Introduction and Episode Overview

John Dehlin [00:00:02] Hello everyone and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories podcast. I'm your host, John Dehlin. It is October 9, 2020 and today we have a somber, serious interview. About a year and a half ago In January of 2019, many of us saw an article posted across various websites in or news sites in Idaho. One article said BYU Idaho Dean known as angel on the tractor dies at age 56. Another article said dean of students passes away. That came from the BYU I scroll. Another one says BYU Idaho Dean of students dies Wednesday. The man who died was named Kip, Kip Brower Harris. And, and he was a beloved dean of students at BYU Idaho. He served as bishop at least two times. He worked for BYU Idaho for about 30 years. He was personal friends with elder David Bednar. He was a father, he was a husband, and he was loved by many without too much time. After these articles broke, there emerged some reports on, on Reddit that maybe it had been a death by suicide. And over time, Kip's son Brennan started speaking out publicly or writing things. And I waited and wanted to make sure and give everyone in the family space because this seemed like a very serious, somber story and it wasn't something that, that. Well, I just wanted to give the family lots of space. And recently Brennan and I reconnected. I've seen things that he's written on Reddit before. And so today we are going to be talking about Brennan Harris and his story. We're going to be talking about his dad, Kip Harris, his story, their family story. There's so much that goes into this story because we've been covering amormous stories, sexual shame in the church. I think it's, it's public knowledge at this point in various places that it's, it's likely that Kip Harris was involved or maybe it's almost certain we'll get into the details that Kip Harris was involved in extramarital affair that he feared. And this is based on writings of Brennan's that I've read on his own blog that he's made public. It was clear that Kip was worried about being fired from BYU Idaho. It was clear that the police that were involved in, in a case with Kip that we'll be talking about notified Kip's bishop that then triggered the notification of BYU Idaho that kicked off that chain, that, that led to Kip's private affairs being made public and that led him to feel like he, like, like ending his life was, was the only and best option for his family. And so we'll be talking about all of this, but also we'll be talking about Brennan Harris and his story. And we just ask everyone to please be thoughtful and respectful because this is a very sensitive issue. And at the same time, it's an important issue because it gets into issues of sexual shame within Mormonism, blurring of lines between law enforcement and the BYU private universities, church disciplinary courts, how the church handles sex and sexuality and sexual indiscretions. And we're going to be talking about what would make a beloved man who was a family man and who is a beloved member of the community feel like taking his life was the only option and to what extent the church and or BYU and or its policies and or the local law enforcement maybe are or are not complicit in that entire story. We are live streaming to both Facebook and YouTube. We do welcome people's comments and questions and even stories. If you have a story about ecclesiastical abuse, about sexual shaming, about being involved in byu, BYU Rexburg, you know, BYU Idaho, BYU Provo, BYU Hawaii, disciplinary councils, the honor code office, and especially the involvement of law enforcement, blurring the lines between ecclesiastical and private police enforcement, law enforcement. We would love to hear comments, questions and feedback from you. Thank you for joining us. And so we, we bring to you now Brennan Harris. Brennan, thank you so much for joining us and thanks for being willing to come on Mormon Stories and talk about something so heartbreaking and so tragic for the family.

Brennan Harris [00:05:09] Yeah, no problem. Thanks for, thanks for having me on to talk.

Kip Harris's Background and Early Life

John Dehlin [00:05:15] So, Brennan, maybe let's begin just with a little bit of maybe your dad's story. Do you want to tell us maybe a little bit about your dad's background before we talk about your birth and your story and then sort of how those things merge and then we'll talk about the aftermath. Should we go in that kind of timeline?

Brennan Harris [00:05:34] Totally. That makes sense.

John Dehlin [00:05:36] And if you want to make say anything up front, please make whatever statements you want to. Don't. I don't want to like, control the things you want to express in this interview. I hope you feel free to express whatever you want to express.

Brennan Harris [00:05:48] Okay, cool. No, I think it makes sense to just start at the beginning and talk about my dad and his life a little bit. So he grew up in Sugar City, Idaho, which is kind of a sister city to Rexburg, Idaho, where Rick's college was and where BYU Idaho is now. So he grew up small community, almost 100% Mormon probably. And so people know Sugar City. They know like what kind of town it is around a thousand People probably when he was growing up and grew up farming and working construction and stuff like that in the family business. So our family has been Mormon for. We're like generational Mormons. So the James Loder, if people know some of that, he was a main kind of figure and leader in the ill fated Mormon handcart companies. He's a prominent family ancestor. And then the name Harris, I think comes from Martin Harris. So there's a connection there to deep founding members of the church.

John Dehlin [00:07:04] So you guys are descendants of Martin Harris?

Brennan Harris [00:07:07] Yeah, I think that's where the Harris name comes from. It's the. We always, when I was like, when we were telling family stories, the Loder family was always kind of like front and center in like our family history. We didn't talk as much about Martin Harris, but I think that's where, I mean, there's a lot of Harris's that showed up in Sugar City that had ties to Martin Harris. So I think it's the same family, even if it's not a direct line.

John Dehlin [00:07:34] Okay.

Brennan Harris [00:07:37] And so, yeah, he grew up. Always in the church, going to primary and stuff, but from what he's told me, he wasn't super serious about his involvement in church until kind of right before he left on his mission. So, you know, his friends, some of them were going on missions, some of them weren't. And his. He had a bishop at the time who pulled him aside and kind of had to sit down and like said, okay, we got to get serious about this. You got to like pay all this tithing that you didn't pay and you need to start getting ready to serve. And he did. And he served in the Tempe, Arizona mission.

John Dehlin [00:08:23] Just as a total coincidence, I served four months in the Tempe, Arizona mission.

Brennan Harris [00:08:28] Oh, really?

John Dehlin [00:08:29] Yeah. But just a few years later.

Brennan Harris [00:08:32] Okay. Yeah, he was serving during that little window where there were 18 month missions. And so he only served, you know, a year and a half. And I don't know if there's any more detail that you want about his childhood or anything else before we move on, but that kind of.

John Dehlin [00:08:52] Is there, is there anything, is there anything, you know, about his childhood that you think would be important to. To help, to help us understand, you know, who, who he became and what his strengths and weaknesses were and what he struggled with and didn't struggle with?

Brennan Harris [00:09:10] Yeah, so I wrote a little bit about this. There's kind of a gap in my. My dad would talk a lot about his mission and he would talk a lot about just kind of his Wilder days in high school. But he didn't talk a ton about his childhood, especially early childhood. And maybe that was just because as he aged, he, you know, memories faded or whatever. But it seemed like there was a lot unknown or unsaid about his, you know, like his early school, you know, from when he was ages 5 to 15 or so. And so I don't know exactly, you know, what went on during that time, but I think he probably, you know, he. He had kind of a strained relationship with his father throughout his entire life. So I'm sure that was true when he was a child as well. Worked really hard, hard physical labor all throughout his childhood, his life. And he lived through the flood too. So Sugar City was kind of like annihilated by the Teton Dam flood that happened in the 70s. And he was just a kid when that happened. And so his family was displaced like everyone else. But then because my grandpa was in construction, his own home was kind of like low on the priority list. So he was rebuilding homes for a long time and they were kind of living in just a trailer for a few years. And I imagine that was like a really tough thing to experience as a, you know, a kid. Oh, 12 or 13 years old, I think he would have been. And so that all happened in his childhood, but he didn't talk a ton about, like what it was like to be a kid or just a few memories, you know, from. From that time that he would share.

John Dehlin [00:11:05] So, okay, so when he. So he serves a mission in Tempe, do you know when he met your mom and. And when they got married?

Brennan Harris [00:11:16] Yeah, so they met at. So he served the mission, came back and enrolled at Ricks College. And he met my mom in a, like a book of Mormon class or something there while they were both attending. And she was, I think it was her first or second semester. I mean, at the time it was only a two year college, so. Yeah. So they met and dated for a few months, three or four months, and then decided to get married. And so that was in either 19. It was in 1984. They got married.

John Dehlin [00:11:55] Okay.

Brennan Harris [00:11:56] And then finished out their time together at Rick's. And then my dad started his bachelor's program and then got a master's at Utah State in Logan.

John Dehlin [00:12:11] He was an Aggie.

Brennan Harris [00:12:12] He was a proud Aggie too, which was funny because he worked for the church for so long that both when he was working, when it was Rick's college and byui, he always, like, there was always that animosity toward Provo just Because of his affiliation. He was just way proud of being an Aggie.

John Dehlin [00:12:31] I was always super surprised, living in Cache Valley, how much many of the Aggie graduates hated the Lord's university. Like, because I had gone to byu, but I. I spent way more time as at Utah State than at byu, so I'm. I'm probably way more. I'm three times the Aggie that I am, the cougar, just in terms of years. But, you know, they. They hated. They hated byu. And that's weird because it's a church school, so it was always really weird to see faithful Mormons hating on the church's school so much.

Brennan Harris [00:13:03] Yeah. And that really, it. Like, there was like, a kind of a jokeiness to it, like, oh, Provo sucks. But there was a seriousness to it as well. And I think, like, it was both his time at Utah State and at Rick's College. Because at Rick's, it was just the puny little community school, like, the community college, basically, compared to, like, well, we have a real university, we have sports, we have, you know, research programs and all that kind of stuff. So there definitely was, like, a little man syndrome institutionally, between the two places that I got a big window into. I. Like, if I had ever gone or applied to Provo, I think my dad would have. He would have had problems with it, which I did. I didn't apply to Provo or anything. Yeah. So. And so he was there. My mom lived there. He got his bachelor's in finance and then his master's in hospital administration. And he wrote his thesis or his. Yeah, his master's thesis on women in the workplace. And he was always really interested in that topic, and I think he continued to be fascinated with it through his professional life. Go ahead.

John Dehlin [00:14:25] Yeah. Okay. So. So you said he got a master's as well as a bachelor's at Utah State?

Brennan Harris [00:14:32] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:14:33] And did I read the master's was in, like, hospital administration or healthcare or something?

Brennan Harris [00:14:37] Yeah, it was. It was hospital administration. And they actually. So right after they graduated or after my dad graduated, my mom just finished with her associate's degree, and she kind of, like. I don't think she would mind me saying this, but she always wanted to get a bachelor's degree, but said it was really tough with my dad because he was so concerned with their financial situation and paying for school. He always, like, maintained work through school. He worked at, like, a cabinetry shop there in Cache Valley, and my mom worked doing different stuff, and he was always really, really anxious about being in debt and paying for school and stuff. And he actually got his father. My grandpa helped him while he was in his master's program. He like, gave him. I think it was a pretty small amount of money, but he gave him a couple thousand dollars to help get him through and pay for tuition and housing and everything. And when my dad graduated, on his. The little mortar hat, he had written thanks dad in like velvet lettering on the hat to say, like, thanks for the, the money. Get me through school.

John Dehlin [00:15:59] Nice.

Brennan Harris [00:16:01] But yeah, so. So my mom, that was a big. It wasn't a conflict. It was kind of an unspoken. It was never a conversation they had. But my mom felt that if she wanted to pursue her bachelor's degree, that my dad would have just quit school and gone to work full time to avoid getting further into debt. And so, like, they never had that conversation. It was just something my mom assumed that my dad's reaction would be. And so she just didn't pursue her education, even though she wanted to.

John Dehlin [00:16:36] How soon did your dad end up working at. At Ricks or byu? Idaho.

Brennan Harris [00:16:41] So after he graduated, they were kind of in the job search. They had either an interview or a phone interview to go work in a hospital doing hospital administration in Gainesville, Florida. And as they were like, they were ready to make that move, my dad got a call from someone who knew him or someone referred him in the admissions department at Ricks College and said, hey, we need an admissions officer and I think you should apply for the job. And my dad was like, okay, that has nothing to do really. I mean, hospital administration, college admissions, maybe there's some overlap, but it wasn't. The guy convinced him to do the interview, and they offered him a job at something like less than a half or a third of what his salary would have been as a hospital administrator. But he and my mom talked it over and they felt like that actually was the right choice to stay and take that job. And he like, through the years, he always, like, talked about that decision with a ton of doubt. Like, always wondered, like, what would my life have been like if I'd pursued my. The career I had set up in my master's program instead of kind of falling back and doing the. I don't know if he thought of it maybe as the safer thing that he like, would stay in the town he grew up in and at the university he'd been to and stuff. But that's what he did. He took a low paying job as a low level admissions officer at Ricks College. And so that's when that's it, that was in 1989.

John Dehlin [00:18:22] And you're saying that over the years he expressed regret to you or, or at least confusion about that decision and wondering if it had been a good one?

Brennan Harris [00:18:32] Yeah, on a number of, like a number of times he maybe not so much regret, maybe a few times he spoke with regret, but just wondering, like, I don't know if I made the right decision there. I don't know if I made the right career decision. And I don't know if that for him was primarily financial, that he would have made a lot more money in hospital administration or just moving out of the town he grew up in and having a totally different kind of life that way.

John Dehlin [00:18:59] Yeah. How many, how many kids did your parents have?

Growing Up in Rexburg as a Church Family

Brennan Harris [00:19:05] There are four of us. So there were three boys. I'm the oldest, and then kind of four years between the next brother and the next brother and then there's a little sister.

John Dehlin [00:19:16] And what, what year were you born?

Brennan Harris [00:19:18] 1990.

John Dehlin [00:19:19] 1990. Okay. Was there, do you know if there was? If like working for the Lord, Working for the Lord's church. The Lord's. One of the Lord's, you know, church's universities. Was that in the calculus for your parents at all, do you think, when they decided to work for byu, Idaho?

Brennan Harris [00:19:38] That's a good question. I don't know. They talked about decision like they'd received. They prayed about it and received a prompting that that's what they should do. So I guess that's always been part of it. And then in later years as my dad became more involved with. Because there's kind of a gray area between, like when you work for a church university, are you an ecclesiastical figure or are you just a professor, an administrator or whatever? And I think that line's a little bit blurred anyway. But then my dad became the know in later years, campus ward bishop and all that kind of stuff. So the spiritual or church centric aspect of it definitely became central as his career progressed in the university system.

John Dehlin [00:20:28] I have a comment from a listener. Warren writes, that is church employment getting paid 1/2 less than market rate. It is sickening that they would penny pinch their employees when they have over $100 billion in reserves for what. So Warren is basically saying he's sorry that church employees have to be paid so little. That's just Warren's opinion. Do you have thoughts on that or is that even relevant to your story?

Brennan Harris [00:20:55] Brendan, by the end of his career, he was making a very good living. But I had a lot of. I went to byu, I got my bachelor's degree there. And I had tons of professors who, like, I had a professor who worked at NASA and he decided there's so many people who. A lot of them maybe grew up in the area. Like in East Idaho, there are so many people who have incredible qualifications who come and they choose to work at BYU Idaho, and they're not making anywhere near what they'd be making in industry. For those people who have that luxury of having kind of an industrial or professional kind of work background could make that. But there's something about BYUI that really attracts people. I met a lot of really quality. I had amazing professors there. So there's something about this school just being there that is interesting to folks who apply and get jobs there.

John Dehlin [00:21:55] So tell us what your family life was like growing up in Rex. Were you in Sugar City or Rexburg?

Brennan Harris [00:22:02] Sugar City.

John Dehlin [00:22:03] So in how far Sugar. Again, you may have already said this. How far is Sugar City from Rexburg?

Brennan Harris [00:22:08] It's like six miles or something like that. It's like a.

John Dehlin [00:22:11] Like a suburb.

Brennan Harris [00:22:12] Travel. Yeah. If Rexburg expands more, it'll be like, swallowed up by.

John Dehlin [00:22:18] Okay.

Brennan Harris [00:22:19] And it's already starting to happen. You know, development is kind of like closing the gap between the two towns. Okay, so.

John Dehlin [00:22:25] So what was it like growing up? Well, what was your family like from kind of a Mormon perspective? You know, what, did you guys do all the things or not do all the things? Was it what you would expect from a stereotypical Mormon home? Or not? And then what was it like for you growing up in Sugar City slash Rexburg? Because for those who aren't LDS or don't know much about Mormon culture, I've joked and said that Rexburg is kind of Mormonism Saudi Arabia. And what I mean by that is just it's known as being, you know, provost known. Provo, Utah, is known as being, like, really conservative, you know, Mormon, you know, college town. But Rexburg is like, known as being the extreme, like the most orthodox, the most harsh, the most strict, even. Even taking Mormonism, which is already kind of a really orthodox religion, even further. So I don't know if that was your experience, but talk about your family growing up and talk about what it was like to grow up in Rexburg for you.

Brennan Harris [00:23:25] Okay. For my family. Well, maybe I can tell a story that kind of illustrates it. So when I was probably like seven or eight, it was just me and my dad in a sacrament meeting. I don't know why it was just he and I alone, but it might have been that my brother was just born and My mom was at home with the baby. Anyway, we were there and the sacrament came around to us. And I picked up the little water cup and I looked at my dad and I just dumped it out in the tray, like, defiance of that. And he didn't wait for the sacrament to be done. He took me by the hand and he took me out in the foyer between the double doors, and he smacked me, you know, spanked me, smacked my butt and said, like, don't you ever disrespect the sacrament like that. And so that was. That was a lot the dynamic a little bit with the church. Like, we were super active in church. We went, like to all the meetings every week, sacrament, everything. And there was like a heavy expectation that, like, you respect it, you take it seriously, and you follow the rules of the church. And so that, like, growing up, when, like, the topic of missions came up, there were three of us boys, at least for me and for my brother, who's just younger than me, the question of, like, whether or not we'd serve missions was not a question. And my dad literally said that. He said, like, it's not a choice, like, you will serve a mission. And. And I never express, like, I didn't want to or whatever, but he just, like, preemptively was like, you're going to serve a mission. And so, yeah, and that was. My dad was super serious parent. He took his responsibility to raise his children very, very seriously. And he put a lot of, you know, he like, coached our teams and came to everything we had in school, growing up. And. But he was really hard. He was a. He was like. He was really, really hard on us. The. When we were children, like from the age of probably about, you know, eight or nine, he came up with these chores that we would have to do in the summer when school was out to keep us busy. And they were like, literally moving rocks. We had rocks that bordered our planting areas and stuff. And he would make us move the rocks, scrape dirt off of the little black plastic covering the stuff, and move the rocks back. So it was kind of like a gulag sort of work where it was just totally pointless and just to keep us busy. And so he expected us to work, work hard beyond just making up nihilistic task force. He. We did real work, too. My grandpa had a. Maintained a farm the whole time. I, you know, pretty small farm with just some grain and 40 cows or something. And so we would work the farm and, you know, projects around the house. And we were encouraged to get jobs early at an early age, doing some mowing lawns and typical ways that kids can make money in a small town. So that was hard work and punishment was a big part of. A big part of growing up.

Family Life and Kip as a Father

John Dehlin [00:27:11] Did you guys have fun? Did you have one on one fun with your dad? Did your family have fun together? Did you and your siblings have fun times with your dad? Was it a. Because there's like harsh, strict, made us work dad, but then there's also like fun dad and teach us character dad, where you know, they're just trying to give you, teach you the values of hard work and so that you'll be a great adult. So was there that fun and was there a balance or was it pretty much always serious or was he gone all the time? Were there. What were the good. Were there good parts and what were they, you know, and how balanced was it?

Brennan Harris [00:27:46] Yeah, there, there were definitely good parts. We had. We would like go on camping trips a lot and stuff as a family. This is when I was a child. So when it was just me and my brother, who's just younger than me, I remember doing a lot of stuff, camping, road trips and, and stuff like that. And when I was, my dad traveled a lot for work when he was in admissions because they would do the CES tours where they'd go and they'd meet in like a stake center and they'd invite all the youth from that stake to come and they do a presentation just the way any college recruiter would do, where they put up slides, give out T shirts and swag and try to get people to be excited about coming to school at Rick's. And so my dad did that for a lot of years, for like 15 or 20 years probably where he was traveling and when they were like in the traveling season, he would be gone about half the time or, you know, for some weeks, sometimes more. And so we were used to him being gone for long stretches as kids. And he took me on a few of those trips. I got to go to Seattle with him one time when he did a tour of the Pacific Northwest there. And when I was an 11 year old, that was the coolest thing ever. Staying in hotels and riding an airplane for the first time and stuff. And then he was always like, you know, he taught us to play catch and just normal stuff. Like. So there was, that was in there. Definitely. There was like fun and good times when I was a kid. But he was, he was mercurial too. Like my. I remember so many times my little brother and I would be playing, you know, at home inside. And we'd hear the garage door open because my dad was home from work. And we just, like, look at each other and be like, oh, no, that's home. And if he opened the door and he was whistling, we were okay. But if he opened the door and we heard, like, a sigh or, like, a heavy breath, it was gonna be a bad day. And, yeah, he was. He was really concerned about orderliness. And so, like, anything out of place was a big, big problem. Like, my brother left a bucket, like, just like a sand bucket out on the lawn one time. And, like, my dad said he couldn't go trick or treating that year because he left a bucket on the lawn. And so. And he would, you know, yell about it and be really intense about that kind of stuff.

John Dehlin [00:30:30] Interesting.

Brennan Harris [00:30:32] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:30:34] So did you guys do the normal things, like family home evening and scriptures to family scripture study, family prayer? What. What was your home spiritual life like when you guys were kids?

Brennan Harris [00:30:53] We did family scripture study and home evening kind of briefly. It wasn't a part of my childhood. We just didn't do that. And my extended family is a little more lax. And so my dad kind of had some of that character as well, of a little more of a rebellious spirit of being. He was really skeptical of, like, authority in a lot of ways. And so, like, he liked to wear, like, crazy ties. And, like, a lady in church was like, you know, you really shouldn't be passing the sacrament or whatever with a tie like that. And he just hated that kind of stuff and was like, I'm gonna wear colored shirts. I'm not. And so we did some of the things. But in terms of, like, the cultural expectations of Mormonism, he actually kind of actively resisted a lot of that kind of stuff during my childhood.

John Dehlin [00:31:50] We actually have someone who is. Who knew. Who knew Kip on his mission, listening in. His name is Derek Larsen. He says Kip wasn't a Nazi Mormon on the mission. There's Rexburg Sugar City Mormon that is more closely aligned with Bountiful or Springville Mormonism. So he's basically saying that Kip wasn't a super obnoxious missionary. Thanks, Derek, for sharing that.

Brennan Harris [00:32:16] Yeah, well, he told me, too. Like, he. When I went on. When I was getting ready to go on a mission, he was like, don't let the mission change you. Like, don't let him get in your head about what you need to be doing or who you need to be. Just be yourself and enjoy it. And so that was his. He, too, on his mission one time. It Was like, against the. It was a pretty big rule that you do not, like, leave the mission boundaries like it is in any mission. And he took a carload of elders one time down to Mexico overnight, and they did, like, an overnight road trip down there and bought some stuff and over the border, and he got, like, publicly chastised at his own meeting for that. That's a story he told. I don't know, like, how true that is, but

John Dehlin [00:33:04] I'm kind of getting to. Oh, what were you saying?

Brennan Harris [00:33:06] He just had that side to him of, like, fun and kind of recklessness, but when they were his rules, they would. He was really serious about them.

