Is There Religion in Middle-earth?

Q: Is There Religion in Middle-earth?

ANSWER: Yes, there is religion in Middle-earth. Some Tolkien readers incorrectly say that J.R.R. Tolkien wanted to avoid inventing any semblance of formal religion when composing his stories about Middle-earth, but in fact Tolkien always intended there to be religious themes in the fiction.

In the earliest mythology, The Book of Lost Tales, which was Tolkien’s “mythology for England” he invented an entire pantheon of pagan gods who were supposed to represent a lost religion of pre-Anglo-Saxon England. In that sense, all of Tolkien’s attempts to construct mythological cycles represent some sort of attempt to define a body of religious or pseudo-religious texts.

J.R.R. Tolkien gradually transformed the original pagan mythology into a non-human (Elvish) mythology which was a thinly disguised exploration of the Judeo-Christian themes of “Fall” and “Redemption”. The pagan gods were replaced by angelic beings, servants of God who had accepted the task of preparing the way for the Children of God (Elves and Men) and of observing their development through Time.

In this later context, which Tolkien pieced together from the late 1930s to the mid-1960s, he fictionalized the Biblical theme of the fall of the angels (through the story of Melkor’s rebellion), interwove a revised mythology about the fall of the Elves (the rebellion of the Noldor, extended to the creation of the Rings of Power), and relegated the theme of the fall of Man to a distant rumor or legend (thus avoiding the complexity of fictionalizing the story of Genesis in his primary books — but he nonetheless fictionalized it eventually anyway).

In Letter No. 142, which he wrote in December 1953, J.R.R. Tolkien commented on some of the religious elements of The Lord of the Rings (which at that time had not yet been published):

It was wonderful to get a long letter from you this morning….. I am sorry if casual words of mine have made you labour to criticize my work. But, to tell you the truth, though praise (or what is not quite the same thing, and better, expressions of pleasure) is pleasant, I have been cheered specially by what you have said, this time and before, because you are more perceptive, especially in some directions, than any one else, and have even revealed to me more clearly some things about my work. I think I know exactly what you mean by the order of Grace; and of course by your references to Our Lady, upon which all my own small perception of beauty both in majesty and simplicity is founded. The Lord of the Rings is of course a fundamentally religious and Catholic work; unconsciously so at first, but consciously in the revision. That is why I have not put in, or have cut out, practically all references to anything like ‘religion’, to cults or practices, in the imaginary world. For the religious element is absorbed into the story and the symbolism. However that is