J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings now stands high on any list of favourite books. Few people know that Tolkien was a Christian and that his beliefs underlie his writing.
John Ronald Reuel Tolkien was born in 1892 in what is now South Africa. When he was three, his father died, leaving him to be raised by his mother in Birmingham, England, under difficult financial circumstances. She became a Catholic and, after her early death when he was twelve, the young Tolkien was raised under the guardianship of a kindly priest. Tolkien was to remain a Catholic all his life.
From his youth, Tolkien displayed both a gift for languages and an extraordinary imagination. He began studying at Oxford University in 1911 but joined the army in 1915 to serve in World War I. He was married in 1916 but soon found himself facing the horrors of the trenches. He was spared almost certain death by contracting an infection that rendered him unfit for further frontline service. Although surviving the war, Tolkien remained scarred by it. He wrote, ‘By 1918 all but one of my close friends were dead.’
Tolkien worked as a researcher for the Oxford English Dictionary before becoming a lecturer at Oxford. After a succession of academic positions in the following decades he eventually became Professor of English Literature and Language at Oxford. Tolkien became close friends with fellow professor C.S. Lewis and over the course of many conversations encouraged Lewis to shift from atheism to a strong Christian faith. With Lewis and others, Tolkien became a regular attender of the now celebrated Oxford group the Inklings, whose members met regularly for discussion, often in a local pub.
Although Tolkien wrote a number of academic works, his extraordinary fame came from his fantasy writing. During his long wartime convalescence, he began to create his own imagined history of what he called ‘Middle-earth’, a part of Earth’s past set somewhere between the Fall of man and the coming of Christ. Tolkien spent decades of his spare time creating in every detail his fantasy world and its peoples, and the result is an unrivalled creative achievement: a sprawling, intricate and imagined world of extraordinary richness and depth.
Tolkien had four children and he would often tell them stories which involved Middle-earth. One such story was written down and, as The Hobbit, was published in 1937 to instant acclaim. Tolkien’s invention of hobbits – small, insignificant people with no ambition beyond a quiet life in the countryside with plenty of food – was a stroke of genius. Asked to write a sequel to The Hobbit Tolkien found himself writing a longer and more epic account on Middle-earth, telling how the hobbits became drawn into a great war between the forces of good against the power of evil. The story grew and the three volumes of The Lord of the Rings were published in 1954 and 1955. Almost immediately the work attracted both outstanding devotion and intense dislike, two views that have persisted. However, The Lord of the Rings retains an extraordinary popularity. In the 1960s The Lord of the Rings became a publishing phenomenon, something further encouraged subsequently by its successful filming at the beginning of this century. Tolkien worked on turning his complex and epic history of Middle-earth into a publishable form until his death in 1973, but that was only achieved by his son several decades later.
Let me draw your attention to three things about Tolkien.
First, Tolkien celebrates a Christian vision. The Lord of the Rings mentions not just a supreme being who has made the universe but also frequently implies that he, not chance or accident, is behind what happens. There are pointers, too, that this being is not simply some cold, merciless deity but rather a being rich in grace: a God who doesn’t just control but also cares. Although The Lord of the Rings is ultimately a triumphant book, we are left in no doubt that all earthly victories over evil are merely temporary and that, one day, God will bring about a final and eternal judgement that will put everything to rights.
Second, Tolkien celebrates many Christian virtues. It is hard to think of any novel published in the last hundred years that so frequently praises ‘doing what is right’. On page after page Tolkien reminds us of the great Christian virtues: courage, hope, joy, sacrifice, humour and friendship. We are warned that life hurts, that no one is immune to temptation, and that even the greatest victory is bittersweet. Perhaps one of the greatest virtues the trilogy emphasises is the need to show grace and mercy, even to those – like the loathsome Gollum – who deserve nothing of the sort.
Finally, Tolkien celebrates many Christian values. In an age where there are no moral certainties, it’s good to be reminded of the reality of good and evil. Yet here Tolkien avoids any naivety: we see good individuals corrupted and bad ones redeemed. One striking and vital theme is the value of ‘the little people’: ultimately it is the utterly insignificant hobbits who achieve the final victory. That’s a good lesson.
The Lord of the Rings is an awesome work of the imagination. There is a delightful irony that in it Tolkien created a fantasy world far truer to reality – and far more uplifting – than most literature that claims to be realistic.
J.John
Reverend Canon