John Dehlin [00:33:16] Yeah. So I'm getting the sense of, like, not culturally super orthodox, a little bit. A little bit culturally unorthodox on the one hand, and. And wanting and respecting free will and free agency and individual personality. But then you're also talking about this kind of strictness at home and this kind of seriousness and sometimes harshness. And so it's a bit of a. It's a bit of a duality, I guess I'm. I'm hearing. Is that how you thought of him as kind of cool and fun, but also harsh and strict? Both?

Brennan Harris [00:33:51] Absolutely. Absolutely. There were things that, like, as a kid, I never worried about my father being upset or being disappointed in me about, like, whatever I chose to, like, whatever my interests were. He was totally supportive. He was really big into baseball in his. When he was a kid, and even as an adult, he was, like, a volunteer or not a volunteer. I guess he got paid, but he was, like a weekend umpire, so he would. He was super into baseball, and he never made us, like, watch it or play. I didn't choose to play baseball, and he never once brought it up like, I should do that. So he was really into, like, autonomy in these certain areas, and. And it really was like, if I were to draw a category around it, it would be like his material world was what he really guarded and what he was really strict about. So it all had to do with stuff like our lawn and the storage shed and where things were hung up. He kind of had that aspect of obsessive compulsive disorder. Obviously, like, I. He was never diagnosed with that or whatever, but it seemed to me like when things were out of place, that's when he really was.

John Dehlin [00:35:10] So was he a neat freak? Was he just a total, organized neat freak?

Brennan Harris [00:35:15] Yeah, yeah. He, like. He bought an engraver, a little, like, buzzing engraver so he could engrave his name on every. So everything in our shop had his initials or his name on it, everything. And he had two engravers. And I think it was because he needed to engrave his name on the engraver. And so that was the joke. He maybe just bought two engravers, but that was the joke we always made, is that he needed to have his name on everything. He needed to be aware of where things were, that they were put back carefully. And, yeah, that was it.

John Dehlin [00:35:52] I'm just speculating that maybe his rougher upbringing, where they were materially challenged, where they were poor, maybe they lived in poverty, that he took stuff and possession and objects really seriously because he knew poverty and he knew the value of money and he knew the value of objects. And he probably believed in taking care of your stuff because stuff is hard to come by when you're poor. And he probably wanted to pass that on to his children. Even though you're going to live higher socioeconomic level than I did, I still want you to value money and stuff because, you know, it's. It's precious, it has value, and it should be. Is that. Is that a possible theory?

Brennan Harris [00:36:35] Yeah, totally. And I don't think my dad and his life really lived in poverty. I think. I mean, the flood was kind of a. It established my grandfather's career in his business because he was awarded a ton of contracts to help in that reconstruction effort. So they were. But my grandpa grew up during the Great Depression. They actually, he was kind of. His family was one of the founding families of Sugar City. And then they went out and homesteaded in Montana. And after they were there a few years, the family was, like, starving during the Great Depression, and so they moved back to Sugar City.

John Dehlin [00:37:15] So maybe your grandpa rubbed off on your dad.

Brennan Harris [00:37:18] Yeah, that was definitely a generational thing that was passed on. I don't think my dad ever lived in extreme poverty, but his whole ethic was around making sure you make, like, good financial decisions and working hard. That was like, his big thing, raising us.

John Dehlin [00:37:36] So I just received my favorite comment of the year. Jacob Williams writes, I just realized that I need to buy a second engraver.

Brennan Harris [00:37:44] You do. You can never get it all fully engraving unless you have two engravers.

John Dehlin [00:37:48] I will see you engrave your engravers.

Brennan Harris [00:37:50] Exactly.

John Dehlin [00:37:51] I love it. Thank you for that feedback. How do you have a sense growing up for your dad's testimony of the church? Was he a true blue orthodox Mormon? Was he a literalist? Was he strict about Mormon stuff? I'm sure we're going to get into, you know, law of chastity stuff in your teen years, but do you Have a sense. Let's just say before age 12, whether or not he was like, church is true, don't ever criticize the brethren, obey the commandments. You know that type of orthodox believing Mormon.

Brennan Harris [00:38:27] Yeah, he might have been enough on the fringe that I don't think he ever gave me the idea that like you never criticize the leadership or you never question that the authority or whatever. But he was a true believer. At around that age. 13, 12, 13. I went to my parents and I was really distraught because I was having some issues with my own testimony and feeling pressured like I needed to get a confirmation and not feeling like it was coming. And he just reaffirmed like, I'm not going to tell you what to believe, but you need to know that like I know this is true. And so yeah, he didn't. He did. He might have expressed doubt to me one time in his life and it was after he'd worked at the university for a while and had contact with Elder Bednar. And he said, we were talking about it one time and he said, you

John Dehlin [00:39:26] know,

Brennan Harris [00:39:28] someone like David Bednar could not be fooled if this weren't true. He's too smart of a guy. I remember him saying that. And so it made me want. It makes me wonder now like did he ever have doubts? Like did he have to rely on, you know, some kind of intellectual exercise around, like, well, there are smart people who are Mormons so it must be true kind of a thing. But other than that it was always like affirmations of belief.

John Dehlin [00:39:56] Okay, so do you want to talk about, is there anything else about your childhood that you want to mention that would be an important part of the story or those early years with your parents? What was your parents relationship like growing up? Were they in love? Were they affectionate? Was it more like business contract where each had their role? Were they fighting a lot? What were your parents, what was their relationship like?

Brennan Harris [00:40:22] I don't think I ever saw my parents have like a full blown fight. The there was sometimes kind of like passive aggressive. Like I could tell there was something kind of weird between them but they never really blew up at each other in front of us as kids that I can remember. My mom was kind of in the same situation we were as kids where like my dad ran the show and he, whatever his mood was was like, that's how our day was going to go. And so my mom was always very accommodating my dad and really worked hard to make sure everything at home was kind of perfect for him. And you know, she gave a lot. Their whole marriage, I think, and like with the school thing, you know, she decided to forego school and we didn't even bring it up as a discussion. I think that's kind of like, that was the vibe I get when I think about my parents relationship. It's like it worked and it was good. While I was a kid, they were affectionate with each other and they, you know, loved each other and they were open and talked and. But my mom was definitely. She was making a lot of things work in their marriage.

John Dehlin [00:41:43] Did she work outside the home? Not really. No.

Brennan Harris [00:41:47] No, she. She was always busy. She like, you know, was active in church and did a ton of volunteering at our schools and stuff, especially when all four of us were kind of school age. And so she was always. She was like. But no, she didn't have like legal, like official employment until 10 years ago or so.

Brennan's Childhood Questions About the Church

John Dehlin [00:42:18] Okay, so how you said you started having questions about the church when you were 12?

Brennan Harris [00:42:28] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:42:30] What was going on there? Why were you having questions about the church when you were 12?

Brennan Harris [00:42:35] I just could. Once I got into like the young men's program once, I was kind of like Aaronic priesthood. I. I just remember hearing a lot about, like, the importance of having a testimony of the Book of Mormon, particularly. And it just wasn't clicking for me. I would read the Book of Mormon and I would pray about it and I would just. Nothing. It was like I was talking to an empty room. And it just seemed weird to me too. Like, even though I grew up in Sugar City and I was kind of insulated, I knew from school and reading and stuff that, like, there were all kinds of other people in the world that. And most people weren't Mormon. Like, we were all Mormon in my town. But like, if you were born in India, you'd be Hindu or Buddhist or whatever. And if you were born in Central or South America, you'd probably be Catholic. And so I just. That was kind of my thought process. Like, well, I'm Mormon because my parents are Mormon. It doesn't mean the church is true because I'm born, like, I wasn't just lucky enough to be born in the right religion. So I just thought, okay, this is just something I am because of. I'm descended from pioneers or whatever who settled this area. So I was kind of having that. And for a year, a whole year, I read the Book of Mormon every day. When I was like 12 years old, I read the Book of Mormon every night. And I would always pray about it, like, almost Every night, be like, God, if this is true, just, I'm ready to like, receive that answer. And nothing. So it was becoming a crisis for me as a little 12 year old. And I, one day I just approached my parents and I was sobbing and being like, I don't think I believe this. And I knew, like, it was hard for me because I knew that there was the expectation that I would serve a mission. And I didn't know how I was going to do any of that if I didn't believe in it.

John Dehlin [00:44:40] How did you resolve it?

Brennan Harris [00:44:43] Went on a camping trip and there was a testimony meeting and I bore my testimony and I finally felt good. As I was bearing my testimony, I, you know, said Joseph Smith was a prophet. I know Joseph Smith was a prophet, prophet. And I just felt this amazing feeling that like, he was a prophet. And I grabbed hold of that and I ran with it for the next 10 years.

John Dehlin [00:45:10] So how old were you at that point?

Brennan Harris [00:45:12] Thirteen.

John Dehlin [00:45:13] Oh, wow. Okay. Yeah, that's interesting. My same thing with me. My, my strongest testimony moments as a youth were in like youth conferences or, you know, temple trips where either I was, you know, in a group with all the Mormon youth and testimony meetings that either things I heard or things that I said were like, really formative. So if you want to get people really committed to a religion organization, get a bunch of youth and adults together, have them bearing their testimonies a lot back and forth, and something, something powerful is going to happen there. Right. Emotionally. Right. And if you get people to associate the emotion with it being true, you can lock them in. Yeah. So your dad was bishop a couple times. Now, was that of student wards or your home ward or one of each. And talk about what it was like to have your dad working at byu, Idaho and also serving as bishop.

Kip's Rise to Bishop and Dean of Students

Brennan Harris [00:46:11] Yeah. So his first calling as he served in Bishop Rick in a single student ward that was a university ward for a few months, maybe a year, he was like a clerk. And so as part of that, we took turns having the. Because all these young single students don't have families, they set up like an alternative family home evening system where every Monday night a group of the students from the ward goes to the home of one of the bishopric members and does family home evening inside of a real home with a real family. And so when my dad became a clerk, that started happening. So that really got us started with. That was the first time we'd done family home evening. It was when my dad was a clerk and then after he'd done that for a Few months he was called as a bishop of a single student ward on campus and did that for five or six years.

John Dehlin [00:47:12] So would you attend with him to the student ward or would your family go to your home ward?

Brennan Harris [00:47:18] Family went to the home ward mostly. But if he. We visited all the time. So, you know, probably once every month or two we would go as a family and attend my dad's campus ward. And every Monday night for like five years there were groups of these home evening groups of students at our house. So we would do, you know, like all kinds of stuff, like Halloween parties and all the ward parties. A lot of that happened at our house in that five or six year span.

John Dehlin [00:47:52] So was there anything you noticed? Like in Mormonism, a bishop is a pretty high calling. It's kind of like a priest in the Catholic Church. It's the head of a congregation. As you were a teenage kid and you're noticing, wow, my dad's a bishop now, that's a pretty big deal. Was there anything you were noticing or observing about your dad or your family and the intersection of bishop with family and personal life?

Brennan Harris [00:48:18] Yeah, totally. So in terms of, from my perspective as like a young teenager, so I probably didn't have the best perspective on this, but it seemed like my parents relationship was the best during that period. Like they both were really involved in campus word activities and it seemed like having the young single students over to the house and like both my dad and my mom seemed very fulfilled by that, by those interactions. My dad would come home and just be like, I think like a lot of bishops, probably every bishop, he was overwhelmed by that responsibility. And especially like when he would, you know, as part of being a bishop, you kind of take confession and counsel with students who are having real problems. That was like that weighted super heavy on it. Like he'd come home from like Tuesday nights or whenever they scheduled interviews and would just be like emotionally wiped out. And pretty soon after he was called, he was like, this was like in the early 2000s and everyone was starting to get Internet in their homes around that time. He was like, we cannot have the Internet in our house because he's talking to all these guys that are viewing pornography. And you know, from probably like the more vanilla or typical kind of guys confessing like, yeah, I view pornography to people who are like, you know, into the dark parts of the Internet and really experiencing bad effects from pornography use or like, so my dad said, you know, and so he became very sensitive about that. Like we do. And so for a lot of years when Everyone was, like, online and connected. We. We didn't have a computer or the Internet or anything, because he was.

John Dehlin [00:50:12] Or smartphones. Or smartphones.

Brennan Harris [00:50:15] Oh. See, smartphones weren't even, like, a thing yet. So, yeah, we were really behind, but it was because my dad was really paranoid about porn.

John Dehlin [00:50:26] Yeah. Yeah. Because a bishop's job in a student ward is to hear all the confessions about, you know, sex, sex stuff, sexual indiscretions, breaking the law of chastity, college kids having sex or messing around. But then college kids masturbating and looking at porn and having to decide, do they get to stay at BYU or Idaho or not? Do they get kicked out or not? Do I sign their ecclesiastical endorsement or not? And it really messes with people's lives because if you go to a church school, there are a lot of These classes that BYU's make you take that don't transfer. And also there's sometimes there are accreditation issues where, you know, and so. And so, like, if you get kicked out of a. Of a BYU school, it can, like, seriously affect your life to the point of, you know, causing you an extra year or two of time and expense. And so I would guess that's a really stressful role as. As a bishop of a. Of a student ward at byu, because there's so much confession. Kids having sex, kids messing around, kids masturbating, trying to decide who's worthy, who's not, who gets shamed when they can't take the sacrament, who can't go to the temple, you know, and who gets kicked out of school. That's. That's intense stuff. And I. I know this because I was a counselor at Utah State University, and I would talk to the students that had to transfer from byu, Idaho and Rick's to Logan, and just the havoc that it wreaks on their lives. And so your dad would have been right in the middle of all that stuff. Tell me if I'm wrong. I don't mean to be, like, inserting all that in your dad's story, but that's just. That's what I know about what it's like to be a bishop of a student ward.

Brennan Harris [00:52:18] Oh, yeah, yeah. And the. But he also, at the same time, he was also on the school on the university side. So, like, yeah, he. And he had a very conflicted relationship with that through his entire time there. Like, as a bishop, I think he was a lot more chill than was typical. So he told stories and he would talk a lot about, like, confessions. He almost to the point of, like, Revealing who people were and like, what they'd said to him. He wasn't like way into discretion or whatever. When he was with us, with family. He would be very open about like, these students are having such and such a problem and it's hard. And he wouldn't like, name students, but shared a little more detail probably than what I would be comfortable with if I shared something with a bishop. But he seemed to really err on the side of compassion when it came to ecclesiastical endorsement, decisions, stuff like wherever he could if there was any fuzziness and like, well, they kind of like brushed up against the line but didn't cross it. He was always, I think, in favor of a more compassionate approach. So he talked a lot about when new semesters would start. You'd get kind of like a whole new ward every semester. And so you'd have students in the ward who were being served by other bishops on campus. And he said like every semester he'd have people coming in and being like, well, I'm working on some stuff right now. You know, I watched some R rated movies and so my bishop, in my last word told me I shouldn't take the sacrament for like three months as I work on that. And he would be like, no, you watched an R rated movie, that doesn't matter. You can take the sacrament. And so he seemed to be sort of on that track even I think with things like casual masturbation and stuff. I think he kind of was lax about it as a bishop. Well, to be honest.

John Dehlin [00:54:21] Oh, go ahead. What were you saying?

Brennan Harris [00:54:22] And then in terms of kicking people out of school, sometimes he would be like, oh, you'll never believe. Like, and this was mostly in his role as like a school employee. He would be like, you'll never believe we found a married student with another married student. And they, we caught, you know, caught him having sex in a car and now they're getting kicked out. And he would tell it as kind of like a salacious sort of story that he was like, it was a funny story to tell. But other times he was like, man, the school's decided to kick this student out over, you know, like one drunk party. It just seems like it's an overreaction. We should maybe work with the kid more. And so sometimes he seemed to really be okay with like strict punishment. But at other times he seemed like he thought the school was going overboard or being a little too puritanical. Its approach to ecclesiastical endorsements and suspensions and expulsions and stuff like that.

John Dehlin [00:55:20] That's all a Little bit foreshadowing of what's going to happen to him in the story, right?

Brennan Harris [00:55:24] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:55:24] Yeah. Really quickly, listeners. We've got 660 live listeners right now. We're about to really get into the meat of the story, and I just want to invite anyone who feels comfortable to share this live stream on Facebook, on Instagram, on Twitter, wherever you do. It would be really great to see if we can get, you know, a thousand listeners to this interview, because this is a really important story. It affects BYU students everywhere. It affects. It's talking about Mormon sexual shame, ecclesiastical, you know, councils, you know, family situations, just all sorts of important stuff, mental health. So please consider sharing this story if you're willing and able and if it's safe for you to do so. Would be great to have as many people as possible get to hear Brennan's story. Thanks for considering. So, Brennan, it sounds like if. I'm just trying to get a sense for your dad. And by the way, as I watch the news about your dad's passing, I paid attention to comments people made, and there were a lot of people that said, Kip was a great guy. He was really kind. I loved him. And. And that's. That's kind of jiving with what I'm hearing from you, that he wasn't the worst type of Mormon. He. In some ways, he was a. A good type of Mormon, a relaxed. A more relaxed Mormon socially. Not super uptight, erred on compassion. He was a believer, but he erred on the side of love and compassion, independence, personal free agency and growth. Doesn't sound like a kind of like a mean, jerky guy from what I'm hearing so far. Sounds like kind of a reasonable, nice, even a little bit progressive kind of guy.

Brennan Harris [00:57:13] Absolutely. And I think there obviously were, especially as he became dean of students, there were kids he kicked out of school or like he was involved in those councils or whatever that met to do that. And so I know there are people who he rubbed the wrong way or they have, like, bad experiences with him. He also was just kind of like a. Tell it like it is. He wasn't afraid to be honest in a lot of situations. And so sometimes he said things that just made people feel uncomfortable or seemed like a little abrasive. And so he. There were people that didn't like him for sure. But for the most part, I think he helped a lot of people, and he made a big impact on a lot of people in a very positive way, especially as a campus where bishop. Like, there are people today who Are this happens in a lot of student wards. It's the design of student wards in a way. But there are families that exist because he did that kind of campus bishop matchmaking. And I think he saved some people's lives. Both save people from suicide and save them from, you know, as the dean of students, he helped coordinate mental health services for students in crisis. And I've heard people say that, like, your dad saved my life. And so he. I think he had a very positive impact. What. What.

John Dehlin [00:58:46] Tell us about the angel on the tractor kind of nickname that your dad had. Do you know about that and what that was about and. Yeah, what extent that represents the type of man he was, huh?

Brennan Harris [00:58:59] Yeah. So we lived in Sugar City, like, in town. So we lived in, like, a normal yard, a normal kind of neighborhood. But he bought a tractor, like a small. Like a mini tractor, which is like, crazy overkill for anything you would do in a yard in, like, a residential area. But, um, he got it because he. Every winter, you know, East Idaho winters are like, a lot of places. They're like, notoriously bitter and cold and a lot of snow some years. And so he. Every morning it snowed, even if it was like a little skiff, he would wake up and he would plow, like, driveways and walkways in our area. So. And as the years went on and he got, like, more equipment, like the tractor, he would wake up, like, early and earlier and do more and more sometimes, you know, shoveling snow from, like, church parking lot, church sidewalks and parking lots. And then like any single parent families or widows that were kind of in our general neighborhood, he would go and plow their snow every morning. And when we were kids, he'd wake us up and have us come help just shoveling sidewalks and stuff. But he did it consistently over 20 years or so every winter. So that's where that nickname comes from. And he even, like, not in the wintertime, just, like, in general, he was very into taking responsibility for other people. So, you know, he'd like, every single day it seemed like he'd be saying something like, you know, sister so and so could probably use some help with getting her firewood chopped and stacked this year. Like, let's. And he'd send one of us over to go see and set up an appointment to bring, like, a young men's group over to do so. He was coordinating service, but not in kind of the way that happens, probably in most words, where it's very checklisty, like, oh, it's been a few months. Like, let's do a service project. He was constantly aware of the material needs of people. And as a campus ward bishop, I think that was just. It's just the same thing there as well. He just took responsibility upon himself for the well being of a lot of people in his life.

John Dehlin [01:01:35] I mean that just sounds extra cool. Like he's a guy that loved people and liked to serve people.

Brennan Harris [01:01:41] Yeah, definitely. And this I know he was heavily influenced in that kind of that ethic that he had by David Bednar. So when he worked, when he became the campus ward bishop, when he had the call, but before he was set apart, he worked Elder Bednar, or David Bednar was the president of Ricks College at that time. It might have been transitioned over to byu Idaho actually at that point. But David Bednar oversaw that transition from a two year college and then in the year 2000 it became a four year university with accredited programs. And that happened over the course of like a year. It was a very rapid change and David Benner oversaw that. This was just prior to his becoming an apostle. And so during that time my dad had a personal relationship with him. And one of the things that when Bednar talked to my dad about his call, he invited him into his office and he told my. My dad told the story all the time that David Bednar said, kip, the way you have to serve in these roles is the way the God touched the stones in the story of the brother of Jared in the Book of Mormon, that he touched the stones one by one. And I think David Bednar published a book about that actually that was called One by one or something like that. But he was on this, Bednar was on this kick when he was in contact with my dad. And that was the advice he gave my dad is when you serve people, serve them one by one and really like get to know their needs personally. And that's how you should carry out your ministry as you're going to be a new bishop now. My dad really took that to heart and I think that was like a really formative experience for him and I think it drove a lot of his behavior and activity in the for the rest of his life.

John Dehlin [01:03:47] So your dad really loved and respected David Bednar?

Brennan Harris [01:03:50] Oh yeah, yeah. Even before he became an apostle. Like he liked David Bednar before it was cool to like David Bednar kind of in a way the he would. I remember, I think when I was about nine years old, he invited a week visited my dad at work on campus and he took us up and introduced us to Bednar in his office. And I remember as a kid, he let me sit in his, like, his swivel chair, and he spun me around, and then he gave us candy or something. But, yeah, that. That was late 90s, when he really started to form a close bond with David Bednar as an employee.

John Dehlin [01:04:32] Nice. Okay, so what other parts of your story do you want to talk about or share kind of before we get into when things started going south? Is there any parts of your personal story or your dad's story or your family's story that you think are really important for us to know before we start understanding how things kind of fell apart?

Discovering the Affair and Family Fallout

Brennan Harris [01:04:59] Sure. So I. From my perspective, a big shift happened while I was serving a mission. So I. Things with my family seemed fine and seemed like things were great. I left on my mission, and then when I came back, it seemed like I came home to a very strained situation and that, like, things were not going well in the family, particularly between my mom and my dad. So on one of my emails home, my mom said, like, you know, for the whole. The whole correspondence was very much like, oh, it's exciting. You know, this is what I'm doing, and here's what's going on back in Sugar City. And. But there was one time my mom sent me an email and said, like, she was getting treatment for, like, clinical depression, basically. And I. That just kind of came out. I was like, oh, I had no idea that that was going on. This was maybe halfway, a little more than halfway through my mission, like, the last three quarters. And so I didn't. And so I kind of knew coming back that there had been some trouble with my mom's mental health. And then when I came home, I could feel it when I was back home that things were not quite right. And it was hard to talk to my dad. He corresponded really openly with me through email when I was on my mission, but when I came home, it was like we couldn't even talk. It was just. He was so awkward and withdrawn and reserved, which we'd always had kind of a strained relationship, but I just expected that after my mission, I've had this amazing correspondence with him. It's changed our relationship. We're so much closer now, but it was the opposite. It was like he was so shut off and didn't want to talk, seem uncomfortable around me. And so I moved out. I started school at byui, and I moved out of home as quickly as I could just because it was so weird.

