C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkein, fellow members of the Inklings, were very traditionally Christian. Much has been written about Christian themes in their fantasy novels. But their characters mostly seem to have no religion. Narnians acknowledge Aslan as their ultimate sovereign – like a legendary king who will return when his people need him – but they don’t worship him, pray to him, or recite his commandments. Only the wicked Calormenes are religious (making human sacrifices to Tash). In Middle-Earth, sophisticated people know about Iluvatar and the Valar, but they don’t seem to pay much attention to them. There are no churches or temples. Why is that?
Furthermore, neither Narnians nor Middle-Earthers seem to have any clear concept of an afterlife.
There is the saying of grace by the Rangers of Ithilien in , IIRC, “Window on the West” chapter, but other than that, you’re right.
This is a complete WAG, as it’s too early in the morning to think straight and/or look things up properly, but both C.S. Lewis and Tolkien were emerging from a time period–World War I–where the entire world was going through the aftershocks of a brutal and miserable war; many many people had lost their faith in a just, rational God after seeing the horrors of battle (and its effects), and their writing–if not shaped by their own personal experiences in battle, as Tolkien’s was–reflects the prevailing mood towards religion during that time.
Again, WAG. Take it as you will.
I don’t now your requirements for “clear” but at least some Middle-Earthers had a general idea of their afterlife.
When Elves die of unnatural causes, they go to the halls of Mandos and wait for the end of this world, with the possibility of reincarnation in some cases.
Men also go to Mandos at first but then leave this world with an unknown destination. Of course there is a big unknown in there, but I think that knowing details about the first place where you go after your death, down to interior decorating, counts as a concept of an afterlife.
According to Elvish belief, Dwarves return to the stone from which they were created. According to their own beliefs, they also go to Mandos and after the Last Battle they will help Aule rebuild the world.
If we accept that the “Red Book of Westmarch” exists as a book within the context of the story, this knowledge was available to at least some people.
Death was originally regarded a a gift for the race of Men; “The Gift of Men”. Unlike the others, they weren’t stuck in the world or bound to it’s fate; even the Valar didn’t have that option. The fear of death was a sign of the decay of Men, and eventually was used by Sauron to manipulate the Numenoreans into attacking the Valar so they could go to the Undying Lands and live forever. It didn’t exactly work out that way, of course.
Why no religion ? Well, for one thing there’s no point. The Valar and so on are already doing all they are allowed/inclined to do. Sacrifice won’t do any good; it’s unlikely that Middle Earth has anything they would want. If you want knowledge or wisdom from them, you’re better off just making friends with the elves and learning from them; they aren’t as powerful/knowledgable, but are accessable.
Also, in Middle Earth these things are all real, which means there’s no faith involved. “Religion” in ME would likely be a specialty in scholarship, not a religion as we know it.
Various characters certainly invoke Elbereth on occasion. (Sam and Galadriel, for sure that I can remember.)
Narnians have a pretty clear concept of it, they all believe they will go to Aslan’s land across the sea. A well founded belief as we eventually learn.
Taking your disclaimer into account, it should nonetheless be pointed out that CSL began writing The Lion etc in 1948-ish, so I don’t think the world wars had any direct effect on his content. Indirect effect, most certainly, since it was as a result of the war that chlidren evacuated from London came to stay with his household from Sep 1939 onwards. He himself acknowledges the part they had to play in the writing of his books, in addition to godchildren and kids of friends.
As for your question proper, I can think of several reasons that CSL didn’t have church services, prayers, etc in his stories. First, because they were stories, designed to entertain, and if thereby to edify, so much the better. But, the story was the thing. Second, Narnia is in a sense in a worshipful state (except when it’s tainted by the enemy). Churches would be as redundant there - in Aslan’s presence - as in heaven. Third, many of the children weren’t Christians; indeed, Pole and Scrubb went to a dreadful “modern” establishment, where presumably atheism was the thing. So, Lewis wanted perhaps by extension to reach out to those child (as well as adult) readers who shared that type of background: materialist, atheist what you will, of Britain in the late 40s and early 50s. He felt perhaps that they wd be put off by anything overtly religious. Which brings us to the final point, connected to the first: CSL would not have been able to write an explicitly Christian set of stories. As he wrote elsewhere, when he turned to writing children’s books, he wrote the kind of books he’d want to read himself as a child. Magical, romantic, harsh (children die and kill) - all of that - but not preachy. It just wasn’t him.
In Britain, sophisticated people know about Church of England, but they don’t seem to pay much attention to it 
I don’t recall any of that stuff from the LOTR trilogy. Was it set out in the Silmarillion?
AFAICR, no Narnian character ever talked about that, with the sole exception of Reepicheep – who thought of the Utter East as a quest-goal, not as the afterlife.
CSL “not preachy”?!
