you have a normal sexual relationship with your wife, then your same sex attraction will go away. It doesn't go away. And the stories, the sad, sad stories of people who have accepted that advice and entered into marriage and found that their sexual attractions to people of same gender don't change. Those stories bring heartsick heartache and sadness. Think of the burden that heterosexual spouse feels when they realize they're not able to fulfill the physical intimacy needs of their partner who turns out to be gay. Think of the problems when children come into those homes and when the families may not stay together. The feeling of abandonment or deceit or betrayal. That happens. So thankfully, the church does not offer that advice.

John Dehlin [02:49:46] Anymore.

William Bradshaw [02:49:46] Anymore and recommends that it not be given.

John Dehlin [02:49:55] Do you know if that's in the handbook somewhere?

William Bradshaw [02:50:00] What usually is quoted, John, is a statement from President Hinckley.

John Dehlin [02:50:06] Do you remember generally what that says?

William Bradshaw [02:50:10] It says it is not recommended. Marriage is not recommended. It says it better than that, John.

John Dehlin [02:50:22] It's President Hinckley.

William Bradshaw [02:50:23] I can find it.

John Dehlin [02:50:25] He's good with words.

William Bradshaw [02:50:26] I can find it in a minute. I'm sorry, I can't quote it.

John Dehlin [02:50:29] No, it's fine.

William Bradshaw [02:50:30] So what changes attitudes within and without Mormonism is knowing someone in a close relationship whom you care about who's gay that changes your feelings. During the Winter Olympics, our group helped erect a couple of billboards on i15 that said someone that you know and love is gay. A conservative estimate is that 4% of the human population is gay and lesbian. Twice as many men as women. The figure is a little bit elusive because it depends on whether or not you measure people who have engaged in same sex behavior or those who have not, but may have erotic feelings and erotic dreams in which they focus on same gender kinds of romance. But that's approaching half a million Latter Day Saints. That's four or five or six people in every ward. Now there's obviously a strong selection against adult homosexuals joining the Mormon Church, but. Our children, my son, the daughter in that family, the son or daughter of families at every level of authority in the church. They are our gay brothers and sisters. Last week one of these gay men, 28 years old in Salt Lake City, took his life. The catalog of that terrible, terrible circumstance is large and, And ought to make many of us rethink our attitudes towards our homosexual brothers and sisters. I understand and support the church's emphasis on monogamy, on fidelity in relationships. It is not true in my view, after looking at a lot of evidence that gay people are intrinsically susceptible to mental health difficulties at a greater rate than occurs in this straight population. But I do believe that the unfortunate incidence of suicide, of depression, of homelessness, of illegal drug use, of. Unsafe sexual practices, of hiv aids infection. Come primarily because of the stigmatization of gay and lesbian people and the societal disapproval that they face. It's enormous. How must it be for anyone in the church who doesn't fit in for the 14 year old kid with purple hair that sticks up or the young lady who wears dresses that don't meet the approval of everybody in the young women's leadership? You know what happens to those awful people in the church who are democrats like me. When you don't belong and when you don't belong in Mormonism and when you're marginalized, that's an awful, awful place to be. I'll stop. John, you may have a question, a follow up question you'd like to.

John Dehlin [02:55:58] Well, I have a couple.

William Bradshaw [02:56:01] Go.

John Dehlin [02:56:04] Homosexuality is clearly outlined by modern day Revelation as being not the orientation but what your son has chosen to do is a transgression. It's an abomination and there's no place for it in the plan of salvation. Carnal passions should be bridled outside the bands of legal and lawful marriage. And if Brett is not able to have a happy fulfilled life with a woman of his choosing, then he should consider himself like the single sisters of our church who are unable to be married and might offer his life as a sacrifice, the intimacy part of his life as a sacrifice to the Lord, much like Abraham and Isaac. And he can look forward to the day in the resurrection where that wrong is righted. And he can be rewarded by God for his sacrifice and commitment to the church like many of our single brothers and sisters have had to do, with all that being righted and his celestial increase made sure.