John Dehlin [01:07:14] Tell us again what year you came

Brennan Harris [01:07:15] home from your mission. 2013. The start of 2013.

John Dehlin [01:07:20] So this would have been six years before he passed away.

Brennan Harris [01:07:23] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:07:24] Do you have any idea what, what was going on for your dad at that time? Have you been able to talk to your mom? Like what, whatever you're able to share about, like what. What changed, why she was depressed? Because, I mean, when you say something like they never fought in front of us, the old me would have said, wow, what a great couple. The psycho, you know, the PhD psychology me that has counseled a lot of couples. Now that that can be a sign of a great marriage. It can also be a sign of real distress, of a tendency to hide or, or internalize or avoid intimacy or connection or conflict or, or meaningful discussion. And so a marriage void of any conflict can, can be an alarm. And so tell, tell me what you've been able to piece together or what your mom's been able to share that you're comfortable sharing about what was going on and why she was so depressed and why your dad was acting weird.

Brennan Harris [01:08:24] Well, the, this might be embarrassing to my mom if I'm going to say this, but it's not like it's a secret, but my mom was, she really had. It was like a chemical, hormonal, clinical depression as she went through like pre menopause. That was really when it. So it wasn't very situational. I don't think my mom's depression, it was, it was like hormonal, clinical, chemical, serious depression. And the, and that was part of what she like emailed to me is like different procedures she was having and different like medications and stuff she was working with. And so I don't think it was anything that happened that sparked the depression, but the other way around actually, that. Because my mom was kind of the fixer and the accommodator in the relationship of my parents once she needed help and she couldn't make the world right for my dad anymore. My dad was just like so upset and really was not very. Both from what I've heard from my mom and from what I saw personally. He was not supportive of her through that period. He just shut down. And once my mom stopped being like the manager of the relationship and being able to accommodate my dad, it was over pretty much. He really withdrew in their relationship. And at the same time, again, this is piecing together, this is hindsight, but he was starting to have a more and more developed extramarital relationship with a woman who our family had known for a long time. And it was someone who was like in our ward and Part of the community. And I remember even before I left on my mission when I was probably 17, I remember asking my dad about it. I said, hey, what's going on between you and this person? And he was like, oh, it's not, you know, I'm just, you know, helping her out. There's nothing weird going on. But I was getting weird vibes already about that relationship when I was, like, a long time ago. But then it was just something we kind of lived with as a family and just figured, like, well, kind of seems a little weird. It doesn't seem, like, super appropriate that my dad is spending a lot of time with this neighbor and helping with yard projects, but whatever. I guess he's just being a good neighbor. But then as his relationship with my mom kind of deteriorated, I think from what I've been able to understand, that relationship became more and more involved, where they started to confide more in each other. And eventually that developed into like a full blown, like a sexual relationship, an affair. And I don't know exactly, like, what the milestones were there. I don't know the timeline exactly, but by the end, that had. So there was a complete breakdown in the relationship between my mom and dad. And then ramping up of this relationship with this neighbor.

John Dehlin [01:11:53] And as someone who is a child of a divorce, that was a complicated marriage, I'll say tactfully, I was able to talk to both my parents very candidly about timelines and, you know, parties that were involved, etc. Were you able to have those types of conversations with your mom to and to know what she knew and when she knew, even to know if. If she knows for sure whether that relationship started before she got depressed. In other words, is there a chance that her depression sounds like you already said no to this, But I'm still just wanting to make sure that it wasn't that your mom found out that your dad was with somebody else and so that made her depressed. You're pretty sure that she got depressed because she kind of got worn down, just. Just sort of being the facilitator of the relationship or the enabler to make the relationship work. And when she burned out of that, that your dad started developing an interest in somebody else?

Brennan Harris [01:12:55] Yeah, and to hear my mom say it, it's not that she got worn down. It was just this depression that hit her in her, like, late 40s. It was gonna happen no matter what. But, you know, because she had to be so engaged to maintain that marriage then that she couldn't anymore because she was so she was just knocked out by it. And so from what I understand, I could be wrong. There are people who know more about this than me who are, like, the parties involved, I guess. But from what I understand, there was already kind of the seeds of an inappropriate in terms of monogamous relationship going on. The primary marriage broke down, and then this other relationship already kind of had the foundations there. And, yeah, there are. I mean, I probably won't share a lot of details, but there was a lot of weird stuff that. And it's funny, too, how you just rational, like, you don't want to accept certain facts that are really heavy or hard to admit. Like, we should have known my dad was having an affair or at least was very involved with someone years ago, like, at least three or four years before. Before he died. But we just chose to kind of see it. I don't know. You just don't let yourself accept certain reality sometimes. And I think all of us did that to an extent. But my mom and sister, particularly, who were living at home, I think they saw a lot more stuff than they even brought up at the time. But there were just some, like, not even red flags, but just like, okay, this is. Something's going on here. You know, it was really clear. And so, yeah, and a year or two before he died, my dad's. I think it was just, like, one year, he brought us all together as a family and said, like, I'm drafting a divorce. I'm not happy with your mother, and I just wanted to let you guys know. And then after we all kind of left that meeting as a family, he texted and said, I can't do this to your little sister who's still in high school, so I'll try to make it work with Mom. But this was after he said, I've already got a lawyer, and I have all the paperwork ready and stuff. So he was ready to jump ship and then decided not to.

John Dehlin [01:15:33] I thought I read in the two blog posts that you shared with me that you think that the affair was probably going on while he was serving as a bishop. Did I read that right? Did I remember that right or not?

Brennan Harris [01:15:45] Yeah, I think probably. Probably it was because he was released around the end of 2018, like wintertime to either November or December. And then the details of this affair were coming to light very clearly and explicitly just a month later. And so it's possible that while he was bishop, they kind of held off on having, like, a fully consummated relationship or whatever, but I just don't really See that. And even if they technically didn't have sex or whatever while he was bishop, there still was a completely inappropriate relationship and something that would have constituted an affair. But I'm, I'm pretty, I'm like 95% sure there was a full blown affair going on while he was the campus word bishop or the. Not the campus word bishop, the home, which he was at that time.

John Dehlin [01:16:49] And you don't have to answer this if it, if it violates anyone's confidentiality. I'm just curious if this person was in the ward, like one of, one of the people in his ward. Did you already say that?

Brennan Harris [01:16:59] I don't know if I said it, but yeah, she was.

John Dehlin [01:17:02] Okay, so she was a. So it was not just a neighbor, it was someone who was in his ward that he was overseeing as a bishop.

Brennan Harris [01:17:09] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:17:10] And would have, would have probably been counseling her alone as well.

Brennan Harris [01:17:15] Yeah, yeah. And so that was the whole like meeting with her to counsel with her was something that we all knew about. Like he told me, like, oh, I talked to so and so, and she said this and it was clear they were not just meeting in the context of like in his bishop's office or whatever, but there was a lot of time spent together, you know, outside of, outside of the church. So like again, should have been, like, should have been obvious at the time. But yeah, yeah.

Kip's Role and Tensions as Dean of Students

John Dehlin [01:17:52] So, so let's see, what else should we talk about before we talk about the actual event that, that kind of brought everything to an unfortunate close. Is there anything else you want to talk about? You, him, you know, your, your life, your mom, your family, or should, or, or is it time to go to the actual event that led to everything coming apart?

Brennan Harris [01:18:28] So yeah, just to be clear, I don't know if we made this clear, but he professionally, through his 30 year career with the college was from like a low level admissions officer to the Dean of Admissions, to managing Director of Student support or something like that, to the Dean of Students. So as the dean of students, and that was probably the last five or six years of his life, he was very intimately involved with facilitating conflict between students and faculty, administration and certain other. He was also the Title 9 Administrator for the school, which meant that instances of sexual harassment were being handled by him, I'm sure in conjunction with like the lawyers the school had or the church had. He was, I think I already said this maybe, but he was coordinating mental health services for students who were experiencing suicidal ideation or other kinds of like mental breakdowns while they were at school. He was involved in the school side of the process for dealing with deaths of students. Whether that was, you know, accidents that seem to happen every year, like just car accidents, students dying there or suicide. There was like every semester it seemed like at least one student there was a death of a student by suicide. And so he was dealing with really heavy stuff. Not just, you know, as a bishop you deal with like, whatever, but as the dean of students. His job itself was very intense in terms of just like the emotional management that he kind of was involved with. And a big part of this too is he was really. He was kind of one of the major points of contact between the Madison county or the city of Rexburg police and the school. And so when, like when Rexburg city police pull somebody over and they know it's a student, it was not uncommon for them to call my dad and be like, hey, we found one of your students doing such and such. And I think this is probably more fleshed out in terms of like the BYU Provo Police Department and whatever, but there really is something kind of weird going. There's a little bit of blurriness between the. I don't know. I don't want to speculate too much there. I don't want to say anything that's like, out of turn, but there's crossover between like church life and civic life. When almost everybody who serves in like a police force, say, is a member of the church and also a member of this really tight knit small community where kind of everyone knows each other. There's like the whole trope of like a gossipy small town. That's very true there. Word travels fast. And so there's. Even if it's not an official part of like, well, as like a policy, as like a Rexburg police department, we report everything we know to the. I don't think that's true, and I think that would be illegal and unethical, and I don't think people are doing that. But there some fuzzy probably stay civic matters or legal police issues. And people in their capacity as employees of the university know there's some kind of collaboration, sharing knowledge there.

John Dehlin [01:22:29] I mean, this is something that really erupted at BYU Provo recently, in the past few years, because you would have, as I recall, you would have female students reporting sexual assault or rape to police. And somehow, and I don't know if this would be campus police or Provo police or both, but somehow that information was being passed to BYU and, or the BYU Honor Code office and, or the bishops of these BYU students and sometimes Women, you know, as I understand it, female students were being, their status at the university was being threatened and, or they were being kicked out because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time according to honor code standards. But they were. That information was either passed on by police or the fact that they had reported. Reported a rape or sexual assault was being passed on, which led to them having to talk about details. But the point was that blurring the lines between police, either BYU police or Provo police in the university, in the honor code office made it so women were afraid to report rapes and sexual assaults. And that's a really horrific sort of situation. I think it's a situation that got the Salt Lake Tribune a Pulitzer Prize just because they did reporting. And it's a really serious deal. And so now byu, I just read recently they're doing some shenanigans where they're, you know, because their, their own police forces was called into question and BYU Provo had to stop having a police force, I think. I don't know the details. But now they're creating their own security force that's not technically a police force. Just really weird security stuff going on that I wish the church was open enough to just to discuss publicly why they're doing what they do and why they're doing kind of shady, weird things around law enforcement and security with BYU students. I imagine it's just there's got to be a combination of like we got to keep the students and the, and the professors and the administrators pure purity culture. And we can't have anyone breaking any of the rules. And, and so if police can pass on information that helps us make sure we keep everyone pure and clean and kick out all the baddies. I'm sure there's. That's part of it. And I'm sure part of it is like, just also like, hey, we need to. The honor code office. We need to make sure the only the people that are here deserve to be here and we need to be able to kick people out that are breaking rules. And so if we have a free flowing of information between police and security and university and administration, then we can get all the people out that shouldn't be here and make room for all the good people that should be here and we won't have sin spreading like a cancer and a virus and bringing sin to our, you know, to our city, to our, to the Lord's university. Just, just this whole purity culture, I'm guessing.

Brennan Harris [01:25:29] I think so too. And I think, I don't know that I'm in a position to talk about the connection between the civil authority in the school as much as maybe somebody else would. I can only say, like, what my experience was here with my dad in this situation. But there is something though, and maybe this is. This would probably not be a distinction that's very important outside of Mormonism for someone who's looking at a school like byu, Idaho and seeing that like, well, almost all the students are members of the church and all of the administrators and professors are have to be temple recommend holding members of the church. But to me, it was a really weird blurring line between the school and the church. So like, my dad would be in trainings with campus ward bishops who like, that's a calling that falls under the hierarchy of the church. You know, they report to like stake president who also is like a campus stake president, but he reports to an area authority or whatever. So you'd think like, okay, there's this church structure that's fine, but the university is kind of able to use campus word bishops to enforce policy, which that's really weird. Like if you kind of had, if you in your mind tried to separate, like, well, there's the church and then there's the church's schools. There is kind. There's a real fuzziness in my mind between like ecclesiastical leaders in the church who are part of the university system. They're not just like institute or young single adult bishops. They actually have kind of different rules that they follow that come down from the school, school policy and not from the church. So that's another kind of weird thing. And my dad was involved in that obviously when he was campus word bishop and then in a campus stake presidency that was for married students. But as dean of students, he ran trainings with campus ward bishops, which is weird.

John Dehlin [01:27:40] Weird why?

Brennan Harris [01:27:42] Just weird that like, are you a bishop or are you a volunteer of the school? Because in my mind there should be a clear distinction between like, the church applies universally to anyone who's a member of the church. The same rules, the same standards. That's not the. Maybe that's just my opinion. Maybe I'm like splitting hairs here and this is dumb, a dumb distinction. But it seems weird that like the person you rely on for your spiritual, like your spiritual patriarch who's your bishop, also is a decision maker about your academic life and whether or not you're going to get to come again here next semester based on whether or not I say just seems weird.

John Dehlin [01:28:33] Yeah, you should be able to tell your spiritual leader anything you want and not have to fear that if you confide in your spiritual leader that you could, that could jeopardize your continuing status at a university. Having said that, we have so many instances of Mormon ecclesiastical leaders. We just released a new video on the Understanding Mormonism YouTube channel. If you haven't checked that out, please do, please subscribe to it. It's a growing channel, but we just, you know, released a small interview of one woman, Clarissa Winter, her interactions with their bishop. And on the one hand, I want bishops to be safe for members to confide anything in. On the other hand, we've got these bishops that will ask really sexually explicit questions, really mistreat the youth or the adults. The inappropriate conversations where grown men are asking 12 year old girls whether they touch themselves or, or shaming a 17 year old girl and yelling at her for having sex or. I'm torn because in some degree I want to get rid of worthiness interviews and one on one interviews and any sexual explicit interviews altogether. I just want to get rid of all that. And on the other hand I, you know, I do. I can imagine scenarios where a good bishop could provide real support to a ward member in need and even a student in need. But even then I wouldn't want the student to have to not be able to take advantage of that support if it's a good bishop. If they have to worry that they might get kicked out of the university, that's. Yeah, I see what you're saying. So I guess one thing that comes to my mind is that, you know, once you get to the dean of students at a major university, you're dealing with heavy stuff all the time. Like you said, mental health stuff, suicide stuff, affairs, bureaucratic problems that are really heavy and intense. And I can only imagine that was just a lot of heaviness and a lot of pressure and plus all the, you know, Mormon, Mormon, you know, Church, LDS Church headquarters, any of the universities, just the bureaucracies and the internal politics of the LDS Church and of these church schools I hear can be horrendous. And so I. Can I look at pictures of your dad towards the end of his life? It, I'm probably reading things into it, but it looks like he was under a tremendous amount of stress in his life, in his position at school. And he's constantly dealing with sexual matters and matters of discipline and employment and ecclesiastical. So I mean like, and, and once you get to that part of the story, it's just really clear. He understands how things work and he understands what the consequences are going to be for his indiscretions. Is that, Is that all stuff. Stuff that resonates with you as well?

Brennan Harris [01:31:40] Yep. Yeah, I think that's accurate. And the, I mean, you just think, like, I think you could call my dad a hypocrite because he was in this position where he was sometimes kicking kids out of school for breaking these rules, like the honor code. And at the same time, he was carrying on an affair in his own personal life. So I don't know how he made that work in his head or if he did. I can't imagine that was a comfortable situation to be in where you're bishop, so you're the judge in Israel for other people and their sins. You're telling them how to best, like, repent and manage things they're doing wrong. You're working. Your day job is involved sometimes in sitting on councils where it's being determined by you or, like, a group of students or administrators, like, whether or not someone gets to stay because they broke honor code rules. Sometimes not even, like, commandments or things that are, like, would get you in trouble doctrinally, but. And at the same time, you know, like, if you were in that chair, if you were on the other side, you get kicked out, too. And so I can't imagine, like, I just don't know how he made that work in his own head. I don't know how he justified that or if he did, if he just felt guilt or if he was able to justify it in some way.

John Dehlin [01:33:12] I don't know where, as humans, we're really good at compartmentalizing. And I've done it. I, I, you know, I've hurt. I've hurt Margi. I've, I've made mistakes in my life. And I, I look back and I think, how did I. How was I so stupid? So this isn't me, for sure. And I don't sense it's you either, judging, standing in judgment over. Over your dad. But, but it is. But it sounds like what you're saying is there was a level of hypocrisy that your dad was, like, bishop, probably disciplining people. He was a school leader, probably involved in discipline, and while he was being unfaithful to his wife the whole time. Yeah.

Brennan Harris [01:33:51] And if you're in a position where you're given a set of rules and you're told to enforce them, and the rules require. Human nature is not an excuse. As common as infidelity is in monogamous relationships, it's not treated like it's a common thing in the church or that it's okay, which I'm not. I think that's a determination for people in monogamous couples to make. I don't think it's okay. I think it hurts people when there's cheating or dishonesty in a relationship. I'm not saying it's okay, but just from my perspective, it's an incredibly common part of human life. And to have such a severe reaction to human nature seems very cruel to me. So no matter who's going to occupy a position, the position makes you a hypocrite in a sense. Because unless you're perfect, if you have to judge someone for their imperfections, what can you be but hypocritical when you're in that position.

John Dehlin [01:35:01] Right.

Brennan Harris [01:35:02] I don't. I'm not excusing what my dad did or saying like it's okay, but

John Dehlin [01:35:09] just

Brennan Harris [01:35:09] because what he did is not okay doesn't mean it's okay.

John Dehlin [01:35:12] Yeah.

Brennan Harris [01:35:13] To be in this situation where you don't allow people the, like, any slack in being imperfect.

John Dehlin [01:35:20] Yeah. It sounds like what you're saying is that this idea of like, you get kicked out of the university if you break certain rules or sin, make mistakes, or you get kicked out of the church or shamed in the church if you break certain rules that pretty much a lot of us end up breaking at one point or another, maybe even a third or a half. You know how many people have broken the law of chastity? You know, what percentage of Mormons have broken the law of chastity? You know, what percentage of BYU students have broken the honor code? Just this idea, this. The purity culture and punishment culture. It sounds like you're saying it harms the people at the end of the. At the punishment, but it also is probably harmful to the people administering the punishment as well.

Brennan Harris [01:36:08] I think many times it is. Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:36:10] Yeah. Really quickly. So your dad passed away in January of last year, so that's about 18 months ago. Is there anything you want to tell us about your own faith journey as of January 2019? Were you an orthodox believing Mormon still? Or do you want to tell us about your faith journey prior to that?

Brennan Harris [01:36:31] I'd be happy to give you a brief.

John Dehlin [01:36:33] Or should we talk about that after? Like, whatever you want.

Brennan Harris [01:36:36] I'm cool to talk about it now. It comes back into the story and kind of. It might tie in a little bit to what happens after. But okay, so shortly after I got married. So I doubts as a teenager, went on a mission and was pretty orthodox believing at that Point, you know, I had just said, I will not be bothered by these doubts right now. I'm going to serve my church. I'm going to be committed. And I went full head first into a mission with that, but still with lingering doubts. I didn't believe the Book of Mormon was real or that it was like a divine translation when I entered the mtc. You didn't.

John Dehlin [01:37:20] That's weird.

Brennan Harris [01:37:21] No, I thought it was made up.

John Dehlin [01:37:23] Was that because of like, did you stumble on CES letter or Mormon stories

Brennan Harris [01:37:27] or just seem fake? What just seemed fake to me, like you read it just like the thing that really got me, and this was before I was a missionary, I read the passages in Isaiah that the Book of Mormon quotes and they're just like word for word the same. And I was like, okay, this is fake because there's like, they're separated by hundreds of years, tons of translations, different languages. It just seemed so obvious to me that Joseph Smith made up the Book of Mormon. That, that seemed way more plausible than it was like an actual, like golden plates carried around, scratched here, brought up later. That just seemed very hard for me. But by the time I left the mtc, I felt very uncomfortable about that. While I was in the mtc, I was like, I don't know how I'm gonna tell people they need to read the Book of Mormon and believe it's true.

Brennan's Mission to Rome and Faith Transition

John Dehlin [01:38:27] So did you talk to your dad or your bishop or anyone about your non belief in Book of Mormon historicity prior to your mission? Go. You just kept that to yourself?

Brennan Harris [01:38:38] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:38:39] And you. I think it's remarkable that you arrived at that conclusion as a 18 year old without Fawn Brody or CES letter or Mormon stories, because I would not have let my mind even go there as a faithful Mormon kid. I would have just said, well, there may be some things I don't understand, but the book's true. The book's the word of God. So the fact that you a allowed yourself to arrive at that decision, that's really interesting. I think it shows a lot of intelligence or courage or integrity, something, but then also that you would not let that stop you from going on a mission. That's also. How do we understand that?

Brennan Harris [01:39:26] Well, I had a belief, a firm belief that Joseph Smith was a prophet. And so in my mind I was like, he made up the Book of Mormon. He wasn't a great guy. He lied about this. But I do believe because of this experience I had when I was 13, I believe he talked to God. I think he was a prophet. And so I let that. I'm like, I can. And I had. Because of that, by extension, I had a pretty firm belief in, like, modern prophets. Just listening to conference, I'd felt the spirit. Like, I'd felt very calm when I'd listened to their words. So I thought, that's fine. God told me the prophets, he just hasn't said anything about the Book of Mormon, and it just kind of seems fake to me, so I'll just try to ignore that and let that be a little gap. But it started to wear on me while I was in the mtc. And then, same kind of a thing. Like, I was able to bear my testimony. Our teacher, who was teaching us, like, the language, invited us to bear testimony. And I did. And I felt kind of good. It wasn't an overwhelming experience, but I was like, okay, that's it. God just told me the Book of Mormon is true. And I needed that so bad. I needed that confirmation that. The first tingling of a good feeling. I just took it and said, there it is, finally. Check. I can believe the Book of Mormon now. Which. I don't know how I did that either, because I still had. I'd still read the Isaiah verses and be like, this seems so fake. Or just the parts where it gets repetitive, where I can't give you the reference, but there are parts in the Book of Mormon where they say a line and they say. Or rather this. Like, they say, like. I mean, actually, like, correcting themselves and just thinking about them, like, scratching that into metal, like.

John Dehlin [01:41:08] Or rather.

