Tolkien's Roman Catholicism was a significant factor in C. S. Lewis's conversion from atheism to Christianity, although Tolkien was dismayed that Lewis chose to join the Church of England. He once wrote to Rayner Unwin's daughter Camilla, who wished to know the purpose of life, that it was "to increase according to our capacity our knowledge of God by all the means we have, and to be moved by it to praise and thanks." He had a special devotion to the blessed sacrament, writing to his son Michael that in "the Blessed Sacrament ... you will find romance, glory, honour, fidelity, and the true way of all your loves upon earth, and more than that".
Religion
J. R. R. Tolkien
J. R. R. Tolkien | Religion
He was a Roman Catholic and had a  special devotion to the blessed sacrament; he encouraged frequent reception of Holy Communion to his son He was a Roman Catholicism. He believed the Catholic Church to be true most of all because of the pride of place and the honour in which it holds the Blessed Sacrament. He was a devout Roman Catholic, and in his religious and political views he was mostly a traditionalist moderate, with libertarian, distributist, localist, and monarchist leanings.
where is sauron during the lord of the rings
user
He rules the land of Mordor
assistant
where is this land?
user
It lay to the east of Gondor and the great river Anduin, and to the south of Mirkwood.
assistant
where does this character and place make a mention?
user
The Lord of the Rings
assistant
what is this?
user
An epic high fantasy novel
assistant
can you explain the physical appearance of the ruler mentioned above?
user
Sauron took the form of a werewolf. Then he assumed a serpent-like form, and finally changed back "from monster to his own accustomed [human-like] form".
assistant
who has written the above mentioned novel?
user
J. R. R. Tolkien.
assistant
what was her view on religion?
user
Tolkien's Roman Catholicism was a significant factor in C. S. Lewis's conversion from atheism to Christianity, although Tolkien was dismayed that Lewis chose to join the Church of England. He once wrote to Rayner Unwin's daughter Camilla, who wished to know the purpose of life, that it was "to increase according to our capacity our knowledge of God by all the means we have, and to be moved by it to praise and thanks." He had a special devotion to the blessed sacrament, writing to his son Michael that in "the Blessed Sacrament ... you will find romance, glory, honour, fidelity, and the true way of all your loves upon earth, and more than that".
J. R. R. Tolkien | Religion
Tolkien was a devout Roman Catholic, and in his religious and political views he was mostly a traditionalist moderate, with libertarian, distributist, localist, and monarchist leanings, in the sense of favouring established conventions and orthodoxies over innovation and modernization, whilst castigating government bureaucracy; in 1943 he wrote, "My political opinions lean more and more to Anarchy (philosophically understood, meaning abolition of control not whiskered men with bombs)—or to 'unconstitutional' Monarchy." Although he did not often write or speak about it, Tolkien advocated the dismantling of the British Empire and even of the United Kingdom. In a 1936 letter to a former student, the Belgian linguist Simonne d'Ardenne, he wrote, "The political situation is dreadful...
J. R. R. Tolkien | Views
Occasionally, her smouldering anger about church-going burst into a fury; but at last after one such outburst in 1940 there was true reconciliation between her and Ronald, in which she explained her feelings and even declared that she wished to resume the practice of her religion. In the event she did not return to regular church-going, but for the rest of her life she showed no resentment of Catholicism, and indeed delighted to take an interest in church affairs, so that it appeared even to friends who were Catholics that she was an active church-goer."
Edith Tolkien | Professor's wife
H. Jessop at Cheltenham. He declared that he had never ceased to love her, and asked her to marry him. Edith replied that she had already accepted the proposal of George Field, the brother of one of her closest school friends. But Edith said she had agreed to marry Field only because she felt "on the shelf" and had begun to doubt that Tolkien still cared for her. She explained that, because of Tolkien's letter, everything had changed.
J. R. R. Tolkien | Courtship and marriage
The last accusation noted by Wood is that the work contains no formal religion. Hobbits have no temples or sacrifices, though Frodo can call to Elbereth, one of the Valar, "in extremis"; the nearest anyone comes to religion is that the men of Gondor "pause before meals". Wood's answer here is that Tolkien intentionally left religion out of Middle-earth so that "we might see Christianity reflected in it more clearly if also indirectly". He quotes Tolkien's remark in a letter that "the religious element is absorbed into the story and the symbolism".
Themes of The Lord of the Rings | No overt Christianity
Though a Catholic himself, Tolkien felt that fantasy should incorporate Christian values without resorting to the obvious allegory Lewis employed.
Religion in The Chronicles of Narnia | Religious and secular reception
A specifically Christian influence is the notion of the fall of man, which influenced the Ainulindalë, the Kinslaying at Alqualondë, and the fall of Númenor.
J. R. R. Tolkien's influences | Christianity
Before they were married, Ronald had persuaded her to leave the Church of England and become a Catholic, and she had resented this a little at the time. During the subsequent years she had almost given up going to mass. In the second decade of marriage her anti-Catholic feelings hardened, and by the time the family returned to Oxford in 1925 she was showing resentment of Ronald taking the children to church. In part, these feelings were due to Ronald's rigid, almost medieval, insistence upon frequent confession; and Edith had always hated confessing her sins to a priest. Nor could he discuss her feelings with her in a rational manner, certainly not with the lucidity he demonstrated in his theological arguments with Lewis: to Edith he presented only his emotional attachment to religion, of which she had little understanding.
Edith Tolkien | Professor's wife
Over the years, some religious people, particularly Christians, have decried Rowling's books for supposedly promoting witchcraft. Rowling identifies as a Christian. She once said, "I believe in God, not magic." Early on and in response to the criticism, she felt that if readers knew of her Christian beliefs they would be able to predict plot lines of characters in her books. In 2007, Rowling said she was the only one in her family who went regularly to church and that she was an adherent of the Church of England. As a student, she became annoyed at the "smugness of religious people" and attended less often.
J. K. Rowling | Religion
Every time I've been asked if I believe in God, I've said yes, because I do, but no one ever really has gone any more deeply into it than that, and I have to say that does suit me, because if I talk too freely about that I think the intelligent reader, whether 10 or 60, will be able to guess what's coming in the books. "Personally", she said of her religious faith, "I think you can see that in the books. Of course, Hogwarts is a multifaith school." Rowling claims to have been very careful not to colour her novels in an overtly religious way, lest one faith be given prominence over any other.