William Bradshaw [02:57:47] So would you like me to respond? All right, he could. And there are those who do. And I can't think of. Anyone more praiseworthy than a gay or lesbian latter Day Saint who is able to live a celibate life under those conditions and find a rewarding and productive life. But I am willing to. I'm willing to entertain some other possibilities. All your life as a young Latter Day Saint, you're taught. That fulfillment in mortal life comes from a family in preparation for an eternal family. There isn't any better way than to edge your way toward godliness than to be a father or mother and raise children and sacrifice and get up in the middle of the night and. And work your finger to the bone to pay for college tuition and all the rest. So what do you do? You're sitting there in the sacrament meeting and that's open to everybody in the sacrament meeting except you. I think it's a false comparison to say that the situation of our gay brothers and sisters is no different than the. Than the widow or the spinster or the widower in the ward. If one of the single ladies in our ward who's 30 or 40 or 50 or 60 or 70 got married, it'd be the biggest party the ward ever held. We'd all be delighted because that's always open to them. Marriage is not condemned. Marriage is not refused. Just the right person hasn't come along another stupid Mormon male who doesn't appreciate

John Dehlin [03:00:23] the

William Bradshaw [03:00:26] great qualities of some of the single women in the church. It's not qualitatively the same as the gay man or woman who knows that they are totally homosexual, who knows that they could not fulfill a temple marriage covenant, But who may decide that far from being in opposition to church teachings, would follow certain church teachings that he or she has heard all of one's life. Be honest with yourself. Be who you are. Don't try to live a life of falsehood. Don't live a life of deception.

John Dehlin [03:01:21] You're a child of God.

William Bradshaw [03:01:23] You are. And John, every hypothetical that I could raise or someone who disagrees with me could raise becomes inconsequential in comparison to the testimony borne by some of my gay brothers and sisters whom I have heard, who in complete sincerity and in my opinion telling the absolute truth, relate religious confirmation from deity about acceptance from Heavenly Father for who they are, for whom they are, for who they are. Now, I know you can make a case about, or you can make the argument about gay relationships can't be acceptable because they can't lead to procreation. They somehow are in a violation of the notion of eternal increase. That might be. I'm willing to be, in the face of the enormity of my ignorance about this and a whole lot of other issues that impact my religious faith. I'm willing to withhold judgment if I find out in the next life that homosexual orientation is a transient, temporary condition of 4% of the human race based on the vagaries of how embryos develop and that. Spirits don't possess homosexual romantic feelings. The Savior tells me that I'll accept that. But the Savior may tell me something that I can't even imagine yet. The Savior may tell me something different than that, and if I hear that, then I'll accept that. Until then, I'm willing to accept the decision made by my homosexual brothers and sisters about various ways in which they attempt to retain as much as they can of their Mormonism and live a life that they find satisfying, productive, moral, upright, happy, progressive. It's not true that homosexual people are incapable of happy feelings, of good feelings, of being terrific parents, of that they're incapable of the levels of sacrifice and the whole set of Christian virtues that we all ascribe to. In fact, in many, many ways, my gay brothers and sisters whom I have known and come to love exhibit those qualities in much higher degree than I do. I believe as a matter of faith that my gay brothers and sisters are going to be recipients of an extra major of blessing by Heavenly Father because of the quality of the lives that they lead in spite of the opposition that they face from society in their lives. Now. A gay Latter Day Saint with a commitment to the Gospel faces an agonizing, terrible decision, a Sophie's choice of a magnitude that I don't think many of us can comprehend. When you fall in love for those of us who are married, how can we imagine life without our wives and husbands whom we love? What if it were us and it was said to us in church meetings, Eat supper alone every day of the rest of your life and find happiness in being of service in the Stake Young Adult Program. I didn't mean to make that sarcastic, but I meant to suggest that that's a pretty hollow promise. Gay people love their monogamous spouses in the same way that heterosexual Latter Day Saint men and women love their heterosexual husbands and wives. That's a hard sell. What is more difficult to imagine for a straight person than to be romantically interested in someone of the same sex? It's unimaginable. And that inability to sympathize or empathize is at the heart of a lot of the antagonism. But back to the Latter Day Saint, are you going to choose celibacy? You might. And the Faith that allows you to do that can only be commendable. Do you want to look in Mormon doctrine and Mormon statements to find commendations of celibacy? What you will find is condemnation of celibacy as an apostate notion. How many Latter Day Saints would look at the unfortunate circumstance in the contemporary Catholic Church with respect to sexual abuse by priests and others and not say, oh, these are the fruits of celibacy? Well, And I've collected some of the statements in church magazines and in church doctrine that condemn celibacy. So. Ultimately, however, the issue I think is pragmatic. What are gay Latter Day Saints going to do? Are they going to stay celibate in the church and eat supper alone and have lives that seem to be unfulfilled in comparison to the lives that their straight brothers and sisters are living? Are they going to fall in love with someone and want to spend the rest of mortal life with them and make the best that they can of life and do all of the things in their same sexual relationship that are good and fine and uplifting and commendable by Latter Day Saints standards as their straight brothers and sisters? Well, my opinion, it's not my recommendation, but my experience is that most are going to agonizingly choose that kind of relationship even though they know it's going to jeopardize their standing in the Church. They don't do it because they're rebellious. They don't do it because they're evil. They don't do it because they're trying to break God's commandments. They're doing it because they think it's the best thing they ought to for their mortal lives and many of them for beyond, because they're subject to the same. To have access to. A divine sanction for who. Who they are and what they do as anybody, and many follow what they believe is divine approval. In my idealism, I would like to find a way for people at every position in this spectrum to have a place in the Church. I would like to have my gay brothers and sisters who are celibate sitting next to me on the bench in sacrament meeting. And I'd like to have my gay brothers and sisters who are married legally to a person of the same gender next to me in sacrament meeting. There may have to be differences with regard to participation in the temple. Some of the best scout masters in the whole world would be gay men. Gay people are not intrinsically pedophiles. You can be seduced into homosexuality. Human beings are capable of all sorts of irrational and terrible behavior. But you can't teach somebody else to be gay. It's not a disease. It's not an addiction. It's not something you catch. It's not something you can pass on to children in the home. I feel inadequate in accurately portraying the goodness of the homosexual Latter Day Saints and non Latter Day Saints who it has been my privilege to know. My life is made richer by knowing them, by what they have taught me, by the goodness of their lives, by the efforts that they are making within whatever community of faith to do the right thing. We have not yet, as the Latter Day Saints, have not yet found the right way as a people to honor all of those good efforts. I hope we can do an awful lot better than we do now.