Brennan Harris [01:41:10] Right. Would you, like, spend 40 minutes, like, writing a word and then be like, oh, you know what? Like, I'm gonna take another hour and a half writing three more words to say like. Or rather, and then, like, correct myself. That just seems so bizarre to me.

John Dehlin [01:41:26] Dude, you're a critical thinker. I'm just. I'm calling you on it. You're a critical thinker. How about it? And it came to pass, like, how much time did it take for people to inscribe? And it came to pass into these golden plates or brass plates.

Brennan Harris [01:41:40] Don't know. I don't know. I just had a couple of things that I like, things that were. Should have been maybe more obvious, like horses in North America? I just kind of, like, that didn't bother me too much. I kind of found ways to make sense of that. And. But there were just. I just feel. Felt weird reading the Book of Mormon. I just felt like, this just seems so fake.

John Dehlin [01:42:03] But then you talk about epistemology, which is the Church just ingrains in us that if you get a good feeling, that means the church is true. If you get a good feeling in the church context, at a youth conference, in a testimony meeting, at general conference, reading the Book of Mormon, if at any point you feel a warm fuzzy, even if it's talking about love or kindness or charity, it doesn't matter. If you get a warm fuzzy in the context, immediately interpret that. Encode that in your brain as the church is true. And that's what you did. So by the time, you know, you leave the mtc, you're. You're on. On plan. Is that. Is that fair to say?

Brennan Harris [01:42:37] Yep.

John Dehlin [01:42:38] Okay. And where'd you serve again?

Brennan Harris [01:42:40] Rome, Italy. Okay. So I got the. I won the lottery of missions, kind of, and David Bednar personally made my call. I actually know that for a fact because my dad was in correspondence with him and said, hey, my son's just turning his mission papers, and David Bednar personally sent me there. So I went on the mission. It's kind of hard at the beginning, but I learned the language and I learned how things work, and it became easier and more fun. And then doubts started. New doubts kind of started forming on my mission because we were in the heart of Catholicism, and I could see that the Catholic Church had amazing power over the culture and the people there in Italy. And not as much like modern. Like, people who were my age seemed like there weren't a ton of super religious or super Catholic people, but you could just see it in the. It was just imprinted on the culture that Catholicism really had power in that country. And I could see the analogy between, like, well, Catholicism is to Italy what Mormonism is to Sugar City, Idaho. Like, it's not a matter of whether this is right or even if it's good. It's just a matter of, like, wealth and power. And the wealth aspect really started bothering me at that time because in my last area, it was. You prob. People here, like, read about the Syrian refugee crisis across the Mediterranean in, like, 2012 or maybe later 2016, maybe. That became, like, a big story that has been going on for, like, at least a decade in the Mediterranean. It's still going on. And I was able to see that firsthand. Like, there were people who were coming from through Syria who were all over, from, like, East Africa, West Africa, the Middle East. And of the last area I served in, there was, like, there was a lot of refugees. It was in southern Italy, close to areas where the Italian Coast Guard was bringing the people in and housing Them and stuff. So I saw, for the first time in my life, I saw real international poverty and what that looked like. Not that the people that lived in Italy, once they got there, they were refugees and they were well taken care of compared to the lives they fled from. But like hearing their stories and these people hadn't, like, they were willing to cross deserts on like rickety jeeps to get to a port where they would get on a rickety boat. And knowing the dangers, they were willing to do that to get into Europe. And so I kind of got this taste for, okay, there are a lot of. There are millions of people in the world that have very little. And that started to really bother me a ton. And like, there was a member of our ward or of our branch in my last area who she was married to a non member. And he was really into like convincing us that we were wrong and that Mormonism wasn't true. And he printed the article about the church's shopping center that went up at that time, Salt Lake Tribune or somebody had written an article about the cost that was funded by the LDS Church.

John Dehlin [01:46:06] The City Creek Mall being a $2 or $3 billion mall. And as you're empathizing with refugees and homeless people and people dying, trying to flee poverty into Italy, and you're seeing all the opulence and the wealth. They started building the Rome, Italy temple by then.

Brennan Harris [01:46:24] Yep. It's very expensive project. And it. The whole time I was there, it was under construction and experiencing massive delays that were costing the church a ton of money.

John Dehlin [01:46:33] So, yeah, we. Who knows how much money was spent on that temple, Right? Yeah.

Brennan Harris [01:46:38] And so a lot more than what's spent on a temple in Utah, which is already a lot.

John Dehlin [01:46:43] And so all of that as a missionary is starting to make you feel or think, what about the church?

Brennan Harris [01:46:47] Just that it was. I couldn't reconcile it anymore. And I really shifted to studying the New Testament at that point too. I'd read the Book of Mormon plenty of times and I was like, okay, this seems a little fake. And I just started focusing. And it was cool because in Italy you're like, you're crossing paths sometimes in the cities I was in and the places I was in with real apostles from the New Testament. And so I became very focused on the New Testament. And I tried to just read it with fresh eyes a couple times when I was in that last area. And it just felt to me like the message of Christianity was really clear and that my church's interpretation of Christianity was really weird. And I could no longer reconcile the church as a Christian entity and this kind of capitalist entity. That just didn't seem coherent to me. It seemed like we are in levels of apostasy spoken of in the Book of Mormon. And all of those aspects seem prevalent in the church and for which I was like an official representative. I was an agent of the church. And it seemed to me that there wasn't a lot of contact with Christianity. And so I started to just kind of feel and believe the church was in a state of apostasy. I still held on to that belief that Joseph Smith was a prophet and he really restored the church, but that just the same way it happened there, like it happened there in Italy, like it happened there in Italy that, you know, Jesus Christ started a church and then it became the, you know, in Mormonism. This is a mean thing to say, but, you know, Bruce Armaconki, the horror of all the earth, that's what Catholicism devolved into. And it just felt to me, it was resonant that the church had experienced some kind of analogous thing, that it was just in complete apostasy, that they were buying these shopping malls and, you know, having a bunch of employees. The apostles in the church weren't out with poor people, weren't converting people. They were doing administrative tasks. Just seemed so. By the time I was done with my mission, I, like, I believe the church was in apostasy, but.

John Dehlin [01:49:08] But that Joseph Smith was still a prophet and. But the Book of Mormon wasn't historical, but Joseph was still a prophet, but the church was an apostasy. That sounds like a pretzel.

Brennan Harris [01:49:18] It was, yeah.

John Dehlin [01:49:19] A theological and a spiritual pretzel. Yeah.

Brennan Harris [01:49:22] It wasn't fun. It was not a simple stroll through my own mind. Sometimes there were just a lot of loose ends and didn't make a lot of sense. But I still had faith and I still had. I had great experiences on my mission. Like both, like, spiritual. There's still things that, like the stories missionaries tell of, like, how is this a coincidence that we met this person at this time following a prompting? And I still don't. I don't know, I don't have an explanation for those things rationally. But even with having, like, strong spiritual experiences and kind of this sort of glimpse into what the potential of humanitarian work could be, I still didn't leave the mission with like, I super believe everything the church says, and I just will follow the prophet whenever. And I think he is making all the right decisions. I had a very nuanced, liberal view of the church. By the time I got back home.

John Dehlin [01:50:19] And were you able to talk to your dad about that, either writing him on the mission or when you got home, did you have anyone to confide in or talk to about that kind of stuff?

Brennan Harris [01:50:30] I talked to my dad one time. I said I thought the church was an apostasy.

John Dehlin [01:50:33] Whoa.

Brennan Harris [01:50:34] He didn't seem to have a super strong reaction. And I didn't like, make a big deal of it. Like, I'm really struggling with this, dad. I. I don't know if I can keep. I was just like, yeah, keep doing it. I think it's like a good thing. And. But I think we're probably on the. I think I framed it as like there's a spectrum of apostasy and we're kind of. We're inching into a disturbing side of it. Maybe, but maybe some things are still going and I don't know.

John Dehlin [01:50:59] I'm just from those I know who work at church headquarters or, you know, work for the church. It's really hard not to get a cynical view of the church when you work. And I worked, I worked for a year inside the church myself. And I could see why your dad would be like, yeah, because you can see so much misuse of money, so much malfeasance, so much politics, so much nepotism, so much backbiting, so much waste. Sometimes just mean spiritedness. And we're all humans. I'm not saying that working for the Mormon Church is like everyone's evil and bad. I'm just saying that everyone I know that's worked there has said it's really easy to lose your testimony when you work for the church because you see so much ugly stuff.

Brennan Harris [01:51:46] Totally. Well. And I knew too that the church was. It wasn't just some perfect. I never had that delusion that like, the prophet receives all the inspiration and they just carry it out perfectly and the church is perfect. My dad actually, and my dad was known to stretch the truth. As he told stories, they became more and more elaborate. He added details. Sometimes after five years of telling a story, it'd be a totally different story. But he told the story that when he visited David Bednar at the church office building after he was called as an apostle, he would go down there for school. Sometimes they do like a conference in Provo. And he kind of made it a tradition that anytime there was official business that he carried out between Rick's college or byu, Idaho and church headquarters, he would bring like boxes of potatoes for people he knew there. So he'd go to a potato warehouse, get like a huge thing and deliver them. And so he did that a few times over the years with David Bednar. And he would go meet him, and it was a cool thing, actually, as a family. We got to meet him one time at his office at the church office building. And this was when I was like, in high school and he said he was, like, doing Jedi mind tricks on me. He was like, when he was like, giving us advice or whatever, he looked me in the eye and he said, if you ever need to tell something to a bishop, you need to tell your parents about it first. He was like, do you understand what I just said? Whoa.

John Dehlin [01:53:20] What do you think that was about?

Brennan Harris [01:53:22] I had just scheduled an appointment with my bishop, like, two weeks before that. So I was like, oh, my gosh, God knows. He talked to this prophet through me. I need to tell my dad. And the thing was, I was just checking in with the bishop. I didn't have, like, any sins or whatever. I was confessed. Like, it wasn't a big deal. I was just like, man, bishop, I'm, you know, I just want to make sure I'm on track with my spirituality or whatever. And I. But I didn't tell my dad. I set up the appointment. So I was like, holy cow. David Bednar received revelation. But then I real. I mean, you can reframe whatever according to your biases, but looking back, if you do that to like a 15, 16 year old, something's going to come to mind. You know, it's not like he said specifically, like, I know you called your bishop and I know you said, I'm so.

John Dehlin [01:54:15] I don't know.

Brennan Harris [01:54:16] That was an experience I had with him when I was a kid. And then again when. Before my. I was actually delayed getting into the mission field because after high school, I had a really severe injury. I broke my back. And so. And I had to have, like a surgery. And it was a long. It was a year and a half long kind of recovery. So at a certain point when I was in recovery and I was like, in bed at that point. I mean, I could get up to go to the bathroom and stuff, but I was mostly in bed. David Bednar had an event at BYU Idaho, because he'd composed some music and an orchestra was going to play it at byu, Idaho, and they were going to have a whole thing in his honor that he had written this music. And so he was there for that. And while he was there, he made an appointment to come see me while I was sick or while I was you know, injured and recovering. And he just, you know, like, he came to our home with Kim Clark was there, who was president of BYUI at the time. And he chatted with me and he was cool, you know, he asked me what I'd learned during that time. And he and Sister Bednar were there, and it was cool experience. And he told me, it might seem like I'm here for this orchestra thing and I'm just making time for you as part of this thing. He's like, that is not the way it is. He said, I'm here for you. I'm here to minister to you. This orchestra thing is like, secondary. I just happen to be doing that while I'm here, but I'm here for you. And I heard him. It goes back to his one by one thing, you know, like. And I've heard he said that too about, like, whenever he goes to like, organize a stake, he makes it a point to, like, set up personal visits. And he makes that the focus of his ministry, not all this administrative stuff. Yeah, sorry, I went off on a tangent there, but no, that's great part of the story.

John Dehlin [01:56:20] No. So you're overall like Bednar is someone that, you know, now that Elder Packer's dead. Bednar is someone that is. Is viewed least favorably by a lot of liberal, progressive and post Mormons. So it's, you know, but I know people who know him and actually say he. He's actually can be a great guy and sometimes a really progressive liberal guy, that he's not as black and white. Darth Vader. Ish. Yeah, you know, you know, he makes that comment, there are no gay Mormons, you know, like, there are no homosexual Mormons or whatever it was he said. Like, he'll say. He said some things that really have infuriated people and he's viewed as like the really strict, harsh, mean, bad guy. But what I hear you saying is it's not that simple.

Brennan Harris [01:57:07] Yeah, I had pretty good experience. He seemed like a fine guy to me. Seemed a little reserved, a little like, standoffish. Like he didn't want to do the huggy thing, really. Like, he didn't seem super personable maybe in terms of his. But he seemed kind and like he was generous with his time and everything. There was one. One other experience my dad had when he visited David Bednar right after he was called or like it was the first time he'd seen him in person after he was called to be an apostle. And somehow or maybe the second time, so this was. Would. Would have Been within one to four years after he was called, my dad visited him in the church office building with a few other BYUI employees. And he said scouting came up and there was no discussion of, like, the church was going to end its relationship with scouting at that point. But my dad said that David Bednar looked at him and said, like, kip, do you realize that with the money we spend on scouting in North America, we could put wells in all of our buildings in the entire continent of Africa, like, all of our church buildings, we could bring fresh water to them with that and just kind of let that hang out there. And so. And that was, like, when my dad came home and told us that story, I was like, holy cow. Like, this guy disagrees with, like, the way the church is functioning. And so it made me wonder, too, like, how do you. But, I mean, I think Henry B. Eyring has said similar things, like about his experience with councils in the church, that the most senior apostles don't really agree a lot of times on how to carry stuff out. But it seemed like from those comments that Elder Benner was a little, like, already solid. There are things that could be improved about the way we're running operations in the church.

John Dehlin [01:58:59] Yeah. I mean, if you listen to my recent interview with Matt Harris about Ezra Taft Benson and his epic fights with the quorum of the 12 in the First Presidency in the 60s and 70s, you'll know that there's extreme conflict in the Quorum and in the First Presidency and undermining in politics and all sorts of really horrendous kind of stuff. But they're really good at keeping that private and. And not letting the membership know anything about those. Those disagreements. So that's true. Okay. So you get off your mission, you feel like the church is in apostasy. Anything else you want to tell about your story or your family before that kind of fateful event with your dad?

Brennan Leaves the Church After His Mission

Brennan Harris [01:59:50] Just in my own story, I guess, to kind of wrap that up. I came home from my mission. I met a girl, got married. I mean, met a girl, fell in love, then she went on a mission. I waited for her. She came back. We got married and just had a blissful, great first six months of marriage. And about six months after we got married, I had a more full blown kind of crisis of faith. And just the experience was that I was watching a presentation or, like, listening to a podcast about Scientology, and they were talking about L. Ron Hubbard, things that happened in the early days of Scientology. And I just thought to myself, like, this is crazy. How would anyone believe this? How would anyone believe that this guy was like. That they should follow him and what he was saying was true. And then just in that moment, right after I had that thought, I just had the thought that's exactly what you'd think about Mormonism if you hadn't raised a blood believe it from when you were a little kid. And that was like, it all came crumbling down. So, like, I was like, I don't believe in Joseph Smith. I don't believe in anything about the church. I think it's all fake. I held on to a belief. And, like, I think I'll probably always be a theist. I'll always believe in Jesus Christ. But once, like, my foundation was in Mormonism, and within, like, a couple more months, that all fell apart too. And I just. I just realized and kind of settled with the feeling that I'm not a believer. And the reality that that's just not true of me. I'm not a believing person. I'm not trying to say what anyone else should believe. Like, I'm not saying I'm right. I just. I'm not a believer, and I don't believe in the supernatural. I don't believe in any religion or whatever. And so that. Oh, sorry, go ahead.

John Dehlin [02:01:40] And that was around what year this would have been?

Brennan Harris [02:01:43] 2015, 2000? Early 2016.

John Dehlin [02:01:48] Okay.

Brennan Harris [02:01:49] No, sorry. We got married in 2016. So it would have been 16. 17.

John Dehlin [02:01:54] It would have been 16.

Brennan Harris [02:01:55] 16, 17. Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:01:57] Okay. One of our listeners or viewers, Lumi Love, says watching Scientology stuff also pulled her out completely. Was it going clear or was it the Leah Remini series?

Brennan Harris [02:02:08] It was neither one. It was just some pot. It was some discussion on a podcast on YouTube or something.

John Dehlin [02:02:13] Oh, okay.

Brennan Harris [02:02:13] Just. They started going into the history of, like, when Elrond Hubbard sent his wife and some other people into, like, steal documents from the FBI or whatever. Like, just that crazy story, right? Yeah. And trying to pressure the IRS. They actually won or whatever.

John Dehlin [02:02:29] Yeah, the IRS's butt.

Brennan Harris [02:02:31] Yeah, it's crazy. So, yeah, it was just a discussion on that. And I had never. I'd known about problems with the church, like, the whole historicity of the Book of Mormon and Book of Abraham. I'd heard of some issues with that while I was still in college, before I'd even gotten married. I remember having a discussion about Book of Abraham with an employer that I had because he was really into, like, Egyptology and stuff. So I was like, I don't got the Book of Abraham. Like, it's been proven to Be like completely fake, right? And he was like, kind of like, technically, I don't know, he gave some kind of weird Waffley answer. But he was an awesome guy, awesome boss, but. So I hadn't. But I never engaged in like anti Mormon literature. Never knew that there was a whole ex Mormon community. And so after I decided I didn't believe anymore. That was the first time I like, within a year maybe of that, I found the CES letter and kind of read that and nothing was super surprising, but there were some elements of the history of the church that I started to explore. Then be like, wow, this is kind of blowing my mind. But it wasn't involved in my decision is like the deconstruction of my faith that kind of happened.

John Dehlin [02:03:47] So a summary of the. Well, first of all, I just, I'm going to call. I'm, I'm going to, I'm going to call this out every single time I do an interview on Mormon stories and it comes up. And that's just that the bubble is real, that you're basically saying that as of three years ago, you had never heard of CES Letter, you had never heard of Mormon stories, you didn't know anything about any of the podcasts or blogs or books or any of the problems with the church. And I just wanted, this is 2020. So you're talking about 2017. You're talking about four years after the Gospel topics essays were released. You're talking about three years after three or four years after CES Letter comes out, all the excommunications. Bill real, Sam Young, me, Kate Kelly. September 6th. Go back decades. You live in Idaho, you're connected to the Internet and you hadn't heard of any of it. And I just want like, you know, one of the things that unhealthy organizations do is they control the information that their members hear and see and learn about because it prevents them from having thoughts that the organization doesn't want them to have. And I'm just going to always call attention to the fact that this church is so intense that in 2017, in 2020, there are the vast majority of orthodox Mormons in the United States who have the Internet, who have Facebook, who have mobile phones, still don't know about any of the true history regarding the church or the problems with the church. And it's, it really is mind blowing. It's mind blowing.

Brennan Harris [02:05:28] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:05:28] Just Twitter and Instagram and social media and Facebook and you were oblivious to it all as of three years ago.

Brennan Harris [02:05:36] I never, like, it was after I Made that decision. I think one of the first things I encountered that was considered like non church approved information about the church was Mormon stories, actually. And it was the interview you did with the Zelf on the shelf.

John Dehlin [02:05:53] Yeah. Samantha and Tanner.

Brennan Harris [02:05:55] Yeah. And that was the first one I watched. And his thing was Scientology too. Like that was. I was like, what? Like, we both went to byu, Idaho, we overlapped. We were there the same years. And then his thing that brought him out was Scientology as well. I was like, that just seems crazy. Like I would have thought this was so unique to me. And there was no one experiencing what I was experiencing. But then that started. After I watched that video, I started to realize, like, okay, there's like a whole community of people who have left the church or are leaving the church. And so, yeah, I became plugged into like ex Mormon on Reddit and Mormon stories and stuff like that.

John Dehlin [02:06:33] Okay, so during all this time again, did you go to your dad and say, dad, I lost my faith, or dad, I don't believe it's true anymore? Or were you able to talk to your dad about any of that stuff?

Brennan Harris [02:06:45] Yeah, I. So I told my wife, basically, I just kept her updated as things were happening. Like when I watched the Scientology, I was like, dear, I don't think I believe in the church anymore. And that was really hard. But she was like, okay, well, we'll figure it out. And then I like dropped the bomb. Once I reassured her, it's okay, I'll keep going to church with you. I'm just struggling with this stuff. It just seemed like every month I just was dropping more of these bombs on her. Kind of like, well, I don't know if I really even believe in Jesus or God. I think I might be an atheist. Going to church is getting really hard for me. And so that was becoming a thing we were just experiencing on our own, her and I. And it was really, really horrible and hard. And I thought we might get a divorce because we hadn't had kids and we weren't planning on having kids for another little while. And so I thought this might just be a nice, like, if this isn't going to work, that we both kind of said like, we should end it now versus, like, get ourselves into a family with kids and have to deal with all of that additional complexity. So that came up and that was. There was a real question of whether, like, our marriage would survive that. But it did. And as years went on, it got better and better. But as we were experiencing that kind of hardest part of processing that Alone. She told her folks about it and I told my mom and everyone was a little shocked by that information. My mom was like, cool about. She's like, I love you, it's okay. But. But then like two weeks later she like texted me or called me and was freaking out like, wait, what are you doing? Like, and so she kind of had a little bit of a freak out after the fact. And then I think both for my in laws and my own mom, it was kind of a process of building back trust just to see, like, okay, just because I don't believe doesn't mean a totally different person. And the same thing with my wife, I think just, you're just, you never know what's going to happen when someone leaves the church. The church tells you that life is over. Like it's the worst thing that could ever, ever happen between you and a spouse is that one of you leaves the church. And so I think we just had to live long enough with this, in this mixed faith marriage kind of situation to realize like, that's not true, it's not the end of everything. And, but, but I did tell, so I told, she told her folks, I told my mom. And I was kind of working up the courage to tell my dad that because I didn't know how he was going to take it because the church was so important to him. Like there was that whole kind of like, we don't really have a choice. You're going to serve a mission, you're going to serve in the church and work hard. But I told him, I sent him an email actually and said, hey dad, just want to let you know, been through this, I'm happy to answer any questions about it, but I don't believe in the church anymore. And he called me back like 15 minutes after I sent him the email. He called me from work and we just had a little chat about it over the phone. He's like, okay, it's okay. I doesn't, I don't feel any different about you as my son. I love you. And I'll probably have more questions later. I said, okay, bye. And we never talked about it again. Really? Nope. He never brought it up. I didn't either.