Religious debates over the Harry Potter series | Christianity in the novels
J.R.R. Tolkien's love of myths and devout Catholic faith came together in his assertion that mythology is the divine echo of "the Truth". Tolkien wrote that myths held "fundamental things". He expressed these beliefs in his poem "Mythopoeia" circa 1931, which describes myth-making as an act of "sub-creation" within God's primary creation. The poem in part says creation is "myth-woven and elf-patterned": Tolkien's opinion was adopted by another Christian writer, C. S. Lewis, in their conversations: "Tolkien explained to Lewis that the story of Christ was the true myth at the very heart of history and at the very root of reality." C.
Religion and mythology | Christianity
Oates was raised Catholic but as of 2007 was an atheist. In an interview with "Commonweal" magazine, Oates stated, "I think of religion as a kind of psychological manifestation of deep powers, deep imaginative, mysterious powers which are always with us."
Joyce Carol Oates | Religion
Later, she started to attend a Church of Scotland congregation at the time she was writing "Harry Potter". Her eldest daughter, Jessica, was baptised there. In a 2006 interview with "Tatler", Rowling noted that, "like Graham Greene, my faith is sometimes about if my faith will return. It's important to me." She has said that she has struggled with doubt, that she believes in an afterlife, and that her faith plays a part in her books. In a 2012 radio interview, she said that she was a member of the Scottish Episcopal Church, a province of the Anglican Communion.
J. K. Rowling | Religion
Peter Hastings, manager of the Newman Bookshop (a Catholic bookshop in Oxford), had written to Tolkien objecting to his writing of the reincarnation of Elves, saying: In a 1954 draft of a reply to Hastings, Tolkien, also a devout Roman Catholic, defended his creative ideas as an exploration of the infinite "potential variety" of God: that it need not conform to the reality of our world so long as it does not misrepresent the essential nature of the divine: Hastings had also criticised the description of Tom Bombadil by Goldberry simply as "He is", saying that this seemed to be a reference to the Biblical quotation "I Am that I Am", implying that Bombadil was God.
Cosmology of Tolkien's legendarium | Tolkien on Eru and subcreation
Christianity is a central theme in J. R. R. Tolkien's fictional works about Middle-earth, but always a hidden one. J. R. R. Tolkien was a devout Roman Catholic from boyhood, and he described "The Lord of the Rings" in particular as a fundamentally religious and Catholic work. While he insisted it was not an allegory, it contains numerous themes from Christian theology. These include the battle of good versus evil, the triumph of humility over pride, and the activity of grace. A central theme is death and immortality, but Tolkien's attitudes to mercy and pity, resurrection, salvation, repentance, self-sacrifice, free will, justice, fellowship, authority and healing can also be detected.
Christianity in Middle-earth | Introduction
H. White and C. S. Lewis, with Rosebury's search for parallels among the Modernists such as Proust, Joyce, and Eliot. Claire Buck however comments in the "J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia" that this brings up the problematic definition of what "modern" is according to the same critics who thought Tolkien "a peripheral figure". Nancy-Lou Patterson, reviewing the first version of the book in "Mythlore", notes that Tolkien criticism had been distinctly "uneven" at best, but British critics such as Rosebury were improving the standard. She liked his characterisation of "Tolkien's descriptive gifts as possessing 'a certain sensuous precision, distinctive of Tolkien'". She agreed with Rosebury's assertion that "The Lord of the Rings" works not because of its basis in Christianity but for its emotional appeal of a powerfully imagined but essentially good world that treats evil as the absence of good.
Tolkien: A Cultural Phenomenon | Reception
She made a bust of her father-in-law which the English faculty at Oxford presented to him on his retirement in 1959. He had it cast in bronze and in 1966 it was placed at the English Faculty Library. Her other subjects included Iris Murdoch and C. S. Lewis. She separated from Christopher in 1964 and divorced from him in 1967. In 1958, she produced a seated Madonna and Child for the Catholic Chaplaincy at Birmingham University. In the early 1980s she returned to religious themes, including working for the Corpus Christi Church in Headington, Oxford and the Church of the Sacred Heart in Sutton Coldfield.
Tolkien family | Faith Faulconbridge
Tolkien was strongly opposed to both Nazism and Communism; Hal Colebatch in the "J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia" notes that his views can be seen in the somewhat parodic "The Scouring of the Shire". Leftist critics have accordingly attacked Tolkien's social conservatism. E. P. Thompson blames the cold warrior mentality on "too much early reading of "The Lord of the Rings"". Other Marxist critics, however, have been more positive towards Tolkien. While criticizing the politics embedded in "The Lord of the Rings", China Miéville admires Tolkien's creative use of Norse mythology, tragedy, monsters, and subcreation, as well as his criticism of allegory.
Reception of J. R. R. Tolkien | Marxist criticism
She finds Rosebury less readable than Shippey, but it comes a close second with "some wonderful insights".
Tolkien: A Cultural Phenomenon | Reception
Catholic theology and imagery played a part in fashioning Tolkien's creative imagination, suffused as it was by his deeply religious spirit. Specifically, Paul H. Kocher argues that Tolkien describes evil in the orthodox Christian way as the absence of good. He cites many examples in "The Lord of the Rings", such as Sauron's "Lidless Eye": "the black slit of its pupil opened on a pit, a window into nothing". Kocher sees Tolkien's source as Thomas Aquinas, "whom it is reasonable to suppose that Tolkien, as a medievalist and a Catholic, knows well". Tom Shippey makes the same point, but, instead of referring to Aquinas, says Tolkien was very familiar with Alfred the Great's Anglo-Saxon translation of Boethius' "Consolation of Philosophy", known as the "Lays of Boethius".
J. R. R. Tolkien | Catholicism
He accordingly encouraged frequent reception of Holy Communion, again writing to his son Michael that "the only cure for sagging of fainting faith is Communion." He believed the Catholic Church to be true most of all because of the pride of place and the honour in which it holds the Blessed Sacrament. While he did not disparage the Second Vatican Council – describing it as "needed" – he felt that the reforms of Pope Pius X "surpass[ed] anything...that the Council will achieve." In the last years of his life, Tolkien resisted some of the liturgical changes implemented after the Second Vatican Council, especially the use of English for the liturgy; he continued to make the responses in Latin, ignoring the rest of the congregation.
J. R. R. Tolkien | Religion
Commentators, some of them Christian, have taken a wide range of positions on the role of Christianity in Tolkien's fiction, especially in "The Lord of the Rings", including representations of Christ and angels in Tolkien's characters such as the wizards, the resurrection, the motifs of light, hope, and redemptive suffering, the apparent invisibility of Christianity in the novel, and not least the nature of evil, an ancient debate in Christian philosophy, that has led to lengthy scholarly argument about Tolkien's position in the book.