In Medieval Europe (on which Middle Earth is partially modeled), nobody would have recognized the distinction you are drawing. Practically everybody assumed God to be as real as the sun and moon.
There’s more to religion than going to church/temple and celebrating holidays. The Narnians do have some religious practices and concepts, though their religion seems pretty light on ritual.
The Narnians have dietary laws that forbid eating talking animals. In The Silver Chair, Jill, Eustace, and Puddleglum find out they’ve been eating a talking stag. Puddleglum says that by doing so they have brought the anger of Aslan upon themselves.
So Aslan clearly does have some commandments, even if the Narnians don’t talk about them much. That fits with my experience with Jewish dietary laws- those of us who keep kosher read labels to make sure we’re not eating something we shouldn’t, but we don’t generally spend a lot of time talking about it, especially not with others who keep kosher. And in a society where everyone or nearly everyone kept the same dietary laws, we probably wouldn’t even have to read labels too much- most of us would just assume that food was kosher.
In The Last Battle, Aslan says “all the service thou hast done to Tash, I account as service done to me… no service which is vile can be done to me, and none which is not vile can be done to him. Therefore if any man swear by Tash and keep his oath for his oath’s sake, it is by me that he has truly sworn… If any man do a cruelty in my name, then, though he says the name Aslan, it is Tash whom he serves” That implies that Aslan does have some ethical laws, though, again, the characters don’t spend much time talking about what those are. I suspect it’s because that wouldn’t make for a terribly interesting book for most kids.
They might not have recognized it, but the distinction still exsists. People believed God was real, but that belief was an act of faith. In Middle Earth, there are his actual, divine servants (Gandalf and the other wizards) walking around, and the very first elves are at most only a few generations removed from living memory. God in Middle Earth is a concrete prescense in their world in a way that he’s never been in ours.
Compared to a lot of children’s writers before him, he was a model of restraint. Go read the sort of book he would have read as a child, and see what you think then. Mrs. Molesworth would do, or Kingsley’s Water Babies.
Lots of people, including myself, manage to read Narnia books for years without realizing that Aslan is Christ, so he can’t have been that obvious about it. I mean, I’m not incredibly bright, but I also have lots of company.
Even now, we still think (as a society, I mean) that children’s books ought to contain a message of right and wrong; most children’s books have some sort of moral. Very few are entirely frivolous, and many are far more preachy than the Narnia books are.
As for the original question, I would be inclined to say that while there is no church in Middle-Earth or Narnia, in both cases the entire story is a working-out of the author’s faith. Church would be a little beside the point, because the whole world is the environment in which the questions are adressed.
Yes, but I’m not sure where the Elven reincarnation thing was explained. I don’t remember whether any of those facts were mentioned in LotR. Far too often I forget where I read those things and conflate the stories.
I’m pretty sure Lucy, at least, does pray to Aslan in Voyage of the Dawn Treader. I don’t have a copy here, so I can’t quote chapter and verse (as it were). I could be wrong; I’ll have to check.
I know for sure that Jill Poole in The Silver Chair constantly recites his commandments given to her at the beginning of the book. At least, she does for a while. Then she gets lazy about it and things start to go bad.
As for worshipping - Narnians sing about Aslan, and bow down to him, and try to live a life pleasing to him. What aspect of worship are they missing?
Just a speculation on my part, but I wonder if it is because Tolkein and Lewis were both devout Christians. It may be that neither one wanted to create an alternative, fictional religion, and couldn’t put Christianity directly into their worlds, so they left it ambiguous.
That’s my thought about the authors’ intentions in writing the books.
Turning to the internal logic of Tolkein’s mythos, I think the lack of religion can be explained.
Within Tolkein’s world, I think some light is cast by the Elves’ attitude to magic. They don’t understand what the humans and hobbits mean by magic, because for them, having ropes that unknot themselves as needed (to take one example) were not magic, but simply a well-made rope by Elvish standards. The Elves were so close to the Eldar that such things were just part of the natural order of creation, not something special and apart.
Similarly, for the Elves, the Eldar and Uru were part of their own personal knowledge and experience (collectively - the Dark Elves wouldn’t have it, nor Sindar born in Middle Earth, etc.), so the idea of worship wouldn’t really come into it. And up until the ending of the Third Age, the Elves were the dominant cultural influence - the Numenoreans relied on the Elvish world view. But it would seem to me that once the Elves withdraw at the end of the Third Age and the Age of Men began, what we would call religion would start to emerge, because the Men lacked the personal connexion to the Eldar and Uru that the Elves had.
Put another way: for the Elves, the Undying Lands were a physical place where they could go if they wished, and socialise with the Eldar; for the Men, they Undying Lands were a mythical place inhabited by legendary powerful characters.
You don’t worship people you can talk with and socialise with; you do worship powerful mythical characters. Once the indirect personal connexion that Men had to the Eldar through the Elves disappears, religion can be expected to emerge.