John Dehlin [02:10:03] And that's so interesting because. And I'm just going to always call this out too. Like, number one, it's unhealthy. I'm not going to say it's cultish, but I'm going to say it's unhealthy if children are afraid to talk to their parents about anything. If it's religious. If a children is ever afraid that their relationship with their parents is going to be strained or damaged because of a change in belief, that is a cult like environment that, that they're participating in, that they're involved in, a child should never have to worry about the love and support of their parents, especially over supernatural superstitious beliefs. That's just wrong. And then it's also worth noting that your dad was a church employee and you know, his life, his money, his pension, everything was tied to his ongoing belief. So it wasn't like he was free to look at things objectively, to really evaluate the evidence. You know, you can't just like, oh, I still work, you know, I don't know if Notre Dame's this way, but like at BYU Idaho or BYU Provo, it's not like, or even church headquarters. It's not like, hey, I'm still good at being a dean of students. I just don't believe anymore. But I won't tell anyone and I won't cause any problems. But I used to do my job. I'm still an accountant or a lawyer or whatever it is working for the church. You can't just have a faith crisis. Your career, your pension, your retirement is all in jeopardy if you actually lose your faith and are open about it. So it either encourages this lying and hiding or in your dad's case, it's mind blowing that you're his son, he's a good guy and he never talks to you about it again. Either because he's afraid that he'll lose his faith or because he's afraid that he might lose his job, who knows? But that's. I don't want to say it's a cult, but I'm going to say it's a cult like environment where a parent never follows up with their kid about the thing the parent believes is the most essential thing in life. Is that fair to say or not? Am I over dramatizing?

Brennan Harris [02:12:25] Was a little weird to me. I thought like within a month or so he'd like call me again and have a lot of questions. And it was a contrast to our conversational relationship that I'd had growing up. My dad was always super open with me, especially as I was getting the talk and learning about sex. He gave me insane amounts of information. As a 7 year old when I first asked the question where do babies come from? He just like unloaded medical terminology on me and was like, this is what it is and this is, it's fine. And, and it kind of Overwhelmed me. But it set up our relationship as being very open and, like, if I felt weird about anything, whether it was about, like, my sexuality or feeling like I wasn't maybe living up to my potential in as a church member or whatever, we just had a lot of open conversations, politics, whatever. And so it's weird that I was so nervous about talking to my dad about this, and the way he responded just made me feel like that comfortable dynamic again. Like, my dad will just talk to me about anything, like, it's fine. And so it. I didn't feel bad that he didn't, like, bring it up again. It was fine. I didn't want to, like, make it an issue with members of my family. He just. The one thing he said was, please don't talk about it with your two younger siblings, because they were, like, in high school at the time, and my other brother had already come back from a mission. So it was like, whatever, he's good.

John Dehlin [02:13:53] And I should just note that's your Dad's in the 99th percentile of cool in terms of how you respond.

Brennan Harris [02:13:59] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:13:59] What other parents are like, I'm cutting you out of the will. You're a disappointment. You're. You know, I repent. Like, are you looking at porn? What are you doing? You know, cut you out of the will, Cut you out of the. The text string of the family. Stop inviting you to things. I don't want you around your siblings. I don't want. You know, there are all sorts of really severe, awful, and completely normal responses that parents make to their kids. Mormon parents make to their kids when the kids say, I don't believe anymore. And your dad is like, again, in the 99th percentile of cool in terms of how he responded.

Brennan Harris [02:14:36] Yeah, he was great. And I never felt like it affected our relationship. Our relationship was different at that point for other reasons. The fact that he had become so withdrawn from the family was a process that happened that seemed to me very unconnected from all this other stuff. But it was. Knowing what we know now, it makes sense. But my experience with my dad was very different than my younger siblings experience because. Because by the time they kind of came of age, started forming memories of him, the deterioration between my parents had already started. He became a lot less involved in, like, family activities. There were no more trips or. A lot. A lot of the stuff that we enjoyed together as a family was kind of over by the time they. They came up.

John Dehlin [02:15:25] Yeah.

Brennan Harris [02:15:25] So the relationship was different at that point, but I think it was different for other reasons. And There was just a lot of distance between him and all of us as his children.

John Dehlin [02:15:36] Chase, one of our listeners writes, the church binds families together and not in a healthy way, in that believers think they are losing you forever if you leave. That's generally true. Although I don't know that was in your dad's theology because he certainly didn't treat you like he was losing you forever. Or at least he didn't give you that impression.

Brennan Harris [02:15:56] Nope.

John Dehlin [02:15:57] Yeah. Okay. So is it. Is it. Should we. Should we start talking about the event now or is there anything else you want to tell about your story?

Brennan Harris [02:16:08] I think we're good.

John Dehlin [02:16:10] So your dad. What's that?

Brennan Harris [02:16:12] So I just can't think of anything else that would make it clear. I think, like, we've kind of established the background.

John Dehlin [02:16:17] Okay, so. So we know that. I keep calling the event. We know that before the event. So the event was in December of.

Brennan Harris [02:16:28] It was January. I mean, the police stop.

John Dehlin [02:16:33] Yeah, the police stop.

Brennan Harris [02:16:34] That happened at least once in December. It might have happened twice. He might have been seen by police. I'm not sure. I mean, at one point it was a Madison County Sheriff's Department officer.

The Police Encounters and Hidden Double Life

John Dehlin [02:16:50] Okay, so let's do this. So we know that your dad has been a bishop. He's a bishop as of. As of, you know, late 2018. Right. We know that he's the dean at BYU, Idaho. We know that he's married to your mom, but there have been some marital struggles. And so start with the relationship with this other woman and then take us through the whole story.

Brennan Harris [02:17:16] Okay. So like I said, I think, like, we kind of established all the background

John Dehlin [02:17:20] there other than what we've already covered. Yeah, yeah.

Brennan Harris [02:17:22] He was meeting with her in and out of church while he was her bishop. And then he was released in November or December, ish, 2018, and continued to meet with her. And that was so. So he was still meeting with her one on one. And they were meeting at weird hours, like 4 or 5 in the morning.

John Dehlin [02:17:41] And your dad, as bishop was meeting with this woman at 4 or 5 in the morning while he was bishop.

Brennan Harris [02:17:47] Yeah. And they would, like, meet up in their cars in like a parking lot at a church or wherever.

John Dehlin [02:17:53] And did any. Did anyone in the family know this?

Brennan Harris [02:17:55] I didn't know it. I don't think my mom knew about that. Yeah, there were some people in the family who knew about, like, the weird hours, leaving and coming and going and stuff. And there were people who I talked to later as I was trying to kind of piece together, like, what happened in Kind of the aftermath of my dad's death. There were some people who knew my dad very well, who had more kind of eyewitness. I don't want to go into too much detail there, but there were, from what I can see, his meetings with this neighbor were becoming more and more, a little bit more reckless. And I know of at least one time they were meeting at odd enough hours and in weird enough places that it was raising the suspicion of law enforcement, which like you can understand why did these people, what are they doing at 3am in an empty parking lot? You know, and so that the. While he was with her in the car at least one time, maybe twice, but at least one time Madison County Sheriff Sheriff's department officer knocked on their window and said like, hey, what's going on here?

John Dehlin [02:19:14] Really quickly, two things, Anastasia. We have, there's this, there's this feature of YouTube called Super Chat where people can actually make a donation. I just want to thank Anastasia for making a, a donation. We obviously survive through donations and I don't want to commercialize this, but I have to thank Anastasia because she just made a donation. And I appreciate that. It's just a feature we enabled. So thanks, Anastasia. Okay, so a couple things that, that are important. I, I. So my mom, my mom lived in Draper. This is just a weird thing about Utah. My mom lived in Draper for many, many years, probably 20 years. And she lived on Golden Pheasant Road. And her, the, the window of her kitchen looked out onto the steak center behind the house of, of one of the Draper steak centers. But it was, it was the back of the steak center, so she could see like the, the field and the softball, you know, softball fields and the pavilion where they would have activities, but it was hidden from the, the road in front. And my mom said that almost every day she would see reliably two cars drive up behind the steak center, park behind the church. One person would get out of one car, get in the other car, they would have sex, and then they, you know, both get in their cars and leave. And, and, and it, it was pretty clear these were never married people. These, these were often, just from my mom's interpretation, married Draper Mormons who would have sexual rendezvous in the parking lot of the church behind. Because nothing was going on at these churches during the week. There wasn't security, there weren't police, there weren't activities. And it was during the day and it was relatively secluded. And just yesterday I was on TikTok and there was this girl who's non Mormon. Who's a tiktoker in Utah talking about how it's a thing to have sex in church parking lots in Utah. And I'm only bringing that up because it really is a thing. And if your dad was parking in a church parking lot super early in the morning, super late at night, that fits the pattern. That is very much a thing in Utah, and I'm guessing it's a thing in Idaho. Is there anything you want to add about that or am I making all that up, or have you experienced anything similar?

Brennan Harris [02:21:45] We would like, we just had a steak center in Sugar City where I grew up, and we would make jokes about that when there would be two cars in the parking lot. Like who's meeting up in the parking lot? But it's perfect because it's a huge building, huge parking lot, and it only gets used like two or three days out of the week. So mostly empty.

John Dehlin [02:22:03] Yeah. Okay, so. So you're pretty sure your dad was. Was having a. An affair with this woman while he was bishop and, and that's what he was doing in the car early in the morning or late at night?

Brennan Harris [02:22:15] Yeah, I can't say a hundred percent. I think in the incident where he was pulled over by a police officer, they probably were just talking, but I have no idea.

John Dehlin [02:22:24] Okay, so you're saying that there was possibly some involvement of police before. Before the actual, you know, event that that led to everything. You have indication that maybe police were involved about seeing your dad out late at night, early in the morning in a car in a church parking lot, and that was starting to arouse suspicion of the authorities?

Brennan Harris [02:22:47] Yeah. So people, rumors about my dad meeting with this person were already circulating by the time the stop happened by the cop. But the fact that a part time Madison County Sheriff's department police officer pulled them over, that's like a confirmed fact that he saw them together, recognized my dad, and then went. From what I've been told, of his own volition, this was not in his capacity as a police officer. This was not condoned by the Madison county sheriff whatsoever. This was not like collusion between the sheriff's department and the church or the school or anything. The officer who pulled them over took it upon himself to inform my dad's ecclesiastical leadership. And whether that was his, the bishop who's newly called to replace him, or his stake president or both, I'm not sure. But at least one of them was informed by the pop.

John Dehlin [02:23:50] So tell our listeners what happened. That, that, that was it a night or a morning where the police Got involved.

Brennan Harris [02:23:58] I think. I think it was a morning. My dad just got. They got pulled over while he was with this woman in the car. And he provided an explanation of, like, why he was. He was like. I was counseling her there was.

John Dehlin [02:24:08] Why was he pulled over? Like, what.

Brennan Harris [02:24:10] I think they were just. I think they were just parked suspiciously, like, at odd hours.

John Dehlin [02:24:15] And it was around what time. Do you have any idea? I could confirm that maybe like morning or night or.

Brennan Harris [02:24:28] I think it was early morning.

John Dehlin [02:24:30] And were they. Were they. Do you know if they were stopped and the policeman just approached the vehicle or were they actually driving because it's weird.

Brennan Harris [02:24:38] No, no, no. They were not, like, pulled over with sirens while driving. They just. They were both in the car, in a parked car, and the police officer.

John Dehlin [02:24:47] And the policeman just walks up and knocks on the door.

Brennan Harris [02:24:49] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:24:49] Have you been able to read the police report to see what the police wrote?

Brennan Harris [02:24:53] It's available. I talked to the Madison County Sheriff and he said that's public record. Like, you're legally allowed to see body cam footage, which we have, and read the reports. I just didn't to me like it. I feel like I had established relevant facts by that point, and I didn't feel like I needed to see the footage. But. Okay, somebody could go, like, I think you could still do that. Someone could go pull the footage and see exactly what happened. But I just. That felt like, for me, that wasn't relevant to, like, the. And my dad had just barely killed himself too, so I. It wasn't like doing all that detective work was at the top of my.

John Dehlin [02:25:37] Sure, sure.

Brennan Harris [02:25:37] Point.

John Dehlin [02:25:39] Okay, so. So in the timeline, the police stops, the police walks up to the car. Was it in the church parking lot?

Brennan Harris [02:25:46] I don't know if it was. I think it was at a different part. I think it was like a John Deere outlet or something like that. I don't think it was necessarily a church parking lot.

John Dehlin [02:25:54] Okay, so is it some parking lot? He's with this woman, the policeman walks up, knocks on the thing, and what identifies him?

Brennan Harris [02:26:05] Good question. I only have the information that I pieced together from, like, my dad's last email that he sent me and what Madison County Sheriff told me.

John Dehlin [02:26:17] So. So what? So, and by the way, I'm sharing in this post, the two blog posts, those are public, right?

Brennan Harris [02:26:26] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:26:27] Okay, so Brendan actually has shared kind of a bio of his dad, a background of his dad, and then he shares the. The final email he received from his dad prior to his dad dying by suicide. And, you know, he. Brennan shares Some of his own perspectives about what was going on, ways that his dad was telling the truth and ways that his dad wasn't. Why don't you go ahead and if you want to tell what your dad kind of said in the. The email that you received about what happened, his version of what happened, and then to what extent your dad was telling you the truth or not.

Brennan Harris [02:27:08] Yeah, So I actually have it pulled up right here, the email. So he actually goes into a lot of detail about, like, this incident of them being in the car together. And he said Dec. 22 in Rexburg at 6:30am that he was grabbing breakfast, he got a call from this person and they met up. So it's not like super early morning. What he says is true. It's 6:30am but he's trying to make it.

John Dehlin [02:27:40] He's trying to make it sound like this wasn't a sexual rendezvous. This isn't someone I was having an affair with. It seems like he's telling you I was out to McDonald's, but this McDonald's wasn't open. So I went to that McDonald's and then, oh, someone called me and I just was helping an innocent lady that needed help. And we got to talking and I dropped my keys. Let's keep going. I don't. I'm just saying it seems like he was trying to say to you I wasn't having an affair, is that he was.

Brennan Harris [02:28:06] But as I read through the email, so the first time I read it, I thought, okay, my dad just denied that he had an affair with this woman. But he didn't. He doesn't. In the email, I read it again, and he just says, he says this was a detail that has come up in rumors. This is a detail. Detail. This is a detail. All of these rumors are false. So he really carefully crafted it that like, it could be that everything he said in that email is true. That, like, technically it's kind of the way you lie to your parents when you're a kid that like, you choose to like, not share certain details or whatever. But. So he said the specific details of accusations were false, but he didn't say it was false that they were meeting. He said he met up with her to counsel her about, like, how to make the transition with this new bishop and all of that kind of stuff. And then a police officer approached the car and knocked on the door and seemed very suspicious about what was going on. And he said a few days later he got a call from his. From, like, their ecclesiastical leaders, the stake president and the New bishop and I, I think it may have been the stake president set up an interview with my dad and the bishop set up an interview with the neighbor. I don't know if like they had a meeting together. I assume not, but. And that's what he implies in the email is that this police officer went and told the ecclesiastical leaders that he saw them together and it was suspicious and he should call them in and whatever. My dad doesn't say that directly in the email. But then later, after my dad's death, we were able to meet with the Madison County Sheriff and he said, yeah, this guy, part time officer, this happened, he saw your dad, he went and told their church leaders and that's a gross violation of protocol and it's illegal. And he was immediately let go when I found out that he did that.

John Dehlin [02:30:07] So the police officer went and probably told your dad's bishop that he caught him in a car with another woman,

Brennan Harris [02:30:13] basically, or his stake president or both of those people. Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:30:18] Okay, that's awful.

Brennan Harris [02:30:21] Yeah. Which you can see, like. And I think it highlights the fuzziness and the messiness of this relationship between. There does not have to be an official kind of colluding type of relationship between the church and the police or the school and the police or all three of them together. There just has to be one fanatic member who considers it his or her duty to report that. And this guy who reported it probably felt brave, probably felt like he was doing the right thing and probably knew that it was against protocol or maybe even illegal to do so, and still thought, you know what this guy is, he's not who he says he is. And he's. I don't know, I don't want to like put words in his mouth or psychology. I have no idea the details that happen there beyond what I've been able to piece together. But you can just see how it doesn't take like just the way the church culture permeates an area like East Idaho, specifically Rexburg and Sugar City. There doesn't really have to be an official link between civil authority and church authority. There just kind of is baked into the membership.

John Dehlin [02:31:37] Yeah, it's one thing. It's one thing to have a small town. It's another thing to have religion and law enforcement overlapping. But you also have a small town, religion and law enforcement overlapping and people's jobs overlapping. And that's a really, it's a really tricky formula that can be combustible, basically. So what do you know about the timeline? From the point that your dad. That you know, parts ways with the police officer to the end of his life. Do you just want to tell us what you know about the timeline?

The Final Days Before Kip's Death

Brennan Harris [02:32:11] Yeah. So December 22nd was when he met. Those would be 2018. That's when he met and was pulled over and had the suspicious interaction with the police officer. And then. Within probably a week, He doesn't give a timeline there, but in some intervening period between December 22 and the. January 9th of the next year, January 9th, 2018, he's called in to meet with state president. And then early In January of 2019, he was notified by the school that they were going to be investigating claims about his relationship, this affair, and that he would be put on administrative leave while the university investigated those claims, those rumors. And so January 9th, 2019, which January 9th is my mom's birthday, by the way, which just makes this even worse. My dad sends me an email while I'm at work. He tells this whole story of visiting, getting pulled over, talking to the stake president, said,

John Dehlin [02:33:52] let me just ask, I'm sorry, had he not talked to you between that time and that final day? Did he not sit the family down? Did he not? Nope.

Brennan Harris [02:34:02] January 8th, he told my mom and maybe my brother and sister who were still living at home, that, like, he'd been put on administrative leave over.

John Dehlin [02:34:11] Okay, so. So over Christmas and the holidays and New Year's, nobody knew. He waited until, like, the day before and told your mom and. And a sibling. Okay, Yep.

Brennan Harris [02:34:25] So, yeah. So January 9th, he sends me this email and goes over all these details. And at the end of the email, you know, at the beginning, he says he's been the university's general counsel, has been tasked to investigate the claims, report back with a recommendation, I'm on paid administrative leave, blah, blah. Then tells the whole story and then says, I'm concerned that in this community, because of my position at the university, this will just turn into a rumor. But I think it's going to, like, in order to take care of you as my family, he never said, like, my life is over, my job, I'll lose my job for sure. He kind of seemed to say, like, this is all just rumors. But then at the end of the email, it takes this, like, really hard turn, and he says, I think this will turn into nothing more than a good scandal, but in order to take care of your mom, I see no other option than to end my life. So, like your mom, I've researched my. Whatever, my insurance policy, and even if I die by suicide, your mom will get the full benefit you can pay off this and that, the remaining mortgage on the house, and then you'll find my body just west of Beaverdick park, which is a park in Rexburg. I love you, blah, blah, blah. And he brings up money again. There will be enough money to pay off. Blah, blah, blah. Love, dad. So I got that at like 9:00am at work, that email.

John Dehlin [02:36:06] And the email was a. It was. It was addressed as I understand it. He had. He had in suggested the email that it was for a lot of people, but I think you said that only you received the email, is that right?

Brennan Harris [02:36:17] Yes, as far as I know, I'm the only one who responded. Received it?

John Dehlin [02:36:21] Why? He sent it just to you?

Brennan Harris [02:36:23] No, I don't know, because he does. He says, like, he brings up people in the family by name. I love so and so and so and so and so and so. But I texted them and said, hey, did you guys just get this email from dad? And none of them had. So I just forwarded it to my family kind of like immediately. I mean, I called. So right when I got the email, I called law enforcement, I called 911 and they got me transferred to the right people. And I gave them those details from the email of like, I think I have a suicidal family member. And they said this is where we'd find their body and gave them like, the exact location and stuff. So. And then they asked me for some details about, like, what kind of car does he have? And then they asked me, like, does he have access to firearms, what car kinds? And then the officer I was on the phone with got off. And in the intervening period before he checked in, I contacted family, texted and then sent out, forwarded this email to them.

John Dehlin [02:37:29] This is a heavy question, but I just can't imagine what it would be like to be a son and receive an email from your dad saying, I'm ending my life. I just. I just can't imagine that.

Brennan Harris [02:37:46] Yeah, it was weird because he had kind of like threatened to divorce my mom and then backed off of it. So it wouldn't be like completely weird if he, like, did something like that. Like he was threatening, this was a cry for help or something. But I called his number too, right after and didn't get an answer. And I thought, you know, I don't think this. I think this is real. I think my dad really is going to, or he already has, you know, try to kill himself because it seemed serious enough. So I called the police and called my family and then was getting updates from police officers as they Found where he was.

John Dehlin [02:38:29] Were you like, terrified? Were you sad? What were the emotions that kind of went. That you processed?

Brennan Harris [02:38:36] So there was a huge range of emotions that kind of like flowed in and out during the day. But the first one was just like, I just kind of the feeling you get when you're in an emergency. Like if you found out your basement was flooding, like, I had to figure out, okay, what do I need to do now? Like, there's probably steps I need to take. And So I called 911 and was just like, hey, I'm not sure 100% who I should be talking to, but this is what happened, blah, blah, blah. And then explaining that again to the person they patch me over to and just kind of waiting. And once I had let law enforcement know, I thought, okay, like now I started to come down from that a little bit. Just kind of the task oriented mindset and be like, okay, I should really let my family know. And then I started to feel just, just kind of anxious.

John Dehlin [02:39:27] Yeah, I'm just thinking about. I'm wondering whether your dad had anyone to talk to, whether he had anyone to confide in a friend, whether he was just going through this alone. We had talked earlier about this compartmentalization where, you know, he must have been compartmentalizing on some level to be a bishop and to be administering a university at a high level and to be involved in an affair. But now that he's like, could lose his job, probably feels like he's harming the family, wondering about whether he wants to live anymore. I'm. I'm also, I'm feeling sad for you, for your mom, for your family. And I'm feeling sad for him because he must have felt incredibly afraid or lonely or sad or desperate. And I wonder if he had anyone to talk to.

Brennan Harris [02:40:23] I don't know. I mean, he had the relationship with this person that I think was probably much more open with her than he was with any of us at that point. I talked to different people who he said different things to. He had raised the issue of suicide with some people in his life before. Even when he brought up the divorce a couple years prior, he mentioned, I thought about wouldn't maybe it would be better for me to end my life to get out of this unhappy, which we should have. Like, we should have been like, holy cow, dad, like, you thought about killing yourself, but he just brushed it off as like, I never would do that. Like, it just was a fleeting thought in a dark moment. But I just want you to know I'm serious. Like, I'm seriously unhappy. And so. And then my. A brother of mine found one of his journals and it was pretty like he just read stuff over the past couple years and there were some just dark passages of, like, I feel very alone. No one seems to understand. I can't talk to so and so I can't talk to my kids about this and that, blah, blah, blah. But there was no mention in the journal, as far as I know, of his affair. So it's hard to know what he wrote intending to be found, what he was, you know, if he was writing things with us in mind of finding that and what our reaction to that would be or like, what was gen. What were. What was his genuine experience that he was capturing in his journal. So.

John Dehlin [02:41:55] And, you know.

Brennan Harris [02:41:56] But I feel the same. I think he was very alone and very. And you desperate.

John Dehlin [02:42:02] Yeah. And have you been able to talk to the woman he was involved with to. To hear anything she can tell you about your dad and.

Brennan Harris [02:42:10] A little bit.

John Dehlin [02:42:11] Okay.

