An Interview with Drew and Megan Dickerson: Marriage, Family, and the Intellectual Life

The intellectual life is in some ways necessarily lonely—in his book on The Intellectual Life: Its Spirits, Conditions, Methods, the French Dominican Friar Antonin Sertillanges insists that the intellectual life requires solitude. He is not wrong. Researchers in history, for instance, spend hours, days, years alone in mysterious musty basements, poring over documents that unveil their mystery to only the most persistent elect. And then the practice of writing takes additional hours (and days and years) of discipline and solitude before the essays or books are ready to go out into the world. But not all Christians who live the intellectual life are professional scholars, first and foremost. And unlike Sertillanges himself, many are married and have children. Some might be lawyers or pastors or doctors or missionaries or various professionals, or stay-at-home moms, or homeschooling mothers, or simply overwhelmed mothers of small children. These factors definitely take a toll on the possibility of solitude. 

In other words, for most people, there are also the practical considerations of the intellectual life and intellectual work, whether done on the margins of one's day or full-time. Writers and other intellectuals are people too—they too must eat, do laundry, keep children alive, perhaps even vacuum on occasion. We all are bodies, as well as minds and souls. So how does this work, in particular, for households that include not just one intellectual but two? 

That is the basic question underlying this interview series, in which the interview below is the third installment. We encourage you also to read the earlier interviews with Charles and Tessa Carman and with John and Katelyn Shelton. 

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Nadya Williams: I'd like to start by asking each of you to tell us a little bit about your intellectual journey: when did you first consciously realize that you are called to live an intellectual life? What did you envision this looking like? How has it turned out so far? 

Megan Dickerson: I don’t think I’ve consciously thought about being “called to live an intellectual life” until maybe this question. I’ve always liked to read and think and ask questions and that has usually gotten me in trouble or been viewed with suspicion. What I see myself doing is being equipped to better serve the church myself while equipping others to serve the church and serve Christ.

I went to the University of Central Arkansas as part of the Schedler Honors College, which is called a liberal arts college within a state school. This meant that I didn’t take English one or various other core classes. Instead, I took different classes that were intended to be interdisciplinary seminars in which we read philosophy and theology and fiction and scientific studies and came together to discuss. I took a class on Friendship and another on The Social Consciousness of Broadway. They wanted to introduce us to The Great Conversation and to great books. I loved it and have been profoundly shaped by this experience. 

But I didn’t know it was unusual!

It wasn’t until after seminary that I realized most people don’t read books! Although I did eventually find a lovely group of homeschool moms who would read theology and fiction with me as we sought to introduce our children to the great conversation. 

Along the way, I’ve usually been able to gather women with me to read and think together. I’ve been challenged to write more so that I solidify my thoughts and grow as a communicator. We moved to North Carolina for Drew to study (I’ll let him tell his own story) and I met friends and found myself also in the seminary PhD program studying systematic theology—focusing on patristics and spiritual formation. (I should be editing my dissertation now, but this is more fun.) My favorite part has been reading with friends and coming together in class to discuss!

I also get to teach in our church’s women’s Bible study. I hang out with younger women in the seminary. I read the Bible and other books with them and talk about ideas. I have been blessed to teach Old Testament, theology, and how to study and teach the Bible to women in a local prison through Judson College’s field minister program. These ladies are earning a college degree and will be deployed to other prisons in the state to minister to other incarcerated women. I homeschooled our children for a long time before they went to a university model school. This year is the first time they’re all going to be in school five days a week. And our homeschool looked like reading good books and discussing them.

Apparently, I do live an intellectual life! But I don’t think any of this is what I envisioned! It’s nothing like what I planned. Every step of our adult life has felt like something was thrown at us or we were shoved into something. But I am thankful that so many of our plans didn’t work out and for much of the life we have. The Lord has guided us into some unexpected places!

Drew Dickerson: I don’t know if I could say that I ever felt called to live an intellectual life. I grew up in a family of athletes; my dad was a college basketball coach, and my brothers and I all played multiple sports through high school. But I was always the one with a book in my hand, reading in the bleachers between games. I enjoyed school, and I loved learning, but I didn’t view myself as an “intellectual.” 