Christianity in Middle-earth | Role
While many describe the books as secular or Satanic, many writers, including Rowling herself, have gone to great lengths to demonstrate that the books actively promote Christian values. Rowling attended a Church of Scotland congregation while writing "Harry Potter" and her eldest daughter, Jessica, was baptised into that faith. "I go to church myself", she told MTV in 2007, "I don't take any responsibility for the lunatic fringes of my own religion". In 2000, when asked if she was a Christian by journalist Max Wyman of "The Vancouver Sun", she replied: Yes, I am, which seems to offend the religious right far worse than if I said I thought there was no God.
Religious debates over the Harry Potter series | Christianity in the novels
Later in the work, he aligns himself with a "renascent or modern religion ... neither atheist nor Buddhist nor Mohammedan nor Christian ... [that] he has found growing up in himself". Of Christianity, he said: "it is not now true for me. ... Every believing Christian is, I am sure, my spiritual brother ... but if systemically I called myself a Christian I feel that to most men I should imply too much and so tell a lie". Of other world religions, he writes: "All these religions are true for me as Canterbury Cathedral is a true thing and as a Swiss chalet is a true thing.
H. G. Wells | Religious views
Tolkien vocally opposed Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party before the Second World War, and despised Nazi racist and anti-semitic ideology. In 1938, the publishing house Rütten & Loening, preparing to release "The Hobbit" in Nazi Germany, outraged Tolkien by asking him whether he was of Aryan origin. In a letter to his British publisher Stanley Unwin, he condemned Nazi "race-doctrine" as "wholly pernicious and unscientific". He added that he had many Jewish friends and was considering "letting a German translation go hang". He provided two letters to Rütten & Loening and instructed Unwin to send whichever he preferred. The more tactful letter was sent but is now lost.
J. R. R. Tolkien | Opposition to Nazism
"Christianity Today" reported that Oxford University's Bodleian Libraries exhibition "" was "nearly comprehensive" but had one "glaring omission": "any mention of the author's devout, lifelong Christian faith." It mentions Michael Ward's comment that Tolkien's faith is not obvious in Middle-earth, unlike his friend C. S. Lewis's Narnia, and concludes that "Only if we recognize Tolkien's deep Christian faith can we hope to understand the life and work of the 'Maker of Middle-earth'".
Christianity in Middle-earth | In other media
Christian authors who have criticised the books include fantasy author J.K. Rowling on ethical grounds and literary critic John Goldthwaite in "The Natural History of Make-Believe" for elitism and snobbery in the books. J. R. R. Tolkien was a close friend of Lewis, a fellow author and was instrumental in Lewis' own conversion to Christianity. As members of the Inklings literary group the two often read and critiqued drafts of their work. Nonetheless, Tolkien was not enthusiastic about the Narnia stories, in part due to the eclectic elements of the mythology and their haphazard incorporation, in part because he disapproved of stories involving travel between real and imaginary worlds.
Religion in The Chronicles of Narnia | Religious and secular reception
The film was criticized for giving no indication that Tolkien's faith was a central theme in his life, despite its impact on his work. Karukoski explained the decision as having been motivated by the difficulty he had portraying religion in Tolkien's life on account of its "internal[ity]." Karukoski related that he had attempted to create scenes that depicted Tolkien's more religious side, but those scenes failed to engage initial audiences and were cut from the film. Nevertheless, Karukoski explained that although there are no overt references to religion in the film, religion is still implied: Other reviews have stated that Tolkien's Christian faith is embedded in the film much the same way that it is embedded in his Middle-earth writings.
Tolkien (film) | Criticism over depiction of Tolkien's religion
There is, however, a growing tendency to look at Tolkien within the English Catholic literary tradition of his time. Although distinct, a movement towards explicit religious loyalty and themes in Anglican and Anglo-Catholic writers such as George MacDonald, T. S. Eliot, C. S. Lewis and Dorothy L. Sayers is sometimes linked to the Catholic literary revival as a broader phenomenon.
Catholic literary revival | England
In the unsent letter, Tolkien made the point that "Aryan" was a linguistic term, denoting speakers of Indo-Iranian languages, and stated that "if I am to understand that you are enquiring whether I am of "Jewish" origin, I can only reply that I regret that I appear to have "no" ancestors of that gifted people." In a 1941 letter to his son Michael, he expressed his resentment at the distortion of Germanic history in "Nordicism", referring to "that ruddy little ignoramus Adolf Hitler ... Ruining, perverting, misapplying, and making for ever accursed, that noble northern spirit, a supreme contribution to Europe, which I have ever loved, and tried to present in its true light." In 1968, he objected to a description of Middle-earth as "Nordic" for a similar reason.
J. R. R. Tolkien | Opposition to Nazism
Religious debates over the "Harry Potter" series of books by J. K. Rowling are based on claims that the novels contain occult or Satanic subtexts. A number of Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox Christians have argued against the series, as have some Shia and Sunni Muslims. Supporters of the series have said that the magic in "Harry Potter" bears little resemblance to occultism, being more in the vein of fairy tales such as "Cinderella" and "Snow White", or to the works of C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien, both of whom are known for writing fantasy novels with Christian subtexts.
Religious debates over the Harry Potter series | Introduction
Farewell!"; as Shippey says, "Arwen is not comforted" by this; none of the traditional consolations of religion are present. He observes that Tolkien stated in a letter to a Jesuit priest that he had cut religion out of "The Lord of the Rings" because it "is absorbed into the story and the symbolism". Shippey explains that Tolkien, a devout Roman Catholic, "thought, or hoped, that God had a plan for [good pagan] pre-Catholics too", so that heroes like Aragorn would go to Limbo rather than to Hell. He notes that the tale contains another death-scene, that of Gilraen, Aragorn's mother; she too is not comforted by Aragorn's mention of "a light beyond the darkness", a phrase that Shippey writes could be a hope of salvation, or simply a hope of winning the War of the Ring.
The Tale of Aragorn and Arwen | Missing religion
She is fascinated, too, by Rosebury's discussion of the divergences of Tolkien's mythology from Christian doctrine, comparing Eru Iluvatar with Milton's God in "Paradise Lost". She suggests that "general readers" will be most interested in the last chapter on the book's "afterlife" in film, games, and other artefacts. She notes that Rosebury calls Jackson's film trilogy a "qualified success" (based on the first two films); he admires the film realisation of Middle-earth, but mourns the loss of "some of the book's greatest virtues" including English understatement, emotional tact, and spaciousness, and the film version's choice of physical conflict over rhetorical power, "dignity of presence[,] or force of intellect", and the book's emphasis on free will and individual responsibility.