John Dehlin [03:14:14] Would you mind sharing briefly your thoughts on Proposition 8?

William Bradshaw [03:14:22] During the period before the election, I went to San Francisco and spent a week and I called as many hours as I could before I gave out to people on the phone in support of the no on 8 campaign. I know how awful that will sound to some of my brothers and sisters in the church. But I did that because I think it's the right thing to do. I am grateful that I'm a citizen of the United States. I believe in the Bill of Rights. I believe in the words that we ought to have access to the inalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. I don't know any other pursuit for happiness that's more likely to succeed than marriage. I don't believe that the presence of legally married homosexual people will diminish. The ideal of marriage. I think it will only help. Gay marriage may not make a big dent in promiscuity in this country. There's more than enough promiscuity among heterosexuals and homosexuals than to go around. But when there are happily married gay couples in our communities, and they are, and the goodness of their lives is there as examples, how can that do anything but promote the notion of marriage? I agree with the church that marriage is in trouble. I think the church ought to be trying to promote marriage to save it, to restore the sanctity of marriage. I'm willing to be totally wrong about it, but I think that gay marriage will only help that sentiment. It's hard not to believe when you look at the worldwide recent history. It's hard not to believe that more and more societies will accept and legalize monogamous relationships among people of the same gender. Argentina is the most recent example. I know about Mexico City, a number of places in Europe, a few states in the United States, the legal wrangling is going to continue. I don't know anyone who's smart enough to know with any degree of certainty how that's all going to come out. But I do believe there's a generational difference in attitude. I think the generation of my children, your generation, John, Are more accepting. And the reason they're more accepting is because they have gay friends. I had gay friends when I was young, but I didn't know it. But my children have gay friends and they know it. And in their honest appraisal of their gay friends, they know that their gay friends are as moral as they are. And it becomes very difficult to mount an opposition that takes away opportunity and. The chance for productive lives from somebody that you know and care about. So as more people my age die off and are replaced in the population by younger people who are more informed and less biased and more open and have more experience, then attitudes in the population are going to shift.

