Why J.R.R. Tolkien appeals to people of faith

People of faith have long been drawn to J.R.R. Tolkien’s work.

According to J.D. Payne, showrunner of Amazon Prime’s “The Rings of Power,” it’s because so many characters and themes in Tolkien’s work reflect figures and themes that are familiar to religious communities.

“You read Tolkien and there’s times where it feels infused with an almost scriptural kind of feeling,” Payne told the Deseret News, adding that Tolkien’s work “feels deeply influenced by sort of a wisdom tradition.”

Although Payne is far from alone in seeing Tolkien’s work as something of a religious text — Tolkien himself was a devout Catholic — some Tolkien scholars and fans believe that his work isn’t Christian at all.

So are there Christian themes in Tolkien’s work? It’s a question that’s been hotly debated between Tolkien fans and scholars alike.

And, as with most things related to Tolkien, sorting out the truth is complicated.

The case for Tolkien’s work being Christian

Those who interpret Tolkien’s work as Christian often point to a specific correspondence between Tolkien and the Rev. Robert Murray in 1953 as evidence.

The Rev. Murray wrote to Tolkien saying that he interpreted “The Lord of the Rings” as touching on the Catholic order of grace. Tolkien wrote back, “‘The Lord of the Rings’ is of course a fundamentally religious and Catholic work; unconsciously so at first, but consciously in the revision.”

While some Christians perceive this letter as confirmation of religious content from Tolkien himself, Devin Brown, an English professor at Asbury University, notes that the key word in Tolkien’s letter is “fundamentally.”

“Paraphrasing Tolkien, we could say that ‘The Lord of the Rings’ is in its fundamentals or at its foundations a religious work,” Brown wrote for Desiring God.

He continued, “The Christian element in Tolkien’s stories is present but not directly evident; it must be deduced.”

Brown notes that Tolkien hints at the presence of divine providence in his work but doesn’t put it front and center.

For example, in “The Lord of the Rings,” Gandalf, when recounting Bilbo’s story to Frodo, tells him that “there was more than one power at work, beyond any design of the Ring-maker.”

Gandalf concludes, “Bilbo was meant to find the Ring, and not by its maker. In which case you also were meant to have it.”

Brown wrote that this passage is akin to saying, “God had a plan. We were meant to meet that day.”

But Christians can also find more direct and explicit links to Christianity in “The Lord of the Rings.”

As Joseph Pearce wrote for The Imaginative Conservative, a Christian reader can interpret Frodo as a Christ figure. He argued that Frodo is the Ring-bearer and that “the Ring can be seen to signify Sin.”

But he continues, “He is not a figure of Christ at all times in the way that a character in a formal allegory is merely a personified abstraction of the thing or person he represents.”

Pearce highlights some other religious symbols in Tolkien’s books: Gandalf’s death and resurrection “resonates unmistakably with the Gospel accounts of Christ’s Transfiguration,” he says; Aragorn, as the heir of Isildur, walks down the Paths of the Dead and “has the power to set the suffering souls free of the death-curse.”

Payne, the showrunner, agreed that there are themes and figures in Tolkien that are familiar to people of faith.

“There are characters that I think resonate with religious figures,” he told the Deseret News. “And that can feel (like) fragments of things that we recognize in various religious traditions. In Christianity, for sure, but I think also other traditions across the globe.”

Is Tolkien’s work ‘about nothing but itself’?

But Payne also noted that Tolkien rejected the idea of allegories, or the idea of hidden meanings being woven into a text.

“Well, it’s funny,” Payne said. “He resisted the idea of archetypes and allegory.”

As Tolkien wrote in the foreword of the second edition of “The Lord of the Rings” in 1966, “I cordially dislike allegory in all its manifestations, and always have done so since I grew old and wary enough to detect its presence. I much prefer history — true or feigned — with its varied applicability to the thought and experience of readers.”

He added, “I think that many confuse applicability with allegory, but the one resides in the freedom of the reader, and the other in the purposed domination of the author.”

This contradiction can be confusing for some readers. As Tom Emanuel pointed out in his article “It Is ‘About’ Nothing But Itself,” published in the October 2023 addition of the journal Mythlore, Tolkien often denied direct Christian allegory in his public statements, but acknowledged that his readers could perceive his work as Christian in his private letters.

But even in light of this assessment, Emanuel argued that interpreting “The Lord of the Rings” as Christian misrepresents Tolkien’s intention.

“What may be, in fact, a valid Christian interpretation of Tolkien’s fiction is passed off as proof of evangelical intent,” he wrote.

Interpreting Tolkien’s work as Christian frames him as an author “who implants a single, univocal meaning in his works,” which oversimplifies his work and disregards any nuance, Emanuel argued.

He also criticized the idea of treating Tolkien like an infallible Christian authority figure. “We disrespect Tolkien when we make him an idol,” he said.

Emanuel points to a 1955 letter Tolkien wrote to his publisher, Houghton Mifflin, to strengthen his argument.

Mifflin had asked Tolkien how he should respond “to people who ask me ‘what is it all about?’” Tolkien replied, “It is not ‘about’ anything but itself.”

Emanuel said that Tolkien “values the freedom of the reader too much” to impose a single Christian meaning or interpretation of his work.

“To the extent that it can be inferred, Tolkien’s intent would appear to be that readers take ‘LotR’ on its own terms rather than as an illustration of some cognitive-propositional concept external to the world of the text,” he wrote.

Why are Christians so drawn to Tolkien?

Regardless of Tolkien’s intent, Christians are still drawn to reading his work. According to Payne, it’s because Tolkien’s work touches on themes that “you also see in scripture.”

“It’s filled with proverbs and wisdom of the soul, and of the nature of good and evil and the credibility of man and elfin and dwarves,” he said. “So it plays in that same sandbox and speaks to that same part of us (that) I think is drawn to scripture.”

While Emanuel cautioned against oversimplifying Tolkien’s work by pigeonholing it into a Christian lens, even he thought that Tolkien valued the freedom his readers would have to interpret his works and find the meaning within the text.

So while “The Lord of the Rings” might not be an explicitly Christian work, finding fragments of Christianity in it might be a valid way to read Tolkien.

As Payne noted, there are plenty of faith-related fragments: battles of the soul, the struggle between good versus evil, sacrifice, friendship and more.

“It’s something you also see in scripture,” he said. “I think they just resonate with similar parts of the human spirit.”

The second season of “The Rings of Power” premieres on Aug. 29.