Tolkien: A Cultural Phenomenon | Reception
She began thinking on the subject after reading a manuscript from Thomas Broughton's "Historical Dictionary of all Religions from the Creation of the World to the Present Times" (1742).
A View of Religions | Introduction
Vowell is an atheist, though she describes herself as "culturally Christian." In an interview with "The A.V. Club", when asked if she believed in a god, she stated, "Absolutely not."
Sarah Vowell | Personal life
Another response to the claim that the books promote the religion of witchcraft, which has been raised as much by Christians critical of the books as those who support them, is that, far from promoting religion, the books do not promote religion in any way. Apart from celebrating Christmas and Easter and a non-denominational clergyman presiding at both Dumbledore's funeral and the Weasleys' wedding, religious practices are largely absent from the books. In her critical editorial on the books, Focus on the Family's Lindy Beam comments, "The spiritual fault of "Harry Potter" is not so much that Rowling is playing to dark supernatural powers, but that she doesn't acknowledge any supernatural powers at all.
Religious debates over the Harry Potter series | Secularism
Tolkien did not consider himself "a 'democrat' in any of its current uses". He saw the only true source of equality among men as equality before God. For him, democracy did not lead to an increase in humility and power for the individual but rather to demagoguery and pride: "with the result [of democracy being] that we get not universal smallness and humility, but universal greatness and pride, till some Orc gets hold of a ring of power – and then we get and are getting slavery."
J. R. R. Tolkien | Democracy
Tolkien was a core member of the Inklings, an informal literary discussion group associated with the University of Oxford between the early 1930s and late 1949. The group shared in Colin Duriez's words "a guiding vision of the relationship of imagination and myth to reality and of a Christian worldview in which a pagan spirituality is seen as prefiguring the advent of Christ and the Christian story." Shippey adds that the group was "preoccupied" with "virtuous pagans", and that "The Lord of the Rings" is plainly a tale of such people in the dark past before Christian revelation. He further writes that what Tolkien called the Northern theory of courage, namely that even total defeat does not make what is right wrong, was "a vital belief" shared by Tolkien and other Inklings.
J. R. R. Tolkien's influences | Inklings
Critics starting with Edwin Muir have found resemblances between Haggard's romances and Tolkien's. Saruman's death has been compared to the sudden shrivelling of Ayesha when she steps into the flame of immortality.
J. R. R. Tolkien's influences | Modern literature
In an article written for "Time" magazine before the publication of the seventh and final book in the series entitled "Who Dies in Harry Potter? God," Lev Grossman argues that, "Harry Potter lives in a world free of any religion or spirituality of any kind. He lives surrounded by ghosts but has no one to pray to, even if he were so inclined, which he isn't." Grossman goes on to contrast "Harry Potter" with other, more explicitly religious fantasies, such as C. S. Lewis' "The Chronicles of Narnia" and J. R. R. Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings".
Religious debates over the Harry Potter series | Secularism
J. R. R. Tolkien was an orphan, his father dying when he was three, his mother, a Roman Catholic, when he was twelve. He was then brought up under the supervision of a Catholic priest, Father Francis Morgan, in industrial Birmingham, which was spreading over the English countryside that he had loved. He remained a devout Catholic all his life, and many Christian themes are visible in his Middle-earth writings. While at Oxford, he joined the informal literary circle of the Inklings, with C. S. Lewis and Owen Barfield among others.
Decline and fall in Middle-earth | Background
Critics and commentators have long agreed that Austen was "a conscientious and believing churchwoman." References in her remaining letters suggest to Oliver MacDonagh that Austen was an orthodox Anglican, that she conceived of the Anglican church (in patriotic terms) as national in character, and that she was pleased with "the increasing religiosity and advance in public morality" in England during her lifetime. In 1939 Canon Harold Anson argued that "Austen's novels are religious not because they contain religious controversy or 'a strong ecclesiastical motif' ... but because they show 'the underlying principles upon which men live their lives and by which they judge the characters of others'." According to Gary Kelly, "this has become the dominant view of those critics who find Austen to be a religious novelist.
Styles and themes of Jane Austen | Religion
She died on 24 October 2017.
Tolkien family | Faith Faulconbridge
Almost as bad as Orcs, and much bigger.") in "Aftonbladet" as "stereotypical and reflective of colonial attitudes". She argues instead that Gollum's view, with its "arbitrary and stereotypical assumptions about the 'Other'", is absurd, and that Gollum cannot be taken as an authority on Tolkien's opinion. Straubhaar contrasts this with Sam Gamgee's more humane response to the sight of a dead Harad warrior, which she finds "harder to find fault with": Straubhaar quotes the English scholar Stephen Shapiro, who wrote in "The Scotsman" that
Tolkien and race | Polycultural Middle-earth
H. Auden in 1955, "I am a West-midlander by blood (and took to early west-midland Middle English as a known tongue as soon as I set eyes on it)."
J. R. R. Tolkien | Linguistic career
In 1989, the Freedom From Religion Foundation honored her with its Freethought Heroine Award. "I'm an atheist," she had declared, "and Christianity appears to me to be the most absurd imposture of all the religions, and I'm puzzled that so many people can't see through a religion that encourages irresponsibility and bigotry." She told a reporter, "As my ancestors are free from slavery, I am free from the slavery of religion." This quote was used by the Freedom From Religion Foundation in advertisements inside Madison, Wisconsin, buses in 2009 and in an Atlanta market in 2010. She lamented that, if humans had focused on Earth and on people, rather than on mythology and on Jesus, there would be less hunger and homelessness.
Butterfly McQueen | Atheism
Carroll did not believe in an omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent God. However, in his essay "Why I am not an atheist," Carroll said he disliked the term "atheist" because he felt it was being exploited by theists and used in straw-man arguments. He preferred the term "Brights." After Carroll abandoned Catholicism, he said, the only religion he found attractive (though he never followed it) was Buddhism as taught by the Dalai Lama. Carroll always maintained that people have to be more skeptical of religion. Religion, he said, is an area skeptics do not target enough, and so, he said, pure faith was winning the race against critical thinking.
Robert Todd Carroll | Views on religion
Tolkien was a devout Roman Catholic. He once described "The Lord of the Rings" to his friend, the English Jesuit Father Robert Murray, as "a fundamentally religious and Catholic work, unconsciously so at first, but consciously in the revision." Many theological themes underlie the narrative, including the battle of good versus evil, the triumph of humility over pride, and the activity of grace, as seen with Frodo's pity toward Gollum. In addition the epic includes the themes of death and immortality, mercy and pity, resurrection, salvation, repentance, self-sacrifice, free will, justice, fellowship, authority and healing. Tolkien mentions the Lord's Prayer, especially the line "And lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil" in connection with Frodo's struggles against the power of the One Ring.