But when I got to college, I felt God calling me to use my gifts, including my mind, to serve the church. At the time, I had no idea what that looked like, but I went to seminary and had an amazing experience getting to study ancient languages, church history, and theology. After graduating, I was called to serve in a church as a student pastor, where I got to spend five years teaching and discipling teenagers. In many ways, those five years shaped my intellectual life the most. I still loved reading about history and theology and talking about and studying those subjects more deeply, but working with teenagers forced me to take the deep truths I had learned and explain them in a way a 14-year-old could understand. 

Eventually, I felt God leading me back to the academic world. Again, I had no idea what that would actually look like, but a very gracious church historian, Dr. Stephen Eccher, spent about three hours on the phone with me one afternoon, casting a vision for the intellectual life that was very compelling. My family and I moved from Arkansas to North Carolina so I could study with him. The vision he cast consisted of a lot of reading and a lot of writing, and my experience has definitely lived up to that expectation. But more than that, all along the way he has encouraged me to love my family well and to direct all of my studies toward how they can better serve the church. That has been the best part of what I get to do.

Nadya Williams: What kind of intellectual work does each of you do now, and what role does it play in your day-to-day life? 

Drew Dickerson: I work in the library at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, and I spend most of my time connecting students and faculty with resources that help them engage with the topics they are studying. So I get to spend my days surrounded by books and people who (mostly) want to learn. 

I can’t imagine a better place for an intellectual to work. I love connecting people with authors from 500 years ago who can help them think more deeply about a topic. It’s like introducing someone to an old friend who I know can help them along in their journey because they have already helped me. I also get to teach college classes on Church History, Missions, and Theology.

Megan Dickerson: We are both at the tail end of writing our dissertations, which is not the most fun. But it will be great when it’s done. 

I get to teach in lots of situations, from women’s Bible study at my church, to women’s conferences at different churches, to my college class in the women’s prison, to filling in on campus at the seminary every now and then. I also get to be on the leadership team for our Society for Women in Scholarship, which is a great place for women to come together on campus to ask questions and wrestle with things together. 

I’m a 40-year-old woman with four school-aged kids, and I am finishing a PhD in Systematic Theology on campus at an SBC seminary. There aren’t a lot of people like me. And it seems that it’s a benefit to the women around that they see me doing what I do. I get to talk with lots of women about motherhood and theological study. I get to tell them that there are seasons, and God wants you to use your gifts, including your academic gets, for the church, but that we don’t have to feel the pressure to lean into all of these gifts at the same time.

I like to read and think and write, and that’s looked very different in my day-to-day life in different seasons. I still read and thought when I was drowning in toddlers, but it wasn’t the season to be in a PhD program. As the Lord has opened new doors (and I’ve felt shoved through a few!), he has also grown my capacity to juggle things, and he’s given me new opportunities to teach in different ways.

While I was drowning in toddlers, the Lord gave opportunities for what I’ve come to think of as “small teaching.” I met one-on-one or in small groups with younger women to discuss the Bible or to read books together. The Lord was using my teaching gifts, even though I didn’t recognize at the time. 

Nadya Williams: What role has your intellectual life played in your marriage and family life? Do you find that it affects your interactions with each other and with your children? If so, in what ways?

Drew Dickerson: We’ve spent the majority of our married life either in school or working in an academic environment, so it would be difficult to pinpoint a way that our intellectual pursuits haven’t impacted our lives. 

One thing I’ve definitely learned is that my wife is amazing. She’s the type of human and scholar I want to be. But our minds work in completely different ways. She can go from menu planning for the week to Cyril of Alexandria’s interpretation of John 6 to who should be the MVP of the WNBA this year (it’s Kelsey Mitchell, BTW) in the span of five minutes. Her mind moves so fast it’s exhausting sometimes, but she has taught me so much about efficiency and how to get things done, especially when it comes to writing. 

When it comes to our kids, I think our conversations around the dinner table are probably more eclectic than most families’. Topics can include (and have included) the messiness of the incarnation, our favorite missionaries, and what position the nine members of the Fellowship of the Ring would play on a football team. We challenge our kids to read good books, think well, and ask good questions. But it’s fun to see how that plays out in each of their lives. My oldest daughter shares my love for literature, especially Tolkien. She enjoys writing her own stories and loves the performing arts. My oldest son is very different. He plays football and enjoys the sciences and building things as part of his school’s robotics team.

Megan Dickerson: Drew and I knew we wanted to get married, because we like to think and talk about ideas, because we like to read. Not that we would have thought about this as an intellectual life. But reading together and talking about what we’re reading is a big part of our marriage. We like learning!

