A comment made in passing from this review of a book on the Inklings, a small group of writers including Tolkien and CS Lewis who met regularly at an Oxford pub to discuss life, the universe and everything.
It’s been a lifetime since I read LOTR so I’ll ask my fellow Dopers. Is there no trace of religion, organized or otherwise, at all in the book? Do the hobbits, the men, the dwarves, the elves, etc make any reference at all to a god or gods?
I suppose Tolkien, a devout Roman Catholic, could like his friend Lewis have been packing Christian allegory everywhere in to his book but that’s certainly not how I remember it. But, as I said, it’s been a long time.
There are certainly Gods, but I don’t think there’s anything resembling the inhabitants of Middle Earth having a religion, organized or otherwise. No Churches or prayers or priests, and the holidays mentioned are secular.
The only exceptions I can think of is that they worshipped Morgoth in Númenor (which didn’t end well). And I think it may have been mentioned that some of Sauron’s human followers worshipped him.
There is a bit of religion and a lot of theology in Middle-Earth, but none of it is found among the hobbits. This is most prominent when Frodo and Sam are being sheltered by Faramir: The Men have a customary prayerlike observance before meals, and the hobbits are a bit embarrassed that they lack any such custom.
The distinction I make between religion and theology is because many of the characters in Middle-Earth have a much more direct relationship with the divine than is implied by “religion”. The older elves like Galadriel and Cirdan have had face-to-face conversations with the Valar, the greatest beings in all of creation, and Gandalf, Sauron, and a number of other characters are themselves beings of the same qualitative kind as the Valar. As such, many of the peoples of Tolkien’s works believe in God in the same sense that I believe in my great-great-grandfather Jimmy O’Brien.
[fanwank]The stories are set before our recorded history. Going by the biblical descriptions, before Moses, monotheistic worship was fairly informal. Fancy temples and elaborate rituals were characteristic of the pagans in Mesopotamia and Egypt. So, organized religion would be more appropriate for Sauron’s minions than for the good guys.[/fanwank]
From a practical standpoint, Tolkien was trying to write stories that captured the feel of the old pagan myths, but without violating his own Catholic faith. So his characters pretty much had to sidestep religious issues.
(Slight hijack) These are very interesting links. The last one, however, has a quote that stopped me cold:
[QUOTE=Christianity.com]
Hope is possible only in a Christian world. It makes no sense to a non-believer; hence the despair of modern man in this post-Christian age.
[/QUOTE]
Just too self-serving to the source to be considered an objective comment. I couldn’t get past it. I have plenty of hope for humankind for the future.
Chronos, the Japanese have a generalized non-religious ceremony commonly used before eating: they say “itadakimasu”, which means “I will receive (this food)” and which is a general thanks to whatever was responsible for putting the food before them, including the preparer and whatever other forces and influences in the world may have had a hand it it; they might also hold up their chopsticks horizontally and slightly bow over them. I mention this to serve as an example that such rituals don’t have to be either religious or theological.
My apologies if that bothered you. I didn’t even read that website very carefully. I just tried to quickly find something that commented on Christian themes in Tolkien’s works. I’m not claiming I agree or disagree with anything on that website. I’ve done some searching to find what good books to recommend about Tolkien’s religious views is, but I can’t find any agreement about which are best. There are a lot of books about Tolkien’s works, but the best ones I know aren’t particularly about his religious views.
Incidentally, I’m in the middle of reading The Fellowship at the moment. It’s an O.K. book, but it doesn’t contain much that’s new. The most bothersome thing about the book is the statement in the blurb for it that “it is the first complete rendering of the Inklings’ lives and works.” No, it isn’t. The earliest book fitting that description that I know of was published in 1978. The publishers find it necessary to oversell the book. Mike Dirda, who wrote that review you link to, is a friend of mine. He’s not particularly an Inklings expert, although he’s a first-rate reviewer. He makes a good point that the Inklings’ books are about many things, not just religion.
An almost unquantifiable experience of it at that - as in, can the Music before the creation of Arda even be measured in time as those in the world would understand it?
Aule had direct experience of Eru after the Creation, of course, when he made the Dwarves. It’s not beyond belief that other Valar have had some personal contact since the dawn of Time, either.
However, Gandalf doesn’t speak personally of his dealings with the Valar, let alone Eru, in any but the most round-about terms: “I wandered far on roads that I will not tell” and “Olorin I was in my youth in the West that is forgotten” is about the nearest he gets to it on-camera.
Some certainly must have, most likely Manwe. It was Eru who changed the shape of the world after the Numenor unpleasantness, after the Valar temporarily laid aside their authority.
Interesting; I hadn’t heard about that before. But while that’s certainly non-theistic, I’m not quite sure I would call it non-religious (unsurprisingly, “religious” tends to be a bit of a fuzzily-defined word). But in any event, the Gondorian tradition is a bit more specific than that (it’s in remembrance of the West), and I did only call it “prayer-like”.
I disagree vehemently! He’s speaking of the ring of fire, Narya, which he wields, just as Galadriel and Elrond wield the other two of the Three Rings for Elven Kings. He is not speaking of the Holy Ghost in any conceivable way!
Gandalf was pretty anti-rings controlling people, so I don’t think he’d call himself a servant of his ring.
And in this case he certainly wasn’t. The Secret Fire is mentioned in the Sillmarillion’s creation myth, and while its not exactly clear what it is, its certainly some sort of religious concept.
Here’s one thing that describes what the Secret Fire is:
Here’s another that furthermore gives a reference to Clyde S. Kilby’s 1976 book Tolkien & The Silmarillion:
I just grabbed my copy of Kilby’s book. Kilby knew Tolkien in the 1960’s. On the page in that book that the Wikipedia entry mentions, here’s what Kilby says:
> Professor Tolkien talked to me at some length about the use of the word “holy” in
> The Silmarillion. Very specifically he told me that the “Secret Fire sent to
> burn at the heart of the World” was the Holy Spirit.
There’s a footnote number after that passage. In that footnote it says:
> Facing the Balrog in their close combat at the end of the journey through Moria,
> Gandalf said, “I am a servant of the Secret Fire.” (I, 429)
“(I, 429)” means that the quotation comes from page 429 of The Fellowship of the Ring.
I agree vehemently! The Silmarillion also says that there will be a second Music at the end of the world, in which everyone will at last understand his part perfectly, and Eru will give this Music the Secret Fire.