J. R. R. Tolkien's influences | Christianity
Edith's husband's professional career at the universities of Leeds and Oxford resulted in the family moving to these cities. According to Humphrey Carpenter, Edith was not an intellectual and had a difficult time functioning around her husband's colleagues and their families. As she often had no other companionship other than the children and the servants, Edith's loneliness frequently manifested itself as authoritarianism. Another result of her loneliness was her envy and resentment of her husband's close friendship with C.S. Lewis, whom she regarded as an intruder into her family. According to Carpenter, "There was also the problem of Edith's attitude to Catholicism.
Edith Tolkien | Professor's wife
These stories are not fueled by witchcraft, but by secularism." The "Harry Potter" books have been lauded by atheists and secularists for their determinedly non-religious outlook. Mika LaVaque-Manty of the liberal website Left2Right notes, "Religion plays no role in the books. There are no churches, no other religious institutions, nobody prays or meditates, and even funerals are non-religious affairs." When considering the role of religion within "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows", Christopher Hitchens observed the apparent secularism in the novel, stating that the characters of Harry and Hermione possess certain moral virtues while also expressing an ignorance of Christian ideas.
Religious debates over the Harry Potter series | Secularism
on almost every level", with complex interlacement, a consistent ambiguity about the Ring and the nature of evil, and a consistent theory of the role of "chance" or "luck", all of which he explains in detail. In 1998, Daniel Timmons wrote in a dedicated issue of the "Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts" that scholars still disagreed about Tolkien's place in literature, but that those critical of it were a minority. He noted that Shippey had said that the "literary establishment" did not include Tolkien among the canon of academic texts, whereas Jane Chance "boldly declares that at last Tolkien 'is being studied as important in himself, as one of the world's greatest writers'".
Reception of J. R. R. Tolkien | Tolkien research
and will never come to puberty ... Hardly one of them knows anything about women", causing Tolkien to complain angrily to his publisher. The fantasy author Michael Moorcock, in his 1978 essay, "Epic Pooh", compared Tolkien's work to "Winnie-the-Pooh". He asserted, quoting from the third chapter of "The Lord of the Rings", that its "predominant tone" was "the prose of the nursery-room .. a lullaby; it is meant to soothe and console."
Reception of J. R. R. Tolkien | A hostile literary establishment
Characteristically, Helen's residual knowledge of, and belief in, Roman Catholicism prevents her from taking a real plunge into Messenger's world of values, where science is the universal problem-solver and where religion and also politics are considered as a curse to humankind. It obviously depends completely whose side you are on whether you consider attempts by renowned scientists at constructing robots as a complete waste of time or as paving the way for a better future society. Morality, especially conventional morals, have no place in this new view of the world and have long been discarded; sex has been reconsidered as having mainly recreational value.
Thinks ... | Commentary
I have the greatest sympathy with Belgium—which is about the right size of any country! I wish my own were bounded still by the seas of the Tweed and the walls of Wales... we folk do at least know something of mortality and eternity and when Hitler (or a Frenchman) says 'Germany (or France) must live forever' we know that he lies." Tolkien hated the side effects of industrialization, which he considered to be devouring the English countryside and simpler life. For most of his adult life, he was disdainful of cars, preferring to ride a bicycle. This attitude can be seen in his work, most famously in the portrayal of the forced "industrialization" of the Shire in "The Lord of the Rings".
J. R. R. Tolkien | Views
Beckett was born in the Union of South Africa, and raised in Edinburgh, Scotland, where her father was studying medicine. In 1946, she entered the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur, a Roman Catholic congregation of religious sisters dedicated to education. She was sent to England where she completed her novitiate and then studied at St Anne's College, Oxford, where she was awarded a congratulatory first class honours degree in English Literature. J. R. R. Tolkien was president of her final examinations board and asked her to stay on at the University, an invitation which she declined. Outside her academic work, she lived in a convent which maintained the strict code of silence typical in convents prior to the changes following the Second Vatican Council (1962–65).
Wendy Beckett | Early life
At Oxford, he created an all-male literary group with another Oxford professor of English, C. S. Lewis, called the Inklings. Among Tolkien's influences, he stated that he enjoyed reading boy's adventure stories, such as those by H. Rider Haggard and John Buchan. Tolkien stated in an interview that Haggard's novel "She" was his favourite. The scholar of English literature Dale Nelson notes that Tolkien "was evidently spontaneously moved by mythopoeic and straightforward adventure romance" as in Haggard's books. On Buchan's influence, Nelson writes that "Greenmantle" tells "of desperate chances and plentiful good luck, of cross-country pursuit and massive battles ...
Women in The Lord of the Rings | Tolkien's background
I always knew [that] if I could use them at the beginning of book seven then I'd cued up the ending perfectly. If they were relevant, then I went where I needed to go. They just say it all to me, they really do." Raymond Keating also outlines several Christian themes of the last book in an article in "Newsday", concluding that "It's possible to read "Lord of the Rings" and "Narnia" without recognizing the religious aspects. That's even more so the case with "Harry Potter". But Christian themes are there nonetheless". Christian commentator Jerry Bowyer says of Rowling's "fundamentalist bashers", "So much of the religious right failed to see the Christianity in the "Potter" novels because it knows so little Christianity itself [...] The gospel stories themselves, the various metaphors and figures of the Law and the Prophets, and their echoes down through the past two millennia of Christian literature and art are largely unknown to vast swaths of American Christendom." As regards Rowling's belief that discussing her faith would spoil the books, Bowyer says, "For once, I disagree with her: I don't think [the bashers] would have guessed the ending.
Religious debates over the Harry Potter series | Christian allegories in "Deathly Hallows"
One of the greatest influences on Tolkien was the Arts and Crafts polymath William Morris. Tolkien wished to imitate Morris's prose and poetry romances, from which he took hints for the names of features such as the Dead Marshes in "The Lord of the Rings" and Mirkwood, along with some general aspects of approach. Edward Wyke-Smith's "The Marvellous Land of Snergs", with its "table-high" title characters, strongly influenced the incidents, themes, and depiction of Bilbo's race in "The Hobbit". Tolkien mentioned H. Rider Haggard's novel "She": "I suppose as a boy "She" interested me as much as anything—like the Greek shard of Amyntas [Amenartas], which was the kind of machine by which everything got moving." A supposed facsimile of this potsherd appeared in Haggard's first edition, and the ancient inscription it bore, once translated, led the English characters to She's ancient kingdom.
