Casey Spinks

Casey Spinks
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Casey Spinks is a Ph.D. student in the religion department at Baylor University. A native of Baton Rouge, he earned his B.A. and M.A. in philosophy and religious studies at Louisiana State University. His academic work has appeared in the book Taking Kierkegaard Personally and the journals International Journal for Philosophy of Religion, Philosophy & Theology and Perspectives in Religious Studies. And he has written essays for The Imaginative Conservative, Christianity Today, and VoegelinView. He is also an avid birder and occasional carpenter.

Recent Essays

Petroleum and Me

I wish environmentalists would better understand that there are no mustache-twirling billionaires drilling and digging and burning oil just for the hell and the money of it. Like money, petroleum is a very effective way to get the things we all want at the best convenience. And those in the oil industry are simply happy to oblige us and profit by their labors.

We Were a Peculiar People Once

What comes out is a story of a small group of Reformed Canadian Baptists who are rural, hardworking, self-educated (largely by reading the Bible), and persistent in becoming holy, but not without earning some dry humor along the way. Jeffrey excels at the hard task of publishing the culture of his upbringing, as well as some of the best of his private life, with both charity and clarity.

Vaya con Dios: Cormac McCarthy (1933-2023)

Somewhat surprisingly, this is also McCarthy at his most delighted at everyday joys. There are many tender passages of drinking coffee in porcelain cups in diners, eating tortillas and beans on stops in the desert, working with cowboys at small jobs on ranches, and companionship with horses, mules, even wolves.

Learning to Love the Brazos with John Graves

With some little local knowledge now in mind, I too may, day by day, attune myself to the Way, How ever imperfectly I go about What I am striving to do.

Cormac McCarthy’s Sorrow of Creatures

Are dreams only dreams? Or are they God’s gifts of the unconscious which we still fail to know? McCarthy lets these questions remain, and no argument or worldview can answer them. So, we are left waiting for God to say something, anything, as His answer.

A Rant Against Satellite Photos and in Defense of Starlit Skies

In our day, we cannot ourselves see the heavens; we can only see pixelated images of heaven produced by computer screens. In this respect, we already live in virtual reality.

Forest Rebel Cinema

With this love and materiality, these two films express the pure reality to which their protagonists are so devoted. In a world of frictionless unreality, endless abstractions, and tepid and timid loves, these films impress upon us resistance, difficulty, attachment, and the dire risk that attachment brings

A Real American Philosopher

Bugbee’s thought suggests a defiant confidence that the things themselves can and do reveal themselves to us in their independence, if only we would have the patience to let them.

Watching Movies and Wondering about Metaphysics in an Anxious Age

Casey Spinks muses on zombie shows, Pixar movies, Scorsese films, metaphysical realism, and the philosophical fate of modern culture in his review of Age of Anxiety: Meaning, Identity, and Politics in 21st-Century Film and Literature, by Anthony Wachs and Jon Schaff.

Take to the Land: A Strategy for Third Parties

Even if ‘land’ is less important than actual vote share, this map does point to a very real issue at the heart of American politics: namely that majorities, specifically local majorities, matter very much in our democracy.

The Promise and Forgiveness of Hillbilly Elegy

Hillbilly Elegy is indeed political, but in a deeper sense, entangled as it is in the webs of broken promises and repeated forgiveness.

Notes on a Mad Hunter’s Morality

The act of hunting makes hunters guilty—and so it makes them moral.