John Dehlin [03:20:15] Do you ever worry that the church might have painted itself into the corner.

William Bradshaw [03:20:24] And may well have? I'm guessing that the church did not anticipate the backlash, the anger. I'm going to guess that there are differences among leaders of the church depending on their experience, depending on whether or not they have gay children, gay nephews, gay nieces,

John Dehlin [03:21:11] brothers, brothers.

William Bradshaw [03:21:17] Uncle jim and aunt jean and so on. I've just started to be engaged in an effort to try to persuade the city councils of Orem and Provo to enact a non discrimination ordinance of the type enacted in Salt Lake City and Salt Lake county and Park City and most recently Logan. I do that because I think that's the right thing for the country, the right thing for the church. I make that a matter of inquiry with my Heavenly Father. And impressions I have are I should go ahead and continue to do things like that. And trying to find a way to live my life that's in concordance with what I feel from my Heavenly Father is the more important motivation. Even more than the all the papers I've read about it and the statistics and the hormonal mechanisms that I know about and so on. So that's where I am.

John Dehlin [03:22:57] Some would want to target their anger at church leadership like Boyd K. Packer, Thomas S. Monson or whoever. But the truth is they've inherited a doctrine and a theology that was not of their own making, largely. So I guess we could blame them for Proposition 8 or the stance, or the lack of welcomeness, lack of welcome in the church towards our gay brothers and sisters. But really, it's got to kind of come down to God. And if we're believers of modern day revelation, it seems like if there was ever a time for one, it would be on this issue, but it's not here.

John Dehlin [03:23:46] Do you ever

John Dehlin [03:23:50] have feelings or prayers in that respect? I imagine you would. Seems like if God could speak to his prophets to fix this, he could. He would. So it must be his duty.

William Bradshaw [03:24:04] I believe he could. My hubris is, well, God's a rational fellow like me. He certainly would do what I want to do. He would certainly institute the policies that I'm in favor of. He wouldn't be God if he were otherwise. Well, It seems to me on a whole lot of issues. Where we inquire of God, what is thy will? And we would like deity to tell us what to do, The answers that we get are, my son, it's a hard issue, isn't it? I want you to know I'm with you. Go do the best you can. Try your best to base your behavior and your actions and your decisions on right principles. How many times have I heard well meaning young people at BYU engage in a conversation with Heavenly Father, something like this, well, God, I'm back from my mission and I want to do your will. So please tell me which major to choose. And there's these three women, there's sue and Sarah and Selma. Which one do you want me to marry? God? Just tell me and I'll marry her and go in the major you tell me to do. I'll enroll in the major you want and I'll get my degree and get a Harvard MBA and end up with three boats and an extra house and hence on to the celestial kingdom. Now I am being sarcastic. And God says, john, you're going to have to marry that woman and live with her and be a good husband. I'm not going to tell you who to marry. It's not my decision. It's your decision. You do the best you can. I'm behind you. I'll try to help you. I'm not going to tell you what to major in. God doesn't have a list of majors on his kitchen refrigerator. This one's the best one. Business and prominence in the Republican Party. That's not necessarily first on my list of majors, John. Well, I'm being too light hearted about it. I don't deny that God seems to have with respect to certain things said, this is what you need to do. With a whole lot of other things I don't believe we know. I think God has kept to himself a whole lot more than he's told us about certain issues. And he may know when every sparrow falls, but he may not prevent every sparrow from falling. And I believe he cares, but I don't think he relieves us of the responsibility to try to figure it out for ourselves. And sometimes the impatient is about more than you can stand. And in my case, that's my problem, not God's problem.

DNA Evidence, the Book of Mormon, and Honest Questions

John Dehlin [03:29:01] Okay, I'm going to ask you a couple. Easy. Well, not easy. I'm going to ask you a couple simple questions and then a compound question, all right?

William Bradshaw [03:29:09] Sure.

John Dehlin [03:29:09] Okay. As a scientist, how do you reconcile DNA evidence with the Book of Mormon?