J. R. R. Tolkien | British adventure stories
Cavendish's views on God and religion remained somewhat ambiguous. From her writings, it is clear that she was a Christian but she did not often address her religious orientation. In her Physical Opinions, however, she explicitly acknowledges her belief in the existence of God, writing "pray account me not an Atheist, but believe as I do in God Almighty." Still, she seeks to split philosophy from theology, and therefore avoids debating God's actions in many of her philosophical works. Uncertainty regarding her theological viewpoints is unusual for a woman writer of her time period, considering that much of early modern women's writing was oriented around religion.
Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle-upon-Tyne | Religious beliefs
J. R. R. Tolkien was among the writers whose works influenced Caldecott's conversion to Christianity. Caldecott became an authority on the Christian themes in The Lord of the Rings.
Stratford Caldecott | On Tolkien
Rowling said that to her, the moral significance of the tales seems "blindingly obvious". The key for her was the choice between what is right and what is easy, "because that, that is how tyranny is started, with people being apathetic and taking the easy route and suddenly finding themselves in deep trouble." In an interview with MTV after the publication of the last book, she is quoted as saying, "To me [the religious parallels have] always been obvious, but I never wanted to talk too openly about it because I thought it might show people who just wanted the story where we were going."
Religious debates over the Harry Potter series | Christianity in the novels
J. R. R. Tolkien's fantasy writings about Middle-earth, especially "The Hobbit" and "The Lord of the Rings", have become extremely popular, and have exerted considerable influence since their publication, but acceptance by the establishment of literary criticism has been slower. Nevertheless, academic studies on Tolkien's works have been appearing at an increasing pace since the mid-1980s, prompting a measure of literary re-evaluation of his work. Brian Rosebury is a lecturer in the humanities at the University of Central Lancashire. He has specialised in Tolkien, in literary aesthetics, and later in moral and political philosophy.
Tolkien: A Cultural Phenomenon | Context
The MMORPG game The Lord of the Rings Online dropped a planned online marriage feature because of the controversy around restrictions on same-sex and inter-species marriage. The online magazine for gaymers "GayGamer.net" commented that, while J. R. R. Tolkien was a devout Christian, his stance on gay rights isn't known as the topic wasn't a public issue at the time.
Gaymer | Same-sex marriage in "The Lord of the Rings Online"
Although Gardner was exposed to Christianity throughout her early years, she was an atheist later in life. Religion never played a positive role in her life, according to biographers and Gardner, in her autobiography "Ava: My Story". Her friend Zoe Sallis, who met her on the set of "" when Gardner was living with John Huston in Puerto Vallarta, said Gardner always seemed unconcerned about religion. When Sallis asked her about religion once, Gardner replied, "It doesn't exist". Another factor that contributed to this was the death of Gardner's father in her youth, "Nobody wanted to know Daddy when he was dying.
Ava Gardner | Religion and political views
Tolkien voiced support for the Nationalists (eventually led by Franco during the Spanish Civil War) upon hearing that communist Republicans were destroying churches and killing priests and nuns. He was contemptuous of Joseph Stalin. During World War II, Tolkien referred to Stalin as "that bloodthirsty old murderer". However, in 1961, Tolkien sharply criticized a Swedish commentator who suggested that "The Lord of the Rings" was an anti-communist parable and identified Sauron with Stalin, stating that the situation was conceived long before the Russian revolution.
J. R. R. Tolkien | Anti-communism
Sayers was a colleague of C.S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien. In this article she derided modern education methods and called for a return to the ancient classical trivium.
Association of Classical and Christian Schools | Introduction
Tolkien said "Of course God is in "The Lord of the Rings". The period was pre-Christian, but it was a monotheistic world", and when questioned who was the One God of Middle-earth, Tolkien replied "The one, of course! The book is about the world that God created – the actual world of this planet." The Bible and traditional Christian narrative also influenced "The Silmarillion". The conflict between Melkor and Eru Ilúvatar parallels that between Satan and God. Further, "The Silmarillion" tells of the creation and fall of the Elves, as "Genesis" tells of the creation and fall of Man. As with all of Tolkien's works, "The Silmarillion" allows room for later Christian history, and one version of Tolkien's drafts even has Finrod, a character in "The Silmarillion", speculating on the necessity of Eru Ilúvatar's eventual incarnation to save Mankind.
J. R. R. Tolkien's influences | Christianity
Later editions incorporated comparisons and contrasts between "Harry Potter" and the more overtly Christian works of C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien. In an interview with CBN.com, Abanes remarked that, "One of the easiest ways to know whether a fantasy book or film has real world magick in it is to just ask a simple question, 'Can my child find information in a library or bookstore that will enable them to replicate what they are seeing in the film or the book?' If you go to "The Chronicles of Narnia" and "The Lord of the Rings" what you see in, story magic and imagination, it is not real.
Religious debates over the Harry Potter series | Evangelicalism
Tolkien reacted with anger to the excesses of anti-German propaganda during World War II. In a 1944 letter to Christopher, he compared the local press to the verbal excesses of Joseph Goebbels, pointing out that if they advocated exterminating Germans, they were no better than the Nazis themselves. He lamented the treatment of native Africans by whites in his native South Africa.
J. R. R. Tolkien | Race
Until she was twenty years of age, Adams's reading had been limited mostly to works of imagination and feeling. She had never been directed to those of a controversial nature, nor to a study of the disputed points between the various sects. Her curiosity being awakened by a small manuscript from Broughton's "Dictionary", giving an account of some of the most common of the religious denominations, she began to read all she could find on the subject. At about the age of 30, becoming disgusted with the intolerance and lack of candor of the authors, she decided to write in a blank book what seemed to her to be the truth.
A View of Religions | Development
During the summer of 1909, they decided that they were in love." His guardian, Father Morgan, viewed Edith as the reason for Tolkien's having "muffed" his exams and considered it "altogether unfortunate" that his surrogate son was romantically involved with an older, Protestant woman. He prohibited him from meeting, talking to, or even corresponding with her until he was 21. He obeyed this prohibition to the letter, with one notable early exception, over which Father Morgan threatened to cut short his university career if he did not stop. On the evening of his 21st birthday, Tolkien wrote to Edith, who was living with family friend C.