As for our kids, they all read a lot, even the ones who say they don’t like to read. Everybody has a book with them most of the time. Which is one of my favorite things. It’s the only thing that I’ve been intentional about in my parenting that has worked out! We’ve always read together and given our kids rich books at home.

We’ve also lived in seminary housing for the past several years, and that’s about all they know. Both of their parents are studying theology and historical theology at a high level, so it comes up as we talk about our day. And when we have neighbors over for dinner, conversation goes in the expected directions. And the kids are in the mix most of the time.

One of our favorite stories was around the lunch table when it was just me and the kids, and we were talking about Jesus, what they were reading in the Bible. And then our youngest who was 3 at the time got a mischievous look and asked: “But did Jesus have a BOTTOM?!?” And his big sister looked SCANDALIZED and said Jesus could NOT have a bottom because he’s JESUS. Which led to a lovely conversation about the necessity of the full humanity of Christ and that what was not assumed was not healed.

But we want our kids to be well-rounded, so they also do a lot of sports—football, basketball, soccer, cross-country, cheer. Lots of kids means lots of sports. They play more video games than I’d like. They watch more YouTube than I’d like. But I think our family culture is centered on reading and loving Jesus, and that’s evident in the lives of our kids.

We are low-church Southern Baptists. We attend an evangelical mega-church with many campuses. We like to read and think, but it’s also not the whole personality for any one of us. 

Nadya Williams: What are some challenges you have found to your intellectual pursuits so far? How did you resolve these, or are you still living through them? What expectations did you have for your intellectual life before you were married, and how do you think these have adjusted over time and with circumstances?

Megan Dickerson: I think life is hard. I think the Lord sometimes gives so many gifts that we can’t always figure out how to prioritize where to lean in! For years now, we’ve just had a perpetual pile of clean clothes that live on our couch. We don’t have a real laundry room, and the intent is to sort them and put them away. But I could either do that or edit my dissertation… or watch a football game. 

We’re both trying to finish our dissertations now, but I was in the hospital a few weeks ago, so that knocked out any “intellectual” work for us for 2-3 weeks. Not great timing! 

Writing and teaching looks different now than it did when the kids were little. Stages of motherhood have changed everything. Not that any stage is harder, but they’re hard in different ways, and they consume time in such different ways. 

Before we were married, we expected to be missionaries. We’d share the gospel, teach the Bible, and plant churches. We’re in a different context than we expected, and we’re not planting churches, but we do share the gospel and teach the Bible. I’m not sure that I had expectations for an intellectual life beyond that.  

Drew Dickerson: I don’t think that the challenges I’ve faced are necessarily unique to me, but life is definitely a balancing act. It’s difficult to find time to devote to writing between driving kids to school, practice, or church; spending time together as a family; and focusing on our marriage. 

Add jobs and church ministry on top of everything, and our calendars never seem to have enough hours in the day. This is still a work in progress as we navigate new rhythms of life as our kids get older.  One of my favorite things about our marriage is that we’ve got to experience our intellectual journey together. Life has never turned out the way we expected; even our intellectual pursuit came as a bit of a surprise. Over time, we’ve learned to pursue excellence in whatever we do and step through the doors that God opens for us. 

Nadya Williams: I'd love to hear your pie-in-the-sky dream: What do you each dream about in your intellectual lives in the future? How do these dreams work together?

Megan Dickerson: I like to read and think and write and teach. I’d love more freedom to do those things and somehow have our bills paid! Every year at the beginning of the school year, I see professors talk about the spectrum of being called to this kind of life between church ministry and an academic vocation. I’d love to live somewhere on that spectrum, and I’m not sure where I’ll land. I love participating in the work of the church, and I’ve loved the opportunities I’ve had to teach and equip students in higher education. 

I’m not sure what doors the Lord will open for us going forward, but I’m sure I’ll land somewhere on that spectrum, and I love the idea of having one foot in the church and the other in the academy. I’ll continue to write and teach. I’ll continue to equip and train. 

Drew Dickerson: My dream is pretty simple. I love teaching, but more than that, I love students. I would love to be in a place where I can teach and pour into young people, help them think well, and prepare them to serve in their communities and churches.

Drew Dickerson is pursuing a PhD in historical theology at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. Megan Dickerson is also a PhD student at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, where she serves as the grant administrator for the L. Russ Bush Center for Faith and Culture. They live in Wake Forest, North Carolina, with their four children.