Brennan Harris [02:42:12] Not very much. I mean, I think, like, the, like, the prevailing feeling is like, this isn't. It's not like we're going to be best friends now or anything. We're going to come through this and be like, yeah, we all love my dad so much. And it just wasn't the. We kind of.

John Dehlin [02:42:29] Yeah. Well, on behalf of all the listeners, there's so many people sending you love, sending you empathy, sending you support, and this is a really. We're all. I mean, we're not done with the story, but, like, I guess I just want to take a moment and say we're also sorry that this happened. This must have been super hard. We're sorry for you. We're sorry for your dad. We're sorry for your mom. We're so sorry collectively that this happened to you and your family.

Brennan Harris [02:43:00] Yeah, I really appreciate that. And I appreciate so many people came out and. And expressed compassion and sympathy, and I appreciate that. It's a complicated story. And it's. In that way, it made it very hard to accept sympathy, too, because people were like, your dad was such an amazing guy. I'm sure you just, like, miss him so much. It's like, well, he was an amazing guy, but he was like, it was really complicated situation too. Like, it's hard to just say, like, oh, thanks, that's so nice of you, when really I'm super sad about my dad and what he went through. I'm really mad at the church at that point and how all that was part of the story. And each Member of my family, I think, could say something, speak to their experience about that. It's hard. It was a complicated situation. He was a complicated guy and it was like a terrible thing, what happened.

John Dehlin [02:43:59] So to finish out before I want to process the church stuff and other things, but before we do, from reading your, your blog posts, your dad didn't die. Was there anything you want to talk about? Just like the time between his attempt and the, the actual end of his life? It's, it's, it's. If those of you who read the blog, it's a very heavy and kind of explicit description of what happened. But what do you want to share in this interview about the time between his attempt and the actual end of his life?

Brennan Harris [02:44:39] Sure. I mean, what do you think? Should I go into any detail there or should we just kind of just,

John Dehlin [02:44:45] just whatever you want, honestly, whatever you feel. You want to be part of the story, right?

Brennan Harris [02:44:50] Okay, I'll just like, it was the worst thing ever. Like, if you don't want to hear this, you turn it off because it's, it's terrible.

John Dehlin [02:45:05] So just as a, as a warning, there, there's, there maybe there'll be some graphic things about his hospital stay and about the after effects of his attempt. So for those who are sensitive, you'll want to pause or skip forward a little bit while we talk about that. Maybe just a little warning. Okay.

Learning of Kip's Death by Suicide

Brennan Harris [02:45:28] So I got a call from the officer and they said, we found your dad. He's responsive, but he's injured. So they pretty vague on like, they're like, we've got an ambulance here and we're going to take him to this medical center, you know, in Idaho Falls, which is like 30 minutes away from Rexburg, a 30 minute drive. So I call my family, I tell them like, hey, here are the details. I'm getting calls a little bit from like uncles and cousins and people who live in Sugar City. And I'm like, let's all meet at the hospital and figure out what's going on here. And so on the drive to the hospital, I know he's alive still, but he's injured, which I don't know the details, what that means. So we get to the hospital and we're kind of waiting around for a little bit. They wait for people to get there. You know, people are in different levels of shock and distress. Between my dad's parents and my mom and my siblings and his brother and everyone who's there. And so the, a guy who's like the coordinator of activity in the emergency Room said okay. And he kind of gave us a brief overview of like the. Your dad was found with a gunshot wound that has injured his head, his face. And, um, they're getting him stabilized right now. It looks like we're going to be able to hook him up to a ventilator and get him stabilized to a place where we can pass him on to an intensive care unit here in the hospital. And so then we went and spent the rest of the day in kind of like a visitor waiting area outside of the icu. And as the day went on, more and more people were kind of filling this room. So it was most of my dad's family, his brothers, sisters, brothers and sister and parents. They all live in Sugar City. Not all of them, but most of most of the family, extended families there in Sugar Cities kind of stayed in the area. So they were all kind of there in the hospital at different times during the day. And the. We're getting updates on his status from the different specialists that are going in to the ICU and working on him. And they're kind of. They came in at two or three different points, but they eventually gave us kind of a briefing between a neurosurgeon and pulmonary, you know, heart and lung kind of specialist and the trauma surgeon. They're all giving us updates and kind of telling us, here's the state he's in. Here are decisions we can make. Here's where we need your feedback or input put on what we do going forward. And medically, the. They said he. So he shot himself with a firearm. It was a small caliber shotgun, which was really weird that he decided to. That he did it that way because he had powerful firearms that would have almost surely killed him instantly. And he chose to shoot himself with this gun that you're not even really supposed to use for like turkey hunting. I wrote that in the blog. It was just weird. It seemed like hasty, and it was just weird that he did that. But he shot himself in the head with the gun under his jaw, pointing up to the back of his head, and it wasn't powerful enough to kill him. Basically, the. The metal, the pellets and BBs that blast out of a shotgun and the gases, they told us, do as much damage as the actual metal parts that come out. Those had basically destroyed every structure in his face. So his jaw was gone, his upper palate of his mouth was destroyed, his sinuses were gone, his eyes were probably gone. And the neurosurgeon said, we found brain material in the wound tissue in the Face, which means the skull separation between the brain and the outside of the body is cracked, at least, but possibly more extensively destroyed. And there may not like. And so they gave us that description and then said, we can work on him. There are things we can do to work on him, but at each stage, he might just die. And even if at every stage everything goes perfectly, the best case scenario, he's going to be stabilized and he's going to live with no jaw, most of the structures in his face. So he'll never be able to speak again, he'll never be able to eat again. He might not be able to breathe on his own. The neurosurgeon said because his brain is compromised, he will be a different person. This has damaged his frontal lobe. They said it's possible that regulatory parts of his brain will be damaged to the point that he'll have to be permanently sedated. Otherwise he could become violent and just have to be either restrained or sedated for the rest of his life so he doesn't hurt. Hurt people. And they said, but you decide, like, do we go forward with that, or do we make him comfortable and

John Dehlin [02:51:14] remove

Brennan Harris [02:51:14] him from the breathing ventilator so that he'll die? And so they just left us as a family. And they. Even though his extended family, his brothers and sisters, they specifically asked my mom and his siblings to meet together and make that decision, whether we continue with more medical interventions or whether we pull the plug, basically. So I don't know if we want to take a breather there or keep going with this story.

John Dehlin [02:51:50] That's such a heavy thing for any family to deal with. But you're what age at this point in the story?

Brennan Harris [02:51:58] I was like 28 years old.

John Dehlin [02:52:01] It's just so. I just can't even imagine. It's so heavy, you're thinking. And you actually went in at one point and held his hand. It was a very touching part of the blog post. Do you want to talk about that?

Brennan Harris [02:52:17] Yeah, sure. So we made the decision as the family. I feel like I was kind of the. The pusher there. I don't know. I had very conflicting feelings. My dad had indicated to us many times that he said, like, if I'm ever on a ventilator and that's the only way I'm surviving, I like, it's my wishes that you pull the plug. Like, I don't want to be kept alive by a machine. I just make me comfortable. And so that part of it. And they told us too, like, the ICU coordinator said the Best thing you can do in making this decision is try to channel what you think the person themselves would decide. And so at that point, it kind of became obvious, like, well, if he didn't want to even continue living this morning with just the complexity of the situation he was in, we couldn't imagine he would want to, like, continue living with, like, all of these horrible deformities and problems he would have had on top of that for the rest of his life. So we decided after talking about it for a little while, that we would choose to make him comfortable and take him off the ventilator. And so then they said, well, you can go in and see him before we do that. And so they kept him on the ventilator long enough that the loved ones who were there, anyone who wanted to, could go and kind of say their goodby eyes. And so my mom went in, my sister and brother, and I went in with my wife. And it was just the worst. I don't know if, like, it was better for me to do that and go get closure or if it would have been better that I just never see that, because it was. It's horrific. It was the worst thing I've ever experienced. It was gross. And it was just. He was. You know, the extent of the injuries was very, very disturbing. And it wasn't really clear how before, when he. He'd been answering thumbs up, thumbs down to questions of the police officers who found him. But by that point in the day, I wasn't sure if he could hear me or what his responses were. I just went in and I was kind of terrified by what I was seeing. And I went and I held his hand and just said, hey, dad, it's Brennan. And I said, I love you. And then I don't even know if I said, bye, I love you. And then as soon as I could, I left my wife and I left and got out of the.

John Dehlin [02:55:02] Yeah, I'm so sorry. That's so incredibly hard.

Brennan Harris [02:55:11] Yeah. And I want to be careful. I mean, I've already said the worst parts of the experience, but it's hard to know what to say about that because you want to express the gravity of death by suicide and you want to discourage anyone from doing that. And it's hard to know, do you. Is it better that people know how bad it is and what the extent of it is, or is it better if we just don't talk about it and just offer support? It's just a terrible thing. It's terrible for the people who go through it. Who actually get to that point where death is better than life, or that's what it feels like to them at the time. And it's horrible for the people who have to live through that, like the people who survive the death of a loved one by suicide. And so I appreciate all the sympathy people express, but it seems like we're doing okay as a family. We went and got therapy and both his family and as individuals and kind of dealt with the emotional toll of that. But it's just something that no one should have to go through that. And it's anyone. I don't even know if I know what to say about people who do experience. Experience suicidal ideation. Just that, like, I'm here for that. If anyone can reach out to me and contact me, I would be here just to be a friendly ear or a friend for people who are going through that. But it's definitely something that if you're experiencing, you should reach out. And if you can, if you have the resources to get professional help. That was something that was very healing for me and my family as survivors. And that would be, if it's possible for people experiencing those things, I would definitely reach out, get help.

John Dehlin [02:57:17] Yeah. People should know. There are suicide hotlines available where people are on call to talk to you if you need support. There are psychologists and therapists, psychiatrists that are available. And every major city has a behavioral health unit, whether it's affiliated with the hospital or with the university. In Salt Lake City, it's called Uni Uni, and it's basically a residential facility, psychiatric facility for people who are actively suicidal. And you can check yourself in, you can call the ambulance, you can call 91 1, they'll come get you, or you can have your loved one who's actively suicidal. You can drive them to uni or to a behavior. Utah county has a behavioral health unit. Logan has one. At the Logan Regional Hospital. Most. Most towns and cities have these behavioral health units or hospitals where either a loved one can drive you there or you call 91 1, an ambulance will come, they'll take you there, they'll check you in, they'll get you safe, they'll get you with the psychiatrist, they'll get you the medication you need, and they'll keep you there and hopefully provide you with the support that you need to get you through that. That. That time that's. That's so critical, and that's just a little bit of education about that. So one thing that I learned, and again, Brennan, thanks for being willing to talk about this and to educate us about this one thing, you know, when I was early on, when Facebook came out and social media came out and, you know, you're feeling frustrated with the church about this or that, it's really easy for someone who's mad at the church or angry with the church to hear about a death by suicide. And by the way, just a little bit of awareness, what I've learned recently is that it's Committing suicide is not a term or a phrase that is appreciated these days or that is appropriate or sensitive. Death by suicide is more a more appropriate term these days in terms of how to characterize. Is that what you're, is that what you understand as well?

Understanding Suicide and Mental Health Stigma

Brennan Harris [02:59:47] BRENDAN yeah, I had to just learn that from it, and I learned more about it after I experienced the death of a loved one through suicide. But, yeah, committing suicide puts it in the same terms as commission of sin. And it's, that's a, it just adds more shame. So that's probably not, probably not for people who see it that way. I think some people hear the phrase and they just think, well, that means just dying by suicide. But, yeah, I can appreciate the, if there's anything we can do to change the culture or the shame around suicidal ideation or then, yeah, we for sure should, should do that.

John Dehlin [03:00:26] Yeah. Historically, in Mormonism, we have the, you know, Mormon doctrine, BRUCE Armaconkie statements by general authorities that really place the blame on the person. They call them selfish, they call it sinful. There will be all sorts of things that are negative that are put on the person who decides to, to take their life or, or who's so ill that they end up taking their life. But, but it's mental illness. It's. If some people have anemia, some people have kidney failure, some people have an aneurysm, some people have diabetes, and some people have mental illness to the point where that is the solution that occurs to them. And it's something just to have no judgment about and lots of compassion. I, I'm not trying to sermonize to you. I, I do have a PhD in psychology, so I do have thoughts and feelings about this. Is there anything else you want to share about just education about death by suicide?

Brennan Harris [03:01:34] I'm definitely not an expert. I've experienced it, but I don't, I haven't really studied it intensely, but yeah, I just my dad was very hesitant to therapy and counseling because my mom, when she was going through depression, she was meeting with a counselor and my dad kind of took that Bruce R. McConkie stance of like, it's just. It's just people who aren't tough, they just need to pull themselves up by their bootstraps. And he was very skeptical and

John Dehlin [03:02:06] kind

Brennan Harris [03:02:06] of paranoid about the mental health services or whatever in general. And I think that's like a huge part of the problem because he. Obviously there were these circumstances of his death that were like the events, the people, the job stuff, but there were also all these underlying things that it makes me like, he wouldn't go see someone and get help, but he could have made a world of difference. He could have. Things could have turned out very differently if there was a different culture around talking about mental health, feeling free to express. When you're. Whether it's just like feeling situationally depressed or chronically depressed, or you just feel like you're experiencing something, there should be no shame whatsoever in expressing that and starting the process to get help. So, yeah, anything that we can do or that I can do to encourage a more compassionate stance toward mental health treatment and really trying to help people who are experiencing turmoil internally, just. I'm all for that.

John Dehlin [03:03:27] And it's. It's yes, amen. And I'll just. I'll try and model this personally through a little bit of vulnerability. Like, I. I had never seen really a therapist prior to starting my PhD in psychology. And even through my PhD, I did not ever seek any support, even though I needed it. And my family went through some really severe and hard things, and I didn't get support, and my wife didn't get support, and we didn't get support. Since graduating with my PhD in psychology, Margi and I have each seen therapists and coaches individually. We've seen marriage therapists, marriage coaches. We've had many of our kids see coaches and therapists, and we've, as a family unit, seen coaches and therapists. We have spent thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars getting help with therapists, with. With marriage therapists, with psychologists, with licensed clinical social workers, and sometimes with coaches just depending on the situation. And it was. It was really hard to do. It was surprisingly hard to do that. For some reason, men tend to not want to get help more often than women in Mormon culture. Sometimes it's even worse. And I have to admit that I was scared. Even though I had a PhD in psychology, I was trained. I did all. I've met all the training certifications. I spent six years providing therapy to people. I was still hesitant to want to go to a therapist myself or go to a coach or go to a marriage therapist and get help, but it saved my marriage with Margi. We had severe problems around 2011, 2012. It's transformed our marriage. We've had kids with significant challenges who, we got them the help they needed and it's made a world of difference in their lives. There have been family members with severe situations where we invested significantly. And it's, it's been a huge financial investment, but that's exactly what it is. It's an investment because it pays off. And I just want to tell people it's not only not something to be ashamed of to get help, it's, it's smart and it's, it's noble and it's courageous. It's courageous to admit that you need help and to seek out help. And so I hope anyone within the sound of my voice or who can see or hear what we're talking about today will flip that switch in their mind where they will say, if I or someone I know or love needs help, I will move heaven and earth to get them a psychologist, to get them a licensed clinical social worker, marriage and family therapist, whatever they need, a psychiatrist, a medical doctor. Get the, get yourself or the people you love the help you need. There's a, there's a Mormon mental health association. You can look up therapists there if you're wanting someone who's sensitive to issues that progressive and post Mormons deal with. Natasha Alfer Parker has a therapy practice called Symmetry Solutions. Natasha Parker, not Natasha Helfer. You can reach out to her@Natashaparker.org There are lots of ways you can find help. Email me and I will refer you to a great therapist or psychiatrist or coach. But just please get the support you need really quickly. Lots of people sharing some things and I just, I want to take a minute to share what some people are sharing. Southern Bowels lady. She made a donation to the program through super chat on YouTube. Thank you so much. But she writes, more importantly, thanks Brennan for sharing your heartfelt story. This took a lot of courage on your part. She writes X J dub solidarity. So she's an ex Jehovah's Witness. She says, John, thank you for bringing more stories in our lives. Much appreciated. Much love to all the 600 plus people. Yeah, we have 800 people in the chat and that's the probably the biggest audience we've ever had on Mormon Stories podcast. So a huge thanks to you, Brennan, for being willing. And thanks again, Southern lady, for your comment and for your financial support. Dear friend Victoria in the uk, she writes, I think it's better that we talk about these things. I felt this way when I left the church, but thankfully my life is far better now and I'm in a very peaceful place now. I think it's important that we talk about this more and make people aware of this experiences. Then we can offer better support to each other. Amen. VICTORIA and I'm just going to say silence is the both. I had this thought in the shower this morning. Within Mormonism and within many faith traditions and other organizations, silence is the enabler and silence is the killer. The fact that so many people are afraid to talk about their feelings, about their thoughts, they compartmentalize, they hide, they put on a front and, or they know about problems with the church or with the leadership or with the institution or with whatever. And people won't speak up about the problems that they are aware of or they see or the illnesses or the sicknesses or the things that happen. Silence is the enabler that keeps broken and toxic systems in place. So silence is the enabler. So many people say, how does the church continue hurting people in so many ways? The answer is silence. People who can speak up, There are people who can't speak up because it's not safe and for them they're off the hook. If there are people who can speak up about anything, they see that's a problem that's hurting people, but they don't speak up out of. That when they can speak up and they don't, it's the enabler to toxic systems and it's the killer. Because silence is the killer. When we don't talk about death by suicide, when we don't talk about mental illness, when we don't talk about the church's problems, we don't talk about the church's toxic culture around sex and sexuality, about the honor code and the hurtful policies at BYU Provo, BYU Idaho, BYU Hawaii, we don't talk about the toxic shame culture in the church, the way they stigmatize sexuality, when we don't talk about ecclesiastical leaders and the punishment that the church does in the disciplinary courts, all that shaming, the shaming of masturbation and pornography and youth and just all the ways that we shame in a toxic, pure purity, sex obsessed culture, when we don't talk about continues and when we talk about it, we build awareness of it and then we can help make a difference. I don't mean to be so preachy, but I just want to echo what Victoria said. Is there anything you want to say about the that monologue? BRENNAN I, I, I guess As a psychology PhD, I feel like I need to speak out on some of this stuff, but I don't want to. This is your interview, so let me step back and let you share whatever you want to about what I just said.

The Church's Culture of Silence and Shame

Brennan Harris [03:10:46] I have maybe a couple of thoughts there. And the. This is the. This is why I wrote a blog about this and why I felt comfortable coming here. And I don't know comfortable, but I decided I would talk about it publicly. Here is that when my dad died, the fact of his suicide was well known in the rumor mill, but it was never officially acknowledged. The article about his death just said, well he died, he was a great guy and so sad. And it was just a normal obituary. When we met with. So after he died, I met with the president of BYU Idaho and then my mom and brother and I met with the Madison County Sheriff and he said that journalists requested. They called him about my dad's death. So I don't know. It was one of the east Idaho journalist organizations. And he said like I just told them like this is disrespectful to the family to talk about these details. And he kind of shut it down. He can't legally do it. Like the journalists could have come and checked out the public documents and even seen body cam footage and stuff like that as part of the public record. They could have written about it, but he discouraged them to. And I don't think he's like some, you know, we gotta hide this. It looks bad for the church. He's just, he and he said this and I'll take him for his word that out of respect for the family, he didn't want this turned into some big salacious, prurient kind of story that would then be an embarrassment to us as his family. And I totally get that. And I wouldn't. I hope in what I've shared I haven't turned it into something like that either. That is just like piques your interest because of how juicy it is. I just think it's things like that. It's people making decisions like, well, we want to respect the family. It's really not polite to talk about this. Like it's just. Let's just not focus. I think it's part of the system that is able to just keep things like this keep happening and no one becomes aware of them and they. Problems persist just because people are. They don't even know that there's a problem. Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:13:26] And I've noticed that so many deaths. I've noticed in obituaries in the Sally Tribune in the Deseret News, you know, the person took their life, but the newspapers never mention it when they have the funerals. It's all about the plan of salvation and about Jesus and about the afterlife. And they don't mention it there and family doesn't talk about it. And it's just like, oh, this person loved the Lord and had a strong testimony of Jesus. And they're with their loving heavenly Father now. And, you know, I just wonder whether we're doing all of ourselves a huge disservice. You don't want to smear anyone. You don't want to scandalize anything. But at the same time, if we don't talk about it, if we just pretend it's not there. And I was just, I was texting one of my friends who is at BYU Idaho. I get, and you even said this, that there's at least one death by suicide every year at BYU Idaho, and sometimes multiple. But none of the students know. And even then I understand because there is such a thing as suicide contagion, where when one happens, kids hear about it and then. Or adults hear about it and then it can lead to more suicidal ideation. So it's tricky because on the one hand, we don't want to encourage suicide contagion, and we've heard about that breaking out at Lone Peak High School and Harriman High School. Different, different Mormons, super conservative Mormon high schools in Utah and elsewhere. But it's tricky because you don't want to promote suicide contagion. But at the same time, if we don't talk about it, how do we address it?

Brennan Harris [03:15:07] Well, I don't want to go into too many details about this just because I don't know a lot of the facts of the case. But my favorite professor, when I had my whole injury and stuff, when I was going through college, I had to withdraw from school. When I reapplied after I'd kind of come back from surgery and stuff, there was one class that I took again that I had the previous the semester I had to like, withdraw. There was one professor I loved so much and I loved his class that I reapplied for that specific course.

John Dehlin [03:15:40] He.

Brennan Harris [03:15:41] After his employment with the university was over. And I don't know the details about whether he resigned or whether he was fired or whatever, but he took his life as well. Another church, like another employee, a former employee of the BYU Idaho. And it just makes me wonder, if we don't talk about it, is there like a bigger problem, a more systemic Problem that is just people living right around it. You never connect the dots and see like there's something really wrong going on here just because we don't talk about it.