J. R. R. Tolkien | Courtship and marriage
She spoke about accepting the beliefs of others as long as they are expressed peacefully, and how the freedom to hold them is more important than the beliefs themselves. Sherine's broadcast follows a similar one made by Richard Dawkins in 2002. "Thought for the Day" continues to be reserved for religious speakers in its usual slot on Radio 4's Today Programme, on weekday mornings. In late 2009, Sherine announced that she was ceasing atheist campaigning and returning to journalism and writing a novel. She remains a distinguished supporter of Humanists UK.
Ariane Sherine | Atheism
Tolkien fandom is an international, informal community of fans of Tolkien's Middle-earth works, including "The Hobbit", "The Lord of the Rings", and "The Silmarillion". The concept of Tolkien fandom as a specific type of fan subculture sprang up in the United States in the 1960s, in the context of the hippie movement, to the dismay of the author, who talked of "my deplorable cultus".
Reception of J. R. R. Tolkien | Fandom
Jane Chance, a Tolkien scholar, writes that the refusal by some critics to accept that Tolkien is a major writer has "consistently annoyed Tolkien readers ...over the past twenty-five years", but that Tom Shippey and Rosebury have attempted "to persuade these nay-sayers". She notes that Rosebury strategically uses Shippey to begin his book, praising him but saying that he doesn't clinch the argument that Tolkien's works are "of high quality". Rosebury then, she writes, applies his expertise as seen in his 1988 book "Art and Desire: A Study in the Aesthetics of Fiction", to demonstrate Tolkien's aesthetic skill. She contrasts Shippey's comparison of Tolkien with fantasy authors from Orwell and Golding to T.
Tolkien: A Cultural Phenomenon | Reception
Lewis and Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings" reflected a Christian worldview. "All along, my imagination had been built on a Christian foundation, and I had never noticed it before. I knew now that in some sense, on some level, I was already a Christian." His reading then turned to Gilson, Maritain and Aquinas. In 1980 he was baptised into the Catholic Church. This was not well received by his father, who viewed Catholicism as "worse than apartheid".
Stratford Caldecott | Conversion
It appears to give freedom, but its true function is to enslave the wearer to the Fallen Angel. It corrodes the human will of the wearer, rendering him increasingly 'thin' and unreal; indeed, its gift of invisibility symbolizes this ability to destroy all natural human relationships and identity. You could say the Ring is sin itself: tempting and seemingly harmless to begin with, increasingly hard to give up and corrupting in the long run."
J. R. R. Tolkien | Catholicism
Some literary figures immediately welcomed the book's publication. W. H. Auden, a former pupil of Tolkien's and an admirer of his writings, regarded "The Lord of the Rings" as a "masterpiece", further stating that in some cases it outdid the achievement of John Milton's "Paradise Lost". Kenneth F. Slater wrote in Nebula Science Fiction, April 1955, "... if you don't read it, you have missed one of the finest books of its type ever to appear". Michael Straight described it in The New Republic as "...one of the few works of genius in modern literature." Iris Murdoch mentioned Middle-earth characters in her novels, and wrote to Tolkien saying she had been "utterly ...
Reception of J. R. R. Tolkien | Enthusiastic literary support
He expressed a dislike for all religions, and was particularly critical of Christians.
Jared Lee Loughner | Views on religion
J.R.R. Tolkien was influenced by the following couplet from "Christ I" (lines 104-5), which inspired his portrayal of Middle-earth and his character Eärendil.
Christ I | Influence on other writers
However, she never forgot her Jewish heritage. When asked years later by a reporter if she were a Christian, she replied: "No, I'm a Roman Catholic, and a member of the great Jewish race. I'm waiting until Christians become better." That contrasted her answer "No, never. I'm an atheist" to an earlier question by composer and compatriot Charles Gounod if she ever prayed. Regardless, she accepted the last rites shortly before her death. In 1859, Bernhardt learned that her father had died overseas. Her mother summoned a family council, including Morny, to decide what to do with her. Morny proposed that Bernhardt should become an actress, an idea that horrified Bernhardt, as she had never been inside a theater.
Sarah Bernhardt | Early life
To those who supposed that the book was an allegory of events in the 20th century, Tolkien replied in the Foreword to the Second Edition that it was not, saying he preferred "history, true or feigned, with its varied applicability to the thought and experience of readers." Some commentators have accused the book of being a story about men for boys, with no significant women; or about a purely rural world with no bearing on modern life in cities; of containing no sign of religion; or of racism. All of these charges have been rebutted by other commentators, who note that there are three powerful women in the book, Galadriel, Éowyn, and Arwen; that life, even in rural Hobbiton, is not idealised; that Christianity is a pervasive theme; and that Tolkien was sharply anti-racist both in peacetime and during the Second World War, while Middle-earth is evidently polycultural.
The Lord of the Rings | Themes
Following her engagement in January 1913, Edith announced that she was converting to Roman Catholicism at her fiancé's insistence. As Edith was heavily involved in her local Anglican parish, she first resisted the demands. Despite Edith's misgivings, her landlord, a staunch Protestant, was enraged and instantly turned her out of the house. The Tolkiens were married in the Catholic Church of St. Mary Immaculate in Warwick on 22 March 1916. Their week-long honeymoon was spent at Clevedon, in North Somerset, and included a visit to the Cheddar Caves. The Tolkiens had four children, three sons and one daughter, born in 1917, 1920, 1924 and 1929.
Edith Tolkien | Marriage
J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth fantasy writings have often been accused of embodying outmoded attitudes to race, but he was strongly anti-racist both in peacetime and during the two World Wars, and Middle-earth is both multi-cultural and multi-lingual, in peace or war.
Tolkien and race | Introduction
Tolkien wrote that stories about "Red Indians" were his favourites as a boy. Shippey mentions Tolkien's interest in the primeval forests and people of North America, and speculates that the romantic descriptions of characters in James Fenimore Cooper might have influenced his descriptions of Aragorn and Éomer. When interviewed, the only book Tolkien named as a favourite was Rider Haggard's adventure novel "She": "I suppose as a boy "She" interested me as much as anything—like the Greek shard of Amyntas [Amenartas], which was the kind of machine by which everything got moving." A supposed facsimile of this potsherd appeared in Haggard's first edition, and the ancient inscription it bore, once translated, led the English characters to "She"s ancient kingdom, perhaps influencing the "Testament of Isildur" in "The Lord of the Rings" and Tolkien's efforts to produce a realistic-looking page from the "Book of Mazarbul".
J. R. R. Tolkien's influences | Modern literature
During most of his own life conservationism was not yet on the political agenda, and Tolkien himself did not directly express conservationist views—except in some private letters, in which he tells about his fondness for forests and sadness at tree-felling. In later years, a number of authors of biographies or literary analyses of Tolkien conclude that during his writing of "The Lord of the Rings", Tolkien gained increased interest in the value of wild and untamed nature, and in protecting what wild nature was left in the industrialized world.
