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 stay-at-home moms, or homeschooling mothers, or simply overwhelmed mothers of small children. These factors definitely take a toll on the possibility for 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. All couples interviewed in this series so far are parents. How does this all come together? We can assume that both challenges and blessings emerge as a result. What are they? And how does this look at different stages of life? (This is the second interview in the series. The first was with Regent University assistant professor of history, Charles Carman, and Mere Orthodoxy editorial board member Tessa Carman.)
***
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?
Katelyn Shelton: Somehow it took me until graduate school to realize I was called to an intellectual life. I had always loved reading and doing schoolwork, but it took sitting in a graduate school classroom at Yale Divinity School for me to realize that perhaps the primary means by which I worship God is intellectual. This was a surprise to me at the time, given that much of my upbringing in the church emphasized emotional ways of relating to God, through music and perhaps a well-timed smoke machine. I didn’t know what an “intellectual life” would look like, necessarily. I just knew that if I was going to worship God forever, which I intend to do, reading and writing would probably play a big part in it. That’s continued to hold true in the near-decade since graduating, even as I’ve become a mom and transitioned into a more stay-at-home role.
John Shelton: I fell into the intellectual life entirely by accident. After four years of coasting along in high school, I retained that same “Cs Get Degrees” ethos throughout most of college. And yet, by God’s providence, I had a roommate named Sam who was a stellar undergraduate and had received a research grant to work with one of the doctoral students on a project examining how churches across the country engaged in (or avoided) politics. Despite my indolence, I found myself pulled by that friendship into conversations about theology and ethics with a rotating cast of aspiring PhDs who were friends with Sam and then eventually friends with me as well.
Inspired and excited by those discussions, I eventually got my grades in order and set myself up to follow in the footsteps of those doctoral students, first with an M.Div at Duke (where those I deemed to have a good balance of sane and smart had attended) and then, I had hoped, at one of the nation’s leading religion or theology departments, with the expectation that I would eventually teach. After failing to get into any of the five religion and politics programs I applied to at the end of my time at Duke, I realized that I had to pivot. I decided to enter directly into the world of public policy while continuing my theological education on the side (congressional staff have special access to the greatest public research library of all time: the Library of Congress).
My career hasn’t looked almost anything like I thought it might as a bright-eyed undergraduate, but I couldn’t be more grateful for the theological education that I received, and the practical experience in the battlefields of politics that my job has vaulted me into. Sometimes, in order to understand a thing, you have to dive in head-first.
NW: What kind of intellectual work does each of you do now, and what role does it play in your day-to-day life?
Katelyn Shelton: I have the privilege of being a Visiting Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center (EPPC), a think tank in Washington, D.C. committed to applying the tenets of the Judeo-Christian tradition to contemporary questions about law, politics, and culture. Practically, this means I write on an array of issues and policies, but primarily on bioethics at the beginning of life. Last June, I won a Robert Novak Journalism Fellowship to conduct a yearlong project on emerging reproductive biotechnologies and what it means to be human.
While my days are primarily spent at home with my four children, we have school or play arrangements for ten to fifteen hours a week in which I do all my writing, usually from a coffeeshop or Chick-fil-a. I call this time my “mental vacation,” where I get to take a short break each week from the very physical labor of being a mom to four children five and under and exercise and apply my intellectual muscles. I’m grateful to live in the 21st century, where the internet makes this kind of dual intellectual-mother life possible to me.
John Shelton: After a half-decade honing my policy chops in Congress, I moved over to a fledgling advocacy organization started by former Vice President Mike Pence, Advancing American Freedom. My work there is typically grounded in the day-to-day activities of the federal government, whether in the legislation being debated in the chambers and committee rooms of Congress or the rulemaking and executive orders issued from the presidential administration. But, more often than not, the years spent studying theology at Duke prove surprisingly relevant—whether that’s applying just war criteria to modern events or, just this week, having to freshen up on Vatican II’s discussions of God’s enduring covenant with Israel amid another blow-up on the political right over antisemitism.
NW: 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?
Katelyn Shelton: I think the intellectual life is particularly well-suited to motherhood, perhaps especially when children are young. The transition to becoming a mom can be lonely, especially if you don’t yet have friends with children, or if you have two at once in the middle of a pandemic, like we did. I sometimes hear other new moms say they feel like their own preferences or hobbies or gifts are completely lost to care for their newborn. And while there certainly is an adjustment period, I’m grateful that reading and writing and thinking interesting thoughts are all quite compatible with being at home with a baby (or babies).
While I have not had tons of relaxing reading time lying on my couch, as I’d prefer, I have had lots of time to listen to books while doing chores or driving. I find that working with my hands while I listen keeps my mind engaged, such that when I do have time to sit down and write, many of my ideas are already percolating to the fore. Being a mom and having limited time also makes me quite focused. I know I only have a few hours’ chunk of time to get an article written, so I don’t have time to dilly-dally.