William Bradshaw [03:29:20] I don't think it's a solvable problem. I don't think that the historical evidence from the Book of Mormon permits us an unequivocal model upon which to compare the DNA evidence. I don't think that there is a straightforward population genetics explanation that would lead to a clear cut prediction. I think sometimes we say we know more than we do about the specifics and the precision of the historical geography and historical family relationships. I don't think that there is DNA evidence. I don't think that the DNA evidence that we have invalidates the story of the Book of Mormon. I've read some of the arguments, the population genetics arguments. I'm not smart enough to understand them all very well, But people whom I trust most who do understand them tell me that you can't solve the problem with this kind of evidence. I accept that.

John Dehlin [03:31:17] Do you.

John Dehlin [03:31:18] Have you considered just in terms of probability, the DNA evidence plus the archaeological evidence plus the linguistic evidence plus the anachronisms? I imagine you've studied what critics would use to undermine the Book of Mormon. If someone was inclined to sort of just apply Occam's razor and say that you can try and explain what a horse was or wasn't, what steel was or wasn't, what a Lamanite was or wasn't, and you have to create some pretty contorted explanations, or you could sort of just look where the evidence points, take the simplest explanation and conclude that it's a fictional book. Have you ever gotten to a point where you've considered that?

William Bradshaw [03:32:14] Yes, but my freshman experience on my upper decor bed trumps that for me. And. And also accompanied by my sense of uncertainty about Joseph's role in the production of the book. Dick Bushman has written a very thoughtful piece on Joseph Smith as a translator. One of the problems of historical inquiry in and outside of a Mormon context is using modern day Understanding of words and concepts and projecting it on people in the past and assuming that they meant the same thing as we do in certain uses of language. A translator is somebody who knows two languages and looks at one language and renders it in another one. So in this model, Joseph is turning the plates over, looking at the characters, peering through them in the Urim and Thummim, and getting a divine reassurance that that character means this. Well, Joseph's mother said that sometimes Joseph would be translating and be looking into his hat. And his sense of translator may not be the simple minded sort of vision that we have when we use the word translation or translator uncritically. I don't know how to say any more about it than that, except. I'm willing to accept some or part of the Book of Mormon as being achieved through the inspiration, through the mediation of Joseph, through a mechanism, something more complex than rendering a pictograph in one language into an English word.

John Dehlin [03:35:05] So inspired, not necessarily a translation in the technical sense of the word.

William Bradshaw [03:35:12] If it turns out to be true, I won't be surprised by that. If it turns out to be something I haven't even thought about and nobody else has, I'll just say, oh, another surprise that. That was not unexpected.

John Dehlin [03:35:40] I imagine your perspective on the Book of Abraham would be similar.

William Bradshaw [03:35:45] Yes. So

Reconciling Science, Religion, and Personal Belief

John Dehlin [03:35:53] here's the longer question. I've tried to put my secular hat on at times to kind of try and figure out how religion might come to be if there isn't some literal, involved celestial influence. And as I put that secular hat on, here's what I've been able to piece together. That man has to deal with uncertainty and tragedy. That man has this self consciousness that causes him to reflect upon the implications of death in the afterlife. And a lack of religious or theological model to help fill those holes often leads man to a very desperate, sad, lonely and nihilistic state. And so occasionally a charismatic genius comes along and says, I'll do mankind a favor and I'll come up with explanations for those theological holes and those existential holes. I'll create a story and I'll use the fact that man experiences emotions and I'll pair those emotions with that story and by just basic classical conditioning, teach that man to associate those emotions that they feel with this narrative that I've been able to weave and maybe even with the best of intentions, rescue man from that sense of existential nihilistic despair and provide him a sense of identity, a sense of hope, a sense of rules, a community, and all sorts of explanations for the afterlife. And so, yes, we're raised and we're given a narrative. And like all humans, experience emotions, we experience emotions within the context of that narrative, as do other people in other religions, as do people who don't believe in religions at all. And thus our testimony or conviction towards that religion is born out of the pairing of that emotional experience with that narrative. And that's religion. And that's what makes your certainty, and that's what makes the certainty of those men who flew that plane into those planes into the Twin Towers. And I don't offer this scenario with joy or glee or satisfaction. I hold my experience in the church with much reverence and affection and esteem and joy and elation. But there's this generation now that's dealing with two things. One is they're finding that the narrative that they actually experience, that emotional experience with, is quite inaccurate, as all narratives are. And they're finding that the actual historical record or narrative that seems to be more based on fact is vastly different from the one upon which their testimony was forged. And then they're seeing how many wonderful people are of different faiths that have no faith at all. And they're contemplating the minuscule percentage of the world's population that happens to be born into the one true church. And they're asking, how can this be? That this is God's one and only true church with exclusive authority, that all other religious ordinances are illegitimate in God's eyes, and that our leaders conveniently have some of the most important revelations that they could have on social issues, always 20 or 30 years after the time that they should. And I don't say all this to depress you. I come to you partly wanting to seek the wisest people I know to help me and many of my friends find a way to make sense of all this. And because I don't want to see the church fall into disrepair, I don't want to see people flooding away and going to who knows what sometimes. But sometimes I get beaten down, as maybe you have, from the disappointments of some of my experiences in the church. And I guess there's just this whole generation of people of youth in my generation who are trying desperately to grasp at whatever straws they can to find a reason to stick around. And so now you have a few minutes to solve that problem for us.