John Dehlin [03:16:17] Yeah. Another comment from a listener Andrew Garon writes by Idaho used to have a policy of announcing a student's death, but suicides were becoming more frequent, so they changed their policy. So that's, that's an interesting report from Andrew. Thanks for sharing that. Scott writes. And this is true, Scott writes, most big universities have a, have a counseling center where you can receive counseling for 15 to 20 bucks a session or even free. When we had to go because I was 13 and called a suicide hotline, it cost my dad $12. Yeah, I'm going to just say that is true. So somebody earlier mentioned the concern about affordability of mental health counseling in Logan at Utah State University. The way we, the way that it. There was a community clinic that was at the university and it was where graduate students would do their training. And so it was supervised by licensed psychologists. Members of the community would come and they would pay on a sliding scale. So if you made nothing, you would pay close to nothing. If you made more, you'd pay more. But there are community resources available where you can pay on a sliding scale and afford, even if you don't think you can afford therapy, there are community resources available, oftentimes affiliated with your university. There was both the Marriage and Family Clinic in Logan and there was the community center that were both staffed by student therapists, supervised by licensed therapists. And the empirical support shows that student therapists are as effective as licensed therapists if they're supervised by professionals. And there are also lots of therapists. I, I included. I'm not a therapist. I haven't pursued licensure. But you know, I do coaching pro bono. And there are therapists that do therapy pro bono or on a sliding scale. So even if you don't feel like you can afford therapy, definitely reach out and see if you can find community resources or therapists that will do some pro bono work, which means doing work for you on a sliding scale or even for free. Don't let money be, be an obstacle. And, and worst case, just check yourself into the hospital. And, and, and sometimes hospitals will be lenient with the bills. I, I can't say always that that's going to be true, but sometimes it is. You know, other people are saying secrecy is the problem. Talk about it. We can't fix what we cover up. Dusty writes, in my experience, Mormon funerals and weddings tend to Rob attendance of truly experiencing the emotions and thoughts, enjoy sadnesses, other emotions that are meant to be felt at such ceremonies. At weddings, there's often a true lack of celebration. At funerals, almost nothing is shared regarding memories of this person. It's usually about the church. That's a different subject. But it is important. Will writes Brendan, I'm so moved by your story. As the son of a BYU administrator, I understand what that meant for you and your family. I shared your article and it reopened a dialogue about mental health with my parents. So thank you. Thank you, Will W. And Will W. Thank you for your donation as well. Your contributions help keep this program alive. So many, so much outpouring of love and support. Let me jump to a really important and sensitive topic now, Brennan, if it's okay.

Brennan Harris [03:19:50] Okay.

John Dehlin [03:19:52] When I when I was starting to get mad at the church about Prop 8 and about the way it treated LGBT people, and then I started learning about suicide, deaths by suicide in the LGBT community and elsewhere, and even faith crisis or, or sexual shaming. People don't just end their life in Mormonism because of being lgbt, they'll end it sometimes when they're caught in an adulterous affair, they'll end it sometimes if they're masturbating and looking at pornography and they're getting sent home from a mission or not allowed to go on a mission or sent home early. There are lots of reasons why sexual shame will cause a Mormon to end their life by suicide, not to mention other things that aren't related to sex at all. But it's very easy for us to just say, well, it's the church, the church caused this, and it's the church, blah, blah, blah. But I had people, you know, remind me that people die by suicide outside of Mormonism. They die by suicide. In other faith traditions, atheists and agnostics can die by suicide. So it's not, on the one hand, it's not as simple as saying it's all the Mormon church's fault. Curse the church, shake your fist at the church. So that's true. And it's also true that it's got to be some of these messages around purity, culture, shame, sexuality, and then even just, you know, disciplinary councils and honor code and you're getting kicked out of the university, you're going to get fired from your job, and your whole community is going to know and they're going to talk about you. So I want to give you some time to talk about what you do, lay at the feet of the church, what you don't lay at the feet of the church. And if you have. When you said you were angry at the church or at byu Idaho or at the police force, can you talk us through what you were angry about, what you were upset about, how you've pieced that apart into, in. In terms of like, who shares responsibility for this and who doesn't and how you've made sense of all that. But also, if we're going to speak up about it, what changes do we want to see the church and the membership make so that the culture contributes and the religion that's supposed to be healing and facilitating growth so that the religion doesn't actually end people's life instead of save and promote, save lives and promote healing. So just talk as long as you want about that, please.

Brennan Harris [03:22:18] Okay. Yeah. I mean, I hope. I think we've focused on a lot of the church employment situational aspects of this story, but it's really, it's. I just want to, don't want to just say this over and over, but it's so complicated. It's the most complicated experience I've ever been through in my life because my dad was on one hand, him having an affair. It's just. It sucked and it not cool that he did that. But it's also a very normal part of human life. But at the same time, he was really bad to my mom. Mom in the last. I don't think he handled it very well. He had, he was so mean to her in some ways. And so like, that was part of it too, that he really was doing some things that were really wrong. But the church was investigating, the school was investigating rumors that he had. Was having an affair, an extramarital affair. What other, like anywhere else that you'd work, even if you're the, you know, like in modern day, if you're the president of the United States, like, it's not like that is that can affect your employment. That just seems in any other situation where I think people would be outraged that if some part of their personal life was being brought, brought to bear on their employment, I mean, you know, outside of the church, that would be very outrageous. And I think both students and employees of BYU Idaho are told all the time, like, well, you know the rules. So you signed the paper. So you said, but when you sign that paper, you don't know. Like, well, if I make a little mistake, the response is going to be so severe, like, I'm going to get kicked out of school for this or I'm going to lose my job. It's not just going to be like someone's going to sit you down and be like, hey, this really doesn't look good for the church or the school or whatever. It's going to be a really compassionate list response to deviations if you break certain rules. So I, yeah, I don't know. Personally I don't hold any animosity to anyone in this process. Even the officer that reported my dad, that was inappropriate, that was probably illegal. But God bless the guy, he thought he was doing the right thing. He'd like been, you know, he saw this guy who in the community was very revered and respected and said this guy is. He's a dirtbag. I just caught him with this woman or whatever. And so I think he in his mind probably was doing the right thing. And I don't hold any animosity to him personally. But that's the thing is no, I'm not mad at the sheriff, I'm not mad at the president of BYU Idaho. I'm not mad at the apostles or whatever. Only insofar as you recognize that there is a problem here, something's wrong and you don't do anything about it. Like the. That to me is where I'm very disappointed in people in who are part of this story and I can be brought to. There's culpability on me too. There's things I could have done very differently. When my dad brought up that whole. He just kind of like sort of hinted when he was discussing with my mom like I considered a suicide plan and it's no big deal. Like it. I should have been more, I should have reached out more to him. I should have, you know, sought external help. I just took him at his word. Which now is so dumb that I did that. But, but I. It was all of these overlapping factors and so I think there are things though that are part of the church and part of the church culture that I don't get. Why we don't just get rid of them. I don't get stinks like the shame around sexuality. What is the harm to the church by just dropping that like let's not discuss consensual nonviolent sexual behavior that's healthy like considered healthy by you know, like society, by the corpus of like modern researchers, psychologists. If there's aspects of sexual behavior that are consensual and they're healthy, those shouldn't be brought, those shouldn't be being discussed behind closed doors between 12 year olds and their bishops and they shouldn't be discussed at all no one should feel like they're committing a sin for engaging in healthy sexual behavior. I don't get like what the church loses by. I mean I guess I can think of a couple of things, maybe in terms of control, but I don't get why the church just doesn't just drop that.

John Dehlin [03:27:49] So basically, you know, I, I would say basically the teaching that, that sex is next to murder in severity. Like the church, the Mormon Church literally teaches that sex, premarital sex, adultery, any of that stuff is literally it's murder and then it's sex.

Brennan Harris [03:28:07] Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:28:07] That isn't with. Only with your married heterosexual spouse. Anything else is next to murder and evil. So like that's, let's maybe we'll start there, get rid of that, purge that from everywhere. Right. And then, and then what? So the other things you're adding are

Worthiness Culture, Sexuality, and Institutional Harm

Brennan Harris [03:28:29] I think definitely masturbation. Why is that? Even on the. And I, to the Church's credit, I think they have eased off of it a bit. The last I heard the references to masturbation were taken out of. For strength of youth. I don't know if I'm correct on that, but it's complicated too because I've heard missionaries who are going out now in some places it's being discussed more heavily among missionaries. So I don't know, but I just don't, I don't see how you could live in the modern world and continue to teach that masturbation is harmful and that it's not just part of sexual development, part of healthy sexual experience. That seems wild to me.

John Dehlin [03:29:21] Yeah. So there's the one on one interviews with children and teens and young adults where 40, 50, 60 year old men who are plumbers or electricians or lawyers are Talking to little 12 and 13 year old girls alone about where they touch themselves and if they touch themselves and how. Or they're grilling a 17 or 18 year old girl about where did he touch you and when did he touch you and was there penetration and did you orgasm? Like this is not made up. This is not hyperbole. We have thousands and thousands and thousands of accounts of this happening every year for decades and decades and decades. So that's got to go. Worthiness interviews, just the concept of worthiness has to go that, that somehow your worth is tied to the, to the mistakes you make and, or sexual things. Do you want to comment on that?

Brennan Harris [03:30:17] I mean I think that really disrupts the Church's model. I think worthiness is like you got to maintain your worthiness to hold the temple Recommend part of that includes paying the Church regularly as a percentage of your salary, your income. It includes participating in meetings, making sure you're here where we can check up on you and see you every week. So I don't know that the Church, I mean, I think they should give up the idea of worthiness, but I don't know that. I think that's an existential threat, the church to, to give up on that, or they're just going to have to make huge changes to the whole, the motivation system, I feel like.

John Dehlin [03:31:07] Yeah, because, because as someone who's tried to create secular communities without fear and shame and guilt, it's really hard. The fear and the shame and the guilt thing is like the secret sauce of Mormonism. It's the way that the church thrives. It really is. Like, you know how like, Coca Cola or McDonald's french fries have that, like, secret ingredient? I, I, my, my best estimate of studying Mormonism for 50, 40 years, you know, is that shame and guilt and, and disciplinary councils and bishops interviews and threats of, of punishment, either in this life, at byu, in your ward, on your mission, with the disciplinary council, or in the afterlife, like, that is the secret sauce of what makes religion survive and thrive. So you're right. It's hard to see the Church letting that go. But that's the problem. It's the problem.

Brennan Harris [03:32:07] Well, and they could at least, I mean, it was framed to me growing up in the Church that like, well, shame is one level of, like, obedience. Like, there's different levels. Like, the highest level of obedience is you love God. But if you're just afraid of the punishment or the scorn of your community or whatever, it's still getting you to do good things. Like if it's shame about what your neighbors would think that keeps you from hurting people or robbing a bank or, you know, they give these dumb examples that would apply to almost no one. But does the justification that, like, well, it's. As long as social pressure pushes you to do something good or make, you know, to forego making a harmful or a bad choice, then it's a good thing too. But I think we've included under the, and maybe there's some merit to that. May I? I don't know. Maybe if the church and like, the way it's structured in people's minds keeps them from doing more good than they would do otherwise, maybe there would be something to say there. But to just like, to lump into all of this, to this category of shame, things that are shameful, to lump into that things that harm no one and that like the shame is obviously doing so much more harm than whatever activity is like, considered shameful. That doesn't make, that doesn't jive with me and I don't feel. Yeah, that's okay.

John Dehlin [03:33:36] A couple important comments from our listeners. Cynthia writes, sex being in the same category as murder, as murder is just absurd to me. And it is common, a common Mormon teaching. And it's, it's even doctrinal. I'm sure it's somewhere in the, in the Doctrine and Covenants of the Book of Mormon. I don't remember the verse, but it is taught as Mormon doctrine and it's pervasive. Cygnus also writes, religions are so obsessed about sex. That's so true. Mason writes, now masturbation is specifically mentioned in the missionary rules. Unfortunately, that's what I thought. And I have heard people end their life by suicide because of masturbation, shame and guilt. And it's, it's a real epidemic in the church that we don't talk about just the whole pornography, masturbation, 12 step addiction program. We just do so much harm in the church with all that thinking that we're doing good, but, but really just doing so much harm. Andrew writes, yes, an existential threat to the church. The church is bleeding numbers and they know. Hence Russell M. Nelson's people are running out of time to get a testimony prophecy. There is a sense that the church is losing its members. And if it lets up on sex and sexuality, I do think the leaders feel like it won't have this. There's this idea that the church creates the illness and then holds itself out for the cure. And this is a really insidious kind of cynical view of, of the Mormon Church and of other religions. But it's just this idea that if the church can make you feeling, you know, every. What's something that's pervasive. Lots of people masturbate when once they hit puberty, girls and boys. Lots of people look at porn because it's all over the Internet and it's so easily acceptable. Lots of people, you know, have affairs or have premarital sex. And so like, sex is a way to get people feeling like they've made big mistakes and that they need an atonement, they need forgiveness, they need a church leader. And again, it's not like, oh, you have a sexual indiscretion. Talk to God. No, no, no, no, no. Not talk to God. Talk to your bishop and only your bishop can help you take advantage of Christ's Atonement. Christ's atonement is not enough. Talking to God in prayer is not enough. You have to have a Mormon bishop intercede and let you know when you're forgiven. And so, but that's the way that members feel humbled. They feel bad, they feel like they need the church, they feel like they're a bad person. They need religion, they need Christ, they need Christianity, because, whoa, I masturbated that one time, or, whoa, I looked at porn, or, whoa, I had sex before I was married. And that guilt and shame just bond you to the church. And so if the church were to get rid of that and say, hey, what you do with your privates is between you and the Lord and work that out, then you don't need the bishop, you don't feel awful, you don't feel shameful, you don't feel unworthy, you don't feel like you need the atonement. And then, and then you don't need the church. And I really do think that's what's going on. Do you think I'm. Do you think there's something to that? Brennan?

Brennan Harris [03:36:53] Oh, yeah. Well, and it keeps us from having a real conversation about sex, because sexuality is a pervasive part.

John Dehlin [03:37:00] It's like, it's how life happens.

Brennan Harris [03:37:04] It's not.

John Dehlin [03:37:05] It's not just a normal part of life. It's how life happens.

Brennan Harris [03:37:09] Yeah, it is. It is life, in a sense, you know?

John Dehlin [03:37:12] Yeah.

Brennan Harris [03:37:13] And so to take this part of our existence that is fundamental and say, well, if you do that, except in this very specific way where you, like, go to the temple, you, like, shake hands, you do all this stuff, and you make sure you do it the right way, husband, wife, no gay people can do this. Then you can have sex, then it's fine. But we're still not going to talk about it. Like, it keeps us from having real conversations about sex, because there are sex is. It can get super complicated in human life when you make the distinction between types of pornography. Is there pornography that's more harmful and more vicious than other types? Absolutely. There's pornography that feeds itself from human trafficking and the abuse of children. But we can't talk about that because a billboard that has or like the scene in titanic in a PG13 movie, and abusive, terrible, dark pornography that's all lumped into the same category in Mormonism. And the same thing with sex, like, consensual sex among adults versus, like, issues of consent within marriage, I think, get totally swept over and undiscussed because we can't make distinctions. It's only like, are you married? Between husband and wife. Okay, then you might as well, like, you might as well have committed war crimes. Like, there needs to be a really broad discussion about sex and sex education and healthy conversations about that. That just can't happen because there's this binary thing of like, it's either fine or it's like the worst thing you've ever done.

John Dehlin [03:39:02] Yeah. Not to mention like this, this story that's untrue that like if a husband masturbates and looks at porn, it's cheating in a marriage. Right. It's, it's, it's, it's infidelity. It's the same as having sex with another person. That's a stupid false narrative. And then also the fact that the church, if you, if you masturbate once every three weeks, looking at little image, you're an addict in the same class literally as a heroin addict or an alcoholic or a drug, you know, whatever. You're in the same class as those people going to a 12 step program talking about your life in terms of sobriety and you're, you're it. There's no difference between that and somebody that's looking at something six, seven hours a day, can't hold a job down, is compulsively involved. There are none of that, none of that should be compared to a drug addiction because porn and sex are in a different category. But one can be viewed as like seriously problematic compulsive behavior that needs a mental health professional to help you work through unhealthy coping. But, but we can't, you know, we can't even distinguish between like once a month or a couple times a month to like 12 times a day. It's just all, it's all next to murder and it's all just like cheating and it's all what an addict does. And it's, it's, we're probably belaboring the point, but it's, it's, we need to just get way better, way better about all this. Let me share a comment that Amanda's making and then I'm going to touch on what I think is one of the worst things of all. Amanda writes. My son was not allowed to go on a mission for 18 months because he admitted to masturbating during his last interview. It was so awful. There's so many things that were wrong. First of all, Amanda, so sorry for you and your son. There's so many things that are awful about this. One is that they're Even having to talk to an adult man about this, it's none of his business. Two, the bishop is probably masturbating too. So that's really weird. 3 Is that all these missionaries that don't get sent home early or don't have to wait to go on their mission, they just lie. And so there's this culture of teaching kids to lie. And it happens all the time. And then it's often the honest kids that get punished. And then there's all the public shame because you're like, oh, why aren't you going on a mission? Wait, I thought you got your call. Well, why didn't you go? Why did you come back from the MTC early? Why. Why are you back in two months? Because of the pressure cooker when you go to the MTC on your mission. And that along with just getting kicked out of BYU like Dan Reynolds or getting fired from your job like your dad. Whenever, like mission or the sacrament or temple attendance or your job or your status as a student is piled on the you're an addict or it's as bad as murder. That's where I think religion, that's where Mormonism is culpable. Because when the stakes are just way insanely too high and ratcheted up, that's when people feel trapped. People end their lives when they feel like there's no way out. Tell me if I'm wrong. Your dad ended his life because he felt like there was no way out. He's like, I'm going to get fired from my job. My family's not going to have an income. I'm going to get all this public shame. I've been a bishop. It's going to bring shame to everyone. Better just to, like, cash in on the insurance policy and end my life. Like, it should never be that way. It should be like, oh, my gosh, you are depressed. You have anxiety. Let's get you a therapist. Let's keep this private. Let's handle this tactfully. Keep your job. We'll get you the support you need. It should never be. You're kicked out of your mission, you're kicked out of byu, you're fired from your church job, you're fired as a professor. Your life is over, Scarlet Letter. You're shamed for life. You may as well die. That's sort of the stakes that the church puts on people. And that's where I think church, you need to change. You need to stop making the stakes so high that people feel so trapped that they want to end their Life. Sorry, Brennan. I got excited about that.

Brennan Harris [03:43:19] Amen.

John Dehlin [03:43:19] John Dillon, do you want to add anything to that?

Brennan Harris [03:43:24] That was good.

John Dehlin [03:43:25] Okay, well, this is your interview, but I. But I feel passionately about this stuff, and so I'm jumping in.

Brennan Harris [03:43:35] Oh, that was great. I think it's an important discussion to come out of this.

John Dehlin [03:43:39] Hopefully a couple other comments from our listeners. This is just sort of like other people's experiences. Tanya writes, I left the church and took my two boys off the name or the records of the church to protect them from religious abuse. They are too precious to God to be questioned by Mormon leaders. This is something I had to change my mind about because for so often I was like, I can't leave the church. How will I raise my kids? Or are you sure you want to leave the church? How will you raise your kids? How will you make them moral and healthy people? And then I'd have people say to me, I'm leaving for the health of my children because I don't want my kids raised in the shame. What if they're gay? What if. What if they masturbate? What if they do look at something? What if they're honest? What if they fool around with their boyfriend or girlfriend? I don't want them to get these messages, toxic messages about sexuality. I don't want them to feel so shamed and guilty that they want to end their life. I think there's something to that, right?

Brennan Harris [03:44:34] Yeah, for sure.

John Dehlin [03:44:36] Yeah. So let's go ahead and get back to your. How can we. How can we pick up your story, your. Your dad's story, and, And. And finish up with your family story and your story? So you're, you're. You. The last we left off, your family decided to go ahead and take your dad off of life support. Let's just turn the time back over to you and, and let's have you finish your dad's story, your family story, and your story, and then we'll. We'll figure out how to wrap up from there.

Church Leaders' Response at the Hospital

Brennan Harris [03:45:11] Okay. So while we were still in the hospital, like, during this day, the stake president and the bishop, who are both called out in my dad's final email, they show up and they just have, like, deer in the headlight looks on their faces. And my mom, when they showed up, she printed off a copy of the email and she handed it to them and had them read it. So, like, I think her mindset was like, these people are my ecclesiastical leaders. What I feel like I saw being processed in their minds is like, oh, crap, we have, like, damage control to do here. Like how you know that knowing how the church operates legally, I can't imagine the situation they were in or the pressure they were under to make right choices and make sure that this wasn't. Didn't explode into some big legal thing or publicity thing or whatever. And that would suck to be them in that situation, I think. But they came. My mom wanted me to get a blessing from them. And I was like, no, thanks. And Elder Bednar called my mom whilst we were there in the hospital and he said, I'm so sorry. I would have been there. Like, I would be there, but I have an assignment from the first Presidency in Italy that I have to go do. And then two days later, while we were doing funeral stuff, or you know, within a few days, it might not have been exactly two days, but I'm sitting there with my wife and she's going through Instagram and I hear Bednar's voice and he's in Italy and he's shooting Instagram videos for the church's channel to promote the construction of the Rome temple and talk about the apostles. He reads some scripted thing. And that was just like such an interesting. I mean, I had already left the church at that point, so I was kind of dealing with my own maybe biases and hard feelings. But it was just so interesting, that experience of this guy whose whole mantra and my dad's connection to him was through this whole idea of one by one, you care for people one by one, you have a one by one ministry. The reason he doesn't come and minister to this one guy who lived his life like idolizing his ethic and carrying it out. Mr. Like one by one angel on a tractor. The reason he doesn't come is so he can promote the church's newest, most expensive real estate project on Instagram and try to generate like social media likes from it. That to me was like one of the weird. That was like one of the most bizarre kind of poetic experiences of the whole deal in terms of the church.

John Dehlin [03:48:13] So you were disappointed that Elder Bednar didn't come to the funeral or come support the family.

Brennan Harris [03:48:20] He's a busy guy, I don't think. Like, I've probably missed important things that were important to my members of my family or, you know, I'm not going to say I'm never going to have a scheduling conflict, but it's just interesting that the reason he missed it was for something that seems to go completely opposite his stated kind of life philosophy.

John Dehlin [03:48:44] Yeah.

Brennan Harris [03:48:46] But also highlights too. It's Just I think part of the story that even the senior, most leadership of the church feels powerless. Feels like they just have to like, follow what the prophet tells them or follow what the legal department advises them to do or follow what the marketing department's priorities are. And so I think it illustrates that as well. But yeah, that was weird. And so coming weeks, we kind of plan the funeral. Tons of people are over. It's like you said during your life when you're a living member of the church, everyone's like, you got to make all the right decisions. You got to make sure that when you make a mistake, you repent and you repent fully. That if you need to confess to a bishop, you go do that. Because all of these things that are unresolved will be hanging over your head at Judgment Day if you don't, you know, do your labors in the day of life or whatever. But then the moment someone dies and there's clearly things they've done that have violated the commandments and that place them according to Mormon doctrine in the telestial kingdom, in this case, people are like, ah, I'm sure he, you know, the atonement will cover. And he's was a great guy and I'm sure you'll be an eternal family again in the celestial kingdom. So that's a weird shift that happens too. While you're under the church's control. In life, it's phrased as like, you make a little mistake, like you're really putting yourself, your soul in jeopardy. But the minute someone's already dead, it's like, oh, I'm sure they're fine. I got that message a few different times from a few different people. And it was very weird. But then we planned the funeral and did that. And then the week after, I made an appointment to see President Eyring, the president of BYU Idaho. Not Henry B. Eyring, but Henry J.

John Dehlin [03:50:44] The son of Henry the Apostle. First Presidency member Henry Eyring.