J. R. R. Tolkien | Nature
John Ronald Reuel Tolkien (; 3 January 1892 – 2 September 1973) was an English writer, poet, philologist, and academic, best known as the author of the high fantasy works "The Hobbit" and "The Lord of the Rings". He served as the Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon and Fellow of Pembroke College, Oxford, from 1925 to 1945 and Merton Professor of English Language and Literature and Fellow of Merton College, Oxford, from 1945 to 1959. He was at one time a close friend of C. S. Lewis—they were both members of the informal literary discussion group known as The Inklings.
J. R. R. Tolkien | Introduction
His 1955 valedictory lecture "English and Welsh" expounds upon his philosophy of language, his notion of native language and his views on linguistic aesthetics (c.f. "cellar door"). Ross Smith published a monograph on Tolkien's philosophy of language.
Reception of J. R. R. Tolkien | Reception of non-fiction works
that she was able to see human existence as a whole, as a novelist needs to do". In an interview with John Tusa on BBC Radio 4, she said of her conversion and its effect on her writing that she "was just a little worried, tentative. Would it be right, would it not be right? Can I write a novel about that – would it be foolish, wouldn't it be? And somehow with my religion – whether one has anything to do with the other, I don't know – but it does seem so, that I just gained confidence." Graham Greene, Gabriel Fielding and Evelyn Waugh supported her in her decision.
Muriel Spark | Literary career
Franklin was best described as an agnostic. Her lack of religious faith apparently did not stem from anyone's influence, rather from her own line of thinking. She developed her scepticism as a young child. Her mother recalled that she refused to believe in the existence of God, and remarked, "Well, anyhow, how do you know He isn't She?" She later made her position clear, now based on her scientific experience, and wrote to her father in 1940: However, she did not abandon Jewish traditions. As the only Jewish student at Lindores School, she had Hebrew lessons on her own while her friends went to church.
Rosalind Franklin | Personal life
John Ronald Reuel Tolkien CBE (3 January 1892 – 2 September 1973) was an English philologist, writer and professor of Oxford University. He was a devout Roman Catholic. Much of Tolkien's published fiction is a connected body of tales, fictional histories, invented languages, and literary essays about an imagined world called Arda, and Middle-earth (derived from the Old English word "middangeard", the lands inhabitable by humans) in particular, loosely identified as an "alternative" remote past of our own world. Tolkien applied the word "legendarium" to the totality of these writings. Most of the "legendarium" was edited and posthumously published by his son Christopher.
Tolkien family | J. R. R. Tolkien
Her personal website lists her religion as "none."
Annie Dillard | Religion
Far from promoting a particular religion, some argue, the "Harry Potter" novels go out of their way to avoid discussing religion at all. However, the author of the series, J. K. Rowling, describes herself as a practising Christian, and many have noted the Christian references which she includes in the final novel "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows". In America, calls for the books to be banned from schools have led to legal challenges often on the grounds that witchcraft is a government-recognised religion and that to allow the books to be held in public schools violates the separation of church and state.
Religious debates over the Harry Potter series | Introduction
Whatever the case, Shippey considers the tale to give "the deepest sense of religious belief mentioned explicitly in Middle-earth", but that the result is an "only-slightly-qualified absence of religion", creating a "paradox of a 'fundamentally Catholic' work which never once mentions God." In her study of death and dying in "The Lord of the Rings", Amy Amendt-Raduege states that Aragorn's death "follows the step-by-step process outlined by the "Ars moriendi"", the Christian precepts on how to die well, namely "the acceptance of death, the refusal of temptation, the dispensation of worldly goods and the last farewell to the family, and the final affirmation of faith".
The Tale of Aragorn and Arwen | Missing religion
After attending the Friends School Saffron Walden, she studied English at St Anne's College in Oxford, where she attended lectures by both C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien before graduating in 1956. In the same year she married John Burrow, a scholar of medieval literature, with whom she had three sons, Richard, Michael and Colin. After a brief period in London, in 1957 the couple returned to Oxford, where they stayed until moving to Bristol in 1976. According to her autobiography, Jones decided she was an atheist when she was a child.
Diana Wynne Jones | Early life and marriage
"I believe in revelation," Thomas wrote, "and therefore one cannot describe all one's insights as entirely human." Above all, his main influence appears to have been the philosopher Kierkegaard – and his "leap of faith" – although he also appears to have concerned himself with the limitations of religious language in an era becoming progressively more post-Christian in the face of science and philosophy. Yet for all his explorations, his sermons and practice as a priest do not seem to have been heterodox, even if in retirement he was to write to his long-term friend, the poet Raymond Garlick, to give him "the address of a retired Christian".
R. S. Thomas | Religious views
The literary estate of J.R.R. Tolkien has declared that "There and Back Again" is an infringement upon their rights to "The Hobbit"; Murphy has stated that, although she disagrees, and considers it to be a transformative work of feminist commentary, the book's publication has been discontinued so as to obviate further dispute.
There and Back Again (novel) | Legal issues
According to Humphrey Carpenter, "Those friends who knew Ronald and Edith Tolkien over the years never doubted that there was deep affection between them. It was visible in the small things, the almost absurd degree in which each worried about the other's health, and the care in which they chose and wrapped each other's birthday presents; and in the large matters, the way in which Ronald willingly abandoned such a large part of his life in retirement to give Edith the last years in Bournemouth that he felt she deserved, and the degree in which she showed pride in his fame as an author.
Edith Tolkien | Later life
He regarded the end of "The Return of the King" as akin to the re-establishment of the "Holy Roman Empire with its seat in Rome [more] than anything that would be devised by a 'Nordic'."
J. R. R. Tolkien | European mythology
He also published a philological essay in 1932 on the name "Nodens", following Sir Mortimer Wheeler's unearthing of a Roman Asclepeion at Lydney Park, Gloucestershire, in 1928.
J. R. R. Tolkien | Academic and writing career
The Birmingham Oratory was to play a major role in the life of J. R. R. Tolkien, the author of "The Lord of the Rings", who was a parishioner there for about nine years during his childhood. After the unexpected death of their father in South Africa, their mother, Mabel Suffield Tolkien, began to seek a spiritual home where she could find support in her struggle as a widow and single mother of little financial means. Fifty years after the establishment of the Oratorian community there, she started to attend the Church of St. Anne. The family was received into the Catholic Church in the spring of 1900, provoking opposition from the Tolkien family as well as her own.
Birmingham Oratory | Tolkien and the Oratory