William Bradshaw [03:41:24] Okay. I believe I have considered every one of the things you said. I don't think I can refute any of them. I don't think I can construct an argument, Plea, make A plea based in evidence. That negates the possibilities that you suggested. I just decided I'm not going to go there for myself. Mostly because I can't, for reasons I don't know, that I can explain to you. I'm much more willing for people to be imperfect and. And unexplainable than I used to be. Meaning church leaders in church leaders or anybody. Mostly myself. I was in Hong Kong when President Monson was visiting and we got word that his mother passed away. I took him to the airport when he needed to get home. I sat on the bed all night long with Marion G. Romney when he got a phone call in the mission home in Hong Kong that Richard L. Evans had passed away and he had to get home for the funeral. Somewhere in the middle of that night, he turned to me and said, what do you do? I said, I teach at byu. What do you teach? Biology. Do you believe in evolution? See, he threw that one at me long before you did.

John Dehlin [03:44:06] John.

William Bradshaw [03:44:18] These are good men. I'm sure that Elder Romney and I disagreed on matters of science, but the issue was that before he left home and Elder Evans was stricken with a virus, the 12 had gone to the bedside and he'd been asked to be voice in the and the anointing and blessing. He looked at me and said I couldn't bless him to get better. So he was sort of expecting the phone call. Maybe my feelings of kinship to the goodness of these people in circumstances like that is a reflection of this psychological explanation that you just propounded. Maybe it is. I don't think so. I hope it isn't. In some ways, the church has been a lot better at. Reducing narrowness. There was a great piece in one of the early dialogues written by a recent convert to the church in Britain. He says, can't we reconsider the primary lesson based on the 4th of July? We British are a proud people and don't like to celebrate our defeats. Well, we've come away from that. That's one of the good things correlation did. And in other ways we're more narrow. Somehow. I think it's a mistake for so much emphasis in the contemporary church on the world is an evil place. We have got to keep the good. We've got to look around us and. Find ways to confront and overcome the evil in the world. I'm not going to tell you there isn't evil in the world, But I don't want my granddaughter Kate and Patrick and Madeline and all of Ben's sons to go out into the world. And feel that way. I want them to go out into the world and feel there's a whole lot of good people in the world and I'll be able to join with them and we'll be able to do something better. I think. I think that positive approach is better than the hunker down and circle the wagons. That isn't directly related to your question, but it is sort of obliquely part of the. Part of it. If I believe my Mormonism, then all of the people of the world are of equal worth in the sight of the beings who put us here, of whom we are progeny. The nicest things that happen to me are when I share love with people who think like I do and people who don't think like I do. And I choose that. I choose that over despair. I choose that over explanations. That my religious sentiments are things of my own making. I could be wrong. I could die, and that would be the end. But if that were the end of consciousness, I wouldn't know that I was wrong, would I? What I don't think is true, I think there's more to come. And so I muddle on. Forgive me for not being able to say anything more insightful than.

John Dehlin [03:50:51] I think. That was plenty insightful.

Closing Reflections and Farewell

William Bradshaw [03:50:56] Thank you for allowing me to talk to you. I remember you. I will always hold you as a good friend. Thank you very much.

John Dehlin [03:51:07] Thank you, Dr. Bradshaw.

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