And now, my kids ask to listen to books too! In December, my boys listened through Dickens’ A Christmas Carol on audio on the way to and from school. On a family road trip to Tennessee, we listened to Lewis’ The Magician’s Nephew. John also does an excellent job of reading to the big kids every night while I feed and rock the baby to sleep. He’s read Little Pilgrim’s Progress, The Wingfeather Saga, and plenty of lower-brow content like Avatar or Minecraft or Marvel, usually in the form of graphic novels. And I have so many beloved children’s books I can’t wait to share with them. I love getting to share an intellectual life with my family.
John Shelton: While I might not be teaching in the formal institutional capacity that I thought I might back when I was an undergraduate, the intellectual life has attuned me to the education of my own family. Most nights, whether they like it or not, our brood of four young children are subjected to some level of Socratic dialogue, often beginning in some kind of mundane questioning about the food we are eating and what had to happen in order for it to end up on our plates, then moving on to questions about death and life and existence. My children will either end up something like the Unabomber or Thomas Aquinas (hopefully the latter).
In all seriousness, the book that helped me make the most sense of how family life squares with the contemplative life has been Ronald Rolheiser’s Domestic Monastery: Creating Spiritual Life at Home. Lacking (as most of us do) the forms provided by the monasteries, one of the next best institutions we have to mold our souls and spiritual lives is the family and the rhythms that it imposes upon us.
NW: 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?
Katelyn Shelton: It feels really important to me to be home with the children while they’re young—it’s something my mom did, and I have always loved that she prioritized us in that way. I do feel like I could use more time. I have far more ideas than I’m able to put down on paper. I’ve maxxed out at least one note in my phone’s “notes” app with essay ideas, most of which I’ll probably never get to. I long to be back in an office, bouncing ideas off of smart people and hosting lectures or events. Maybe one day I’ll get to reenter work more formally, but for now I’m trying to focus instead on enjoying this precious time with my littles and being grateful for whatever I am able to write during my allotted time. “For everything, there is a season,” after all.
I am also grateful to have married an intellectual husband. What attracted me to John from the very start was his brilliance, and the way we connected on theological issues, in particular. I often say that John taught me how to write. While I was in graduate school, he read every paper and gave intense feedback, helping me learn how to structure and source long essays. It’s still fairly rare for me to send something to a publisher without John reading it first, but it’s happening more frequently now, as our lives get busier and our writing opportunities more numerous.
John Shelton: I think that I will always struggle with the idea that there is not enough time in the day to pursue the intellectual life. I take Paul’s caution in 1 Corinthians 7 seriously here: “An unmarried man is concerned about the Lord’s affairs–how he can please the Lord. But a married man is concerned about the affairs of this world–how he can please his wife–and his interests are divided.” When I was younger, I thought that I might remain celibate so that I could devote myself to these things. “Purity of heart,” after all, “is to will one thing.” But books like Rolheiser’s have helped me to understand how even my divided interests can lead me back to the Lord’s affairs and the contemplative life. Studying the Cappadocian Fathers in Divinity School also helped: Theology is always both meditative and ascetic. As a parent, even sleepless nights with a newborn can be the site of spiritual growth, where, with the right posture, we learn to understand our dependence on grace anew.
Having a spouse to talk through these things with, who has a similar educational background as me, is not a necessity to a good, fulfilling marriage, but it is certainly an unexpected, unlooked for gift in ours. I love getting to read what Katelyn is writing—and oftentimes will take inspiration from her projects. I didn’t really have any expectations about how these things would work in our own marriage beforehand, as I didn’t know anyone with a similar situation except perhaps through the Internet.
NW: 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?
Katelyn Shelton: I’d love to write a book at some point in my life. While it will probably take the form of a bioethics-related nonfiction tome, I also dream of writing a science fiction novel someday, if I can figure out how to do the creative writing bit (not a given!). My love for reading began with an all-you-can-read buffet of incredible fiction, and I’ve always had the urge to contribute to the genre.
I also dream about starting a hyper-local classical Christian school for our wonderful neighborhood outside of D.C., to help foster the intellectual life amongst our children. Alasdair MacIntyre, the late virtue ethicist and perhaps my favorite philosopher, says, “Deprive children of stories, and you leave them unscripted, anxious stutterers in their actions, as in their words.” The question, then, becomes, as MacIntyre says, “Of what story or stories do I find myself a part?” I so deeply desire for my children to be a part of the story of the great Judeo-Christian tradition, which built this truly awesome country and will hopefully continue to shape and reawaken it.
John Shelton: I think that one of the most rewarding things that we have been able to do as a couple has been teaching aspiring members what we believe as a church. I would love to do more of that.
I have long had the fortune of a good and interesting job that allows me to pursue some of my theological interests, even if I am often cramming them in as I can here and there. While my preferred model of the intellectual life has always been that of the participant-observer (think of an Edmund Burke, who reflects on the politics that he lives and breathes as a Member of Parliament), at a later point in my career, I think it would be fantastic to move out of more active engagement in the political skirmishes that come and go with each passing day and back into higher-order reflection on what politics is and should be.
With less than seven years of marriage under my belt, I don’t pretend to be an expert on the subject, but it seems that a lot of the time, marital success involves figuring out how your professional livelihood (or withdrawal from it) can best serve your spouse’s dreams. Right now it seems like there is some good balance there for us.
Also, for the record: I would really like Katelyn to write a book as well, and I’m determined to figure out how she makes it happen.