209: Dr. William Bradshaw Part 1 - My Early Years, Harvard and the Hong Kong Mission.

Mormon Stories Podcast

Dr. John Dehlin

Religion & Spirituality

4.5 • 5.7K Ratings

🗓️ 5 November 2010

⏱️ 67 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In this episode, John Dehlin interviews one of his former professors and mentors, Dr. William Bradshaw, on a wide variety of topics. Dr. Bradshaw has just recently retired from a rich and fulfilling career as a microbiology professor at BYU in which he influenced thousands of students to continually be open to the best thinking of the sciences while still nurturing a robust, mature faith and spiritual life. Many report Dr. Bradshaw’s classes and their various interactions with him as pivotal to their finding a way to value the wisdom generated in both their heads and their hearts. In this far-ranging discussion, Dr. Bradshaw takes us through the arc of his life, including his mission, experiences at Harvard, the circumstances of his career choice, and the surprise call he and his wife Marge received to serve as very young mission presidents in Hong Kong, during which service they had to wrestle with opening and closing missionary work in Vietnam. Dr. Bradshaw relates stories from his career at BYU, talks about science and religion issues, and reveals the way he faces challenges to his faith from Mormon history and scriptural studies. Many Mormon Stories podcast listeners will already be familiar with one aspect of Dr. Bradshaw’s life from Episode 191, which featured a recording of the most recent lecture he gave at BYU on the biological origins of homosexuality--a lecture he has arranged and given every year for the past several years. Dr. Bradshaw first became prompted to study the research on this subject when his son Brett came out about his homosexuality. Since that time, the Bradshaws have been active members in various LDS groups for families working to support their GLBT children. They are currently serving as the presidents of LDS Family Fellowship. Brett and his partner are married and living in California, where they are raising an adopted daughter.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Mormon Stories Podcast is made possible through the financial contributions of its listeners.
0:06.0	To keep it alive and available to future generations, please consider a donation today at MormonStories.org.
0:14.0	Thank you for joining us today on Mormon Stories. I'm John DeLin.
0:18.0	Today we have with us a very special guest and someone who has met a lot to me personally throughout my life,
0:24.0	but especially during my time at Brigham Young University. His name is Dr. Bill Bradshaw.
0:30.0	He was a biology professor for many years at BYU and he was a biology professor while I was at BYU.
0:37.0	I'll never forget coming home from my mission and having biology 100 with Dr. Bradshaw.
0:44.0	He did several interesting and inventive things in class, including sacrificing a mouse in front of the class.
0:53.0	And that may sound disrespectful, but actually it was done with much reverence, and maybe we'll talk a little bit about why he did that today.
0:59.0	But more importantly, I was able to take several honors, religion classes from Dr. Bradshaw at a time when I really needed some spiritual support and mentoring as I was struggling with stuff from my mission.
1:11.0	And then of course, some of you will remember when I wrote that letter to Elder Oaks about what happened on my mission.
1:17.0	Dr. Bradshaw was kind enough to help me draft a kind learn, a gentler, and a more thoughtful letter that maybe would have a better chance of being received well by the authorities.
1:28.0	So Dr. Bradshaw's teachings have been really important. Today we're going to cover several things.
1:35.0	Dr. Bradshaw's life, his experiences as a teacher at BYU, his thoughts and feelings around biology and evolution and science as it relates to faith.
1:46.0	And religious issues. We're also going to discuss homosexuality. Dr. Bradshaw has a gay son, and we're going to talk a little bit about his experiences with that.
1:58.0	And then finally, we're going to talk about maybe some issues regarding reconciliation of faith and intellect. Dr. Bradshaw's a former mission president.
2:09.0	He's a former member of a stake presidency, and he's just a dear man. So with that, Dr. Bradshaw, thank you for joining us on warm stories.
2:19.0	You're very kind, John. It's nice to be with you again. How's that for introduction? Did I embarrass you sufficiently?
2:26.0	Yes, and looks like the tables are turned now. I'm on the other side of the lectern as it were.
2:33.0	This is your exam. Okay. All right. Well, Dr. Bradshaw, there's so much we want to cover, but I think a discussion about sort of your early years at Harvard and even before that.
2:48.0	And a discussion about some of your times at BYU would be in order. So let's just maybe ask you to start. Tell us a little bit about your early years as it relates to the church.
3:00.0	And maybe some of the meaningful milestones along the way that might be of interest to others.
	...

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