Brennan Harris [03:50:48] Yeah. And at this point, I was still. All I had to go on was my dad's suicide. The. His last email that he sent in terms of what actually happened. And he kind of talked to my mom the night before he died and said like, hey, I'm on administratively. But I was just trying to put it all together and decide and like, understand what happened. So I went and met with him and just asked him a few questions, like, what went on here with my dad? And I asked like, I heard, like, there's this thing in his email about the cops and does that have anything to do with. And he just kept reiterating there were rumors. So I heard rumors about this affair and I decided let's just sit and wait on it. But then rumors came up in a second instance. But he didn't say specifically who told him or what specifically the rumors were. He just kept saying there were rumors and that at that point he, in a meeting where there was a church lawyer present, decided they should put my dad on administrative leave and investigate these rumors. And that was kind of all the detail he went into. I asked was there any complaint against my dad in regards to like his relationship with a student or a co worker or anyone who worked at the university.

John Dehlin [03:52:14] And he said there was not like just job related.

Brennan Harris [03:52:16] Right, right. Because maybe that would make sense that you investigate sexual harassment in the workplace or whatever. But he said that wasn't it. So I had kind of a weird short conversation with him. And part of why I was doing this too is we still hadn't. This is going to sound maybe bad of me and maybe it was, but the financial situation was not resolved yet with my, my dad's insurance policy. And it could have been the case. It was looking like at the time they might have been able to like pull a clause in the insurance policy and end up not getting coverage for my mom. Basically. Like she would just be left with no income and she really would have been in a pretty desperate situation with like the remainder of the mortgage still to pay off in the house and all of this other stuff. And so I was also. I wasn't trying to be sneaky, but I wanted to make sure that all the ducks were in a row and we had as much information as possible if we needed to pursue any kind of legal recourse to like make sure that my mom was taken care of basically. So after I talked to Henry Eyring, I just mentioned in passing like there's this thing in the email about the police. Do you know anything about that? And then two days later my mom got a call from the Madison County Sheriff and he just. Of his own, he invited her to come and he wanted to talk to her and if she had any questions about what happened, he was willing. And we just had a short conversation with him. It was me and my mom and my brother. And we just, he kind of clarified like there was this guy, he worked for us, he was a part time employee. I usually don't get involved in like we discover a lot of things like this in part of. Is as part of like our routine checkups and we know a lot about people's personal lives and its policy to not share that. And we don't. And I don't participate as the sheriff in that kind of rumor stuff, and I don't encourage the sharing of that information. But once I found out what happened and that this guy had gone and told your dad's church leaders or church leader about what happened, he was let go immediately. And that was kind of the gist of that conversation.

John Dehlin [03:54:53] And

Brennan Harris [03:54:55] that's kind of the end of the story in terms of detail. And then there was just the whole, you know, then we processed that emotionally as a family. It was a really intense couple weeks around the funeral. And then we just, as a family, did our best to be there for each other. It felt like we really came together after that. That happened. Like my mom and my siblings, and we had, like. We went and saw therapists together that my mom was seeing. We saw them as a family. And then each of us individually have also pursued therapy around processing the trauma around that. And you already made a great plug for therapy. But it's hard for people who I think are in that gap between. They don't have public resources because they're not poor enough, but they don't have enough disposable income to pay for therapy without good insurance and stuff. But I just. I was lucky enough that I had the resources to. To get that and just to have an outside perspective was really healing. And to give. Just someone giving me permission to process my emotions. It was like a really positive experience. And I feel like, as a family and as like, an immediate family, my mom and my siblings were actually doing pretty well, as far as I can tell. I think we're all doing okay. The extended family, I don't know as much. We haven't talked about it as much with, like, my dad's parents or his siblings. And I think it's hard because my dad was a very different guy with two. He meant different things to different people in his life. And so I think different people have taken my dad's death really hard. I'm guessing other people are like, well, he was a hypocrite. He got what was coming to him. And maybe all of those perspectives are valid, but. And then I, after a couple years, I wrote this blog series as much for myself as anything, just because I hadn't really sat down and thought about or process those events since they happen and since I talked about them with a therapist kind of in the months right after it happened. And so it was. I Don't know if it was good or bad or whatever, but it was something I felt like I needed to do to rethink all those things that happened and try to contextualize them, what that means for my life now.

Grieving, Processing, and Moving Forward

John Dehlin [03:57:25] So other than the things you've already shared, what have been what. What things have been important, what decisions, what steps, what processing has. Has been important for helping you recover? Can you recover from this? And if so, what. What things have been helpful for your recovery besides the therapy and the other things you talked about? Anything else you want to mention about how to grieve the loss of a parent and the loss of a parent in such a traumatic way? So for anyone else who's experienced this or might experience this, just any tips you might have of ways things that have helped you process everything

Brennan Harris [03:58:13] besides professional counseling. Just having family around has been just having, like, a support group. My wife was amazing through that whole experience.

John Dehlin [03:58:27] How was she amazing?

Brennan Harris [03:58:28] She just was, like, so patient with. I had to be, like, especially, like, in the immediate aftermath, planning the funeral and everything. We had a baby, and I had to be away a lot, and she just, like, never made. You know, she was so patient with, like, us going through that process and my family members having needs that I needed to kind of attend to. She was just, like, holding down the fort here and helping with them a lot as well and just giving me, like, the space to, like, have my kind of. To process that emotionally and feel what I was feeling. It brought up, like, it made the church stuff way harder for me, and she was really patient with that as well. Because I went to church, like, one time after my dad died, and I just couldn't handle it. I couldn't. Like, everything seemed to be a symbol of that experience and all the things wrong that I didn't like about the church but kind of were. So she was just really patient with me and loved me through that and was awesome. And then we had the baby, too, which was actually kind of nice. Especially, like, in the funeral when everyone was really. Everything was really heavy and people were so sad. It was just nice to have a baby who didn't care, didn't understand what was going on, just was smiley. And then coming together with my siblings and kind of. I think we're still in that process of being like, man, remember when dad did this? Or remember how messed up this was? Or remember how funny it was? It just kind of. We're kind of settling into what are some kind of emotional stability about what our. How we remember our dad and what he means to us now and what we're thankful for and what we're. What were the hardest parts and stuff. So that to me, it's been hard to. I don't feel like I have a major support group among friends or extended family or community, just in the sense of, like, it's not easy to talk to them about it because I, I have people who I don't know that I can say, like, well, I think the church did a really bad thing here because, you know, they're totally in the church and they. I just don't think that's a conversation they want to have. Or maybe I'm just too afraid to bring it up. But that's been a hard thing too. And you're in a situation where you can't fully express what you're feeling or you feel like maybe it's inappropriate to express. So that's been maybe a difficulty. But I'd say just having family support has been the biggest factor for me overcoming this and processing it.

Reflections on Faith, the Church, and What Comes Next

John Dehlin [04:01:24] What are you comfortable sharing about? Just your views now on God and Jesus and religion and the afterlife? And you know, a lot of times religion exists because it helps us deal with death, our own death and the death of our loved ones. So some people believe in religion or hang on to religion because it, it resolves those questions for them, or at least they think or believe they do. Others leave the church and become agnostic or atheist and don't want anything to do with belief and don't think about the afterlife. Where have you settled on, on those types of things and with, with how that fits into your dad not being here?

Brennan Harris [04:02:08] So by that point, I was kind of a complete non believer by the time my dad died. My beliefs about God and Jesus had kind of. They'd kind of dissolved at that point. Once my belief in Mormonism kind of fell apart. My belief in just theism in general, kind of. I just kind of realized that about myself that I'm just not a believer naturally. And so I have kind of settled on no positive beliefs about whether or not there's a God, whether or not there's an afterlife. I just think, you know, I just, I view all religious ideas kind of the same way I view like Greek mythology. It's just I know details about it, but in terms of I have no belief one way or another about. I don't spend time anymore wondering about stuff like that really. But the thought that my dad is at rest, even if that means he's just dead and gone, that at least he's not suffering like he was in the years, months, specifically the days and hours, his last hours on earth. The thought that he's not experiencing that anymore is very comforting to me. The thought that he's getting tortured psychologically or spiritually or any other way for his sins, that's not a comforting thought. And that to me seems clear from Mormon doctrine what would be happening. He'd be in spirit prison right now according to what I understand about Mormon doctrine. And so for me, the idea that he's not experiencing that, the fact that I don't have to believe that, that's comforting because I don't think that's a comforting doctrine when a sinner dies. But I don't know, there's kind of a double edged sword too because there's something really comforting about the thought that there is a God who loves you, who's going to receive you on the other side, that as long as you're like keeping your covenants or whatever, there's kind of a lot of conditional stuff in there in Mormonism, but just the idea and theism that like life goes on, it's just kind of, I don't feel like I have that certainty like I had before or that belief. And so that feels like it's a hard thing to just experience reality without that buffer. Just to think that like, to deal with the question of like, well, what if when we die that's just, it's over. It's kind of sad, but at the same time it just feels like it's a natural part of life too, that it's always been part of life and that the best you can do is just live a good life here and now, like the life you know you have and you'll either see what happens after or you won't.

John Dehlin [04:05:18] There was a recent statement made in General Conference, I think it was by Russell M. Nelson, something about atheists live fearful or sad lives. One of the two, I, I forget which one, but it's ironic because religion certainly didn't help your dad feel happy and healthy and non fearful and, and for so many people they're terrorized by their religious beliefs and the fear and the shame. They're not comforted by it. But, but there's still this idea anyway that poor non believers, they're, they're living these lives of sadness or fear and I guess what I hear you saying is that, you know, sometimes you'd like there to be a heaven or an afterlife and you'll be positively surprised if there is. You're not going to, like, say it, you're not going to preclude it from the realm of possibility, and that maybe there is some sadness about some of the beliefs you've lost. But what I hear you saying is that overall you don't consider you, the state you're living in, to be fearful and sad. Is that true?

Brennan Harris [04:06:24] Yeah, that's true.

John Dehlin [04:06:25] So how. I mean, you've already said it, but like, a religious person would go, I've heard religious people say, well, if I don't believe in God or the afterlife, there's no point in living life has no meaning. Or then I'm terrified. But that's not how you're experiencing it.

Brennan Harris [04:06:41] No. And I'm probably not a good test case. Maybe because I was dealing with all these doubts through my whole, like, I. I never felt like I fully put two feet in with my testimony or anything. So when it all kind of fell apart, when I had my faith crisis, I was like, okay. Like, I always kind of considered the possibility that it all might not be true anyway. So emotionally that didn't hit me very hard. I will say that being out of the church for me is a much healthier, much better kind of way to live. There are things about the church I really miss, but not having to worry about whether or not I'm living up to those standards, it's been a big weight off my shoulders. I still worry that I'm making the right decisions in a lot of ways. You know, whether or not I'm making ethical decisions as, like a citizen, as a husband and a father, I worry that I'm making right choices for my family. I'm being a good spouse, being supportive. But the fact that I don't have to worry like, oh, I didn't do my home teaching, I didn't like, check whatever boxes that I need to to be in good standing with the church, that just feels like a weight off my shoulders. And I think that can be more or less traumatic for people. I don't want to, like, minimize that. A faith crisis or losing your beliefs can't be a huge problem and a huge trial for some people. But for me, it's been a better balance.

John Dehlin [04:08:26] Post Mormonism, we're all conditioned to think that wickedness never was happiness and that there's nothing more wicked than leaving the church. You know, that's the epitome of wickedness. But the truth is, a lot of people do find that their health and happiness improves, and I don't think they understand how that's even possible. How could your health and happiness improve leaving God's one true church?

Brennan Harris [04:08:55] BRENNAN I don't know how. John Dehlin. It just did. But that's the thing is you're taught to believe that that's the end of everything. If you leave the church and it's hammered into you so hard that, like, it was really hard on the people in my life who remained active in church after I left that like, because they believe that too. They were like, well, I've lost my son, I've lost my husband, I've lost my. But like, then we just lived with it. It's like, well, what has changed? Am I, you know, did I delve into drugs, pornography, alcoholism, you know, whatever problems they say are. Like, that just didn't happen for me. And it's not to say that that doesn't happen for anyone or that they experience hard things in their life or their life gets worse after they leave the church. But just the fact that you left the church leads to ruin. Just think I'm an existence proof that that is not true.

John Dehlin [04:10:08] There's also something you're disproving. There's this idea, why would you ever be moral? Why wouldn't you just kill people and cheat on everyone? Everyone. And become a drug addict and break the law if you leave the church? And what, what I just heard you say is that you, you still very much care about ethics and honesty and values that you don't. You personally don't feel like you need a church or religion to have the desire and even the motivation to live a ethical life. True.

Brennan Harris [04:10:43] Yeah. It was a lot simpler when I was Mormon because all of the ethical questions I had, or it felt like most of them had an answer in the church. Even if I had a complicated situation I was in, I feel like I could go to a church leader and get advice or turn to the scriptures or maybe go through conference talks or something like that. And I could feel like, okay, this is the right thing, where I could pray about it and God would tell me through the Holy Ghost. And now I'm just swimming in this world of all these competing ethical theories that I feel like if one of them is true, it's important, but I have no way of knowing. So I live with a lot more moral uncertainty. But the desire to be a good person and do the right thing is just as strong as it's ever been for me. And I feel like I was raised Mormon and I'm Mormon in my. I feel like parts of that will probably never go away. I feel Like, I'm grateful that I was brought up in the church. I'm grateful that I had a dad who taught me to work hard and was hard on me and taught me to be tough. I'm grateful, like, I can recognize that maybe there were things wrong, that those weren't perfect experiences I had. But going forward, I'm really grateful for all the experiences that I've had that were formative for me. And I hope I can take, like, lessons about the things that were wrong and make that better for my kids or if I can help friends or whatever going forward. Share my story Put pressure on the church to change things. It does that are messed up. Those are all really important to me.

John Dehlin [04:12:23] And I think one of the things your dad's story helps to illustrate a little bit is, you know, a response to how can anyone be healthy and happy outside of the church? Is just the reality that there are a lot of people suffering in the church. Depression is super high. Anxiety is super high. Suicidality is super high. Divorce is super high. And it's just that people don't talk about it. They hide it. They internalize it. They self medicate. Prescription drug abuse is super high in Utah. Pornography use is super high in Utah. Like hit. You know, the church benefits by people just not talking about their problems and not being open and vulnerable so that every member thinks that they're the only one that's suffering, but that everybody else is super happy and healthy. But the truth is just like it's not fair to say that everyone who leaves the church is less healthy and happy. It's also not fair to say that everyone in the church is healthy and happy. There's plenty of people in the church that are living quiet lives of desperation as, as unfortunately, your dad's story is, is one of many, one of many examples. And there's healthy and happy people in the church. Like it's. It's all that, right? Yeah. So at the end of the day, do you feel like you blame the church for your dad's passing or partly blame the church? Like, how have you settled on that question or have you decided not to settle?

Brennan Harris [04:14:02] I don't know if I'm settled about that question specifically. My dad was born to be in the church, not of any free choice of his. Whatever he did in his life, whether he became a hospital administrator in Florida, whether he stayed single his entire life, whether he divorced my mom, whether he is still living today and had decided not to kill himself, whatever he did was going to the church was going to be Part of that story because he grew up in the church. And so I can't lay everything that has happened that's negative at the feet of bad church leaders or the structure of the church, cops, bad culture in Rexburg. But I think the story of his death highlights how all of those things were all a huge part of what happened and hopefully lead to discussion about what things could change to eliminate the part of suffering and suicide or shame that are due to the changeable cultural aspects of the church or the doctrine of church or policy or whatever. Maybe that's not. I don't know if that's. Yeah, no, good answer.

John Dehlin [04:15:31] It's mixed. It's great. This may be a weird question, you don't have to answer it, but I'm wondering if you've ever thought about if you had had a chance to talk to your dad before or if you had the chance to see him in some fictitious world, what you would have or what you would say to him. Is that something you've ever even thought about or is that even an interesting question to you?

Brennan Harris [04:15:56] If you had asked me that maybe like two weeks after he died, I probably would have said something. Or like the day he died me, I would have said something like, I hate you. Why did you do this to us? I was feeling a lot of anger, particularly at the beginning. I don't know, I think if I could talk to my dad or send him a message now, I don't know what I'd say. I don't know, maybe I'd thank him for the good things he left me and just leave it at that. But yeah, there's still a lot unresolved there. I mean, it's a whole life of experiences, positive and negative ends violently and traumatically. And I feel like it might take me, you know, another 25 years to fully settle all that in my own mind.

John Dehlin [04:16:53] I'm just curious, what do you do for work or school now? I'm just kind of curious what, what trajectory your life is taking just because you come across as super thoughtful and fair and balanced and ethical and reasonable. I'm impressed with just your character and how you present and your fairness and your level headedness and compassion. So I'm just curious what trajectory your life's taken going forward, if whatever you're able to share.

Brennan Harris [04:17:23] Yeah, so I, at byui, I studied mechanical engineering, so I was mechanical engineer. And then I got a job that ended up being more kind of software development. So I'm. That's kind of what I do now. I'm a software developer. I worked from home for a little while. I started a software design company while my wife went back to work. I stayed and was a full time

John Dehlin [04:17:49] parent

Brennan Harris [04:17:51] and that was a good starting a company was like a good resume filler. It never didn't become a big business or take off or anything. But spending time with my daughter was awesome. I got to spend a whole year at home as the primary caregiver and that was, I wish more people could do that because that was an amazing experience. And then I just, then my wife and I swapped back. I work for here at the Idaho National Lab now at the Department of Energy.

John Dehlin [04:18:25] What part of ARDE do you live in?

Brennan Harris [04:18:27] We live in the Idaho Falls area. So we've since my wife and I got married, we've lived here for a long time.

John Dehlin [04:18:35] Beautiful. Well, there's so many people that want to share with you their gratitude and for your courage, for your grace, for your, your vulnerability, for your openness. And you know, I'll invite listeners to make any comments that they want as we close, just to thank you, Brendan, for all that your story has meant to them. And by the way, the vast majority of our listeners and viewers are going to be people that listen later. And so on behalf of all of them and the people watching and listening now, we just can't thank you enough for being willing to tell this vulnerable story, talk about it, to share it. So many people just go silent and no one learns. Nobody benefits, nothing gets better and all the bad things get stuck in place and the toxicity and the lethality just kind of perpetuate. And so we all just want to thank you for your honesty, your willingness to talk about hard things, to share this very difficult story and to do it with such grace and thoughtfulness. Is there before we close, is there any final thing you want to say to our audience? Current or in the future? Just about any aspect of your story or to give people hope or just anything, wisdom. Any final things you want to share before we part?

Closing Thoughts and Gratitude

Brennan Harris [04:20:00] First, I'll just reflect that back to you. Mormon stories after I had had my faith crisis was really, really big for me and having like kind of that wide net of experiences, I was able to, you know, I first caught the video of Sam and Tanner, like I said, and that really resonated with me and it pulled me into the community of people who were living after Mormonism. And it helped a lot because I didn't have any close friends or family who were out of the church. And so just to have online to find a community where people were expressing some of the same frustrations or giving advice, dealing with stuff, it was huge for me. It changed my life. And so for you and other people in the post Mormon community, I just say just try to be as compassionate as possible, as patient as possible with other people who are making that transition because we need a lot of help through that.

John Dehlin [04:21:05] Thank you. All right, well, the love is coming in. Jen Smith Nielsen writes, thank you. Vulnerability is the greatest healer. Luis says, thanks, Brennan. Liana says, wishing you and your family so much love and happiness. Akeem says, thanks. Jennifer says, thank you. So many people are grateful. So I just hope you are able to feel and absorb the gift that this interview was. And we just wish you all the health and healing and happiness for you, for your mom, for your siblings, for your wife, for your child, for just. We, we just wish you all the best, Brennan. And I hope you know that if we can ever return the favor to you, if you ever need anything, please reach out to me and I will do all I can to return the favor of your gift of this interview.

Brennan Harris [04:22:00] Awesome.

John Dehlin [04:22:02] All right. All right. Brennan, you're awesome. Thank you so much.

Brennan Harris [04:22:07] Thank you. Have a good one.

John Dehlin [04:22:08] You, too. And listeners, I just want to say thanks for joining us today. Thanks for tuning in. Thanks for all the comments. Thanks for everyone who makes Mormon stories in the Oba Stories foundation possible. A big part of that is people who make monthly donations. We rely on those donations to make all this possible. It's kind of a sad thing that less than 1% of our listeners and viewers actually donate. So if we could just change it from one, if we just make 1% or 2% of our listeners donated, we could do this for another 50 years. But every year it's kind of like, are we going to survive or not? Do we have to shut down or not? Right now, we're okay this year, but in the coming years, it could all implode, especially with COVID So if you value this programming, if you want to see it continue, if you want to see other stories like this, like Radio Free Mormon, like Lila Tuller, like Donna Showalter, like, you know, the the Book of Abraham stuff with Robert Rittner, the Shannon Caldwell Montez stuff, the Ezra Time Benson stuff, if you've enjoyed Mormon stories in the past or if you benefit from it, please consider paying it forward. Please become a monthly donor. You can go up to MormonStories.org click on the donate button. 10 bucks a month, 20 bucks a month, 50 bucks a month, 100 bucks a month. You can make one time donations. Please consider becoming a monthly donor if you value this programming. And we'll keep doing this until the support stops. But if and when the support declines or stops, we have to stop. And this year we were worried about whether we were going to continue. So if you want to see continue, please support us. We're a tax deductible nonprofit. We're Five One C3. Your donations are tax deductible in the U.S. we're transparent in our finances. We release our 990 every year like all Five One C3 do that aren't religious. And you'll be able to see how we spend our money. And we don't hide that we've shared our finances publicly. We've disclosed even more than we needed to since our inception 10 years ago as a nonprofit in 2010. And I can promise you that we don't waste your money. We are careful with your money. We have accounting firm that watches over the money. We have an independent board that supervises our finances, that sets my compensation. And we're doing everything that we can to be appropriate and responsible. So please become a supporter if you're not. And if you are a supporter, thank you and please, there are lots of ways to support us. You can, you can comment on mormonstories.org you can share these episodes on social media. You can like us. You can like the Mormon Stories podcast page on Facebook. You can become a follower on YouTube. You can again spread the word. You can make us suggestions, comments, feedback. You can check out our YouTube channel, Understanding Mormonism. Subscribe to that. We're having lots of short videos, huge success there. That that channel is really taking off of short videos that you can share to help people understand Mormonism better. Our Mormon Stories YouTube channel is doing great. There's just lots of ways you can volunteer. So just email us@mormonstoriesgmail.com if you want to get involved, if you have feedback, if you have ideas, if you know of a great person we can interview. But most importantly, your. Your donations are what keeps us alive. So thanks for all that. Thanks everybody. Please stay in touch and we hope to see you all again soon. Oh, and if you're on YouTube, you can do a super chat where you can click on the little dollar sign in YouTube and donate through through YouTube. YouTube takes a cut. If you want to donate directly, do it through Mormon Stories. But thanks again. Thanks to Brennan, thanks to his family. Thanks to all of you. We've got great stuff coming up, so please stay tuned on Mormon Stories. Podcast. Take care, everybody. We'll see you soon.

Transcript © 2026 John P. Dehlin. All rights reserved. Brief quotations are welcome with attribution and a link to mormonstories.org; all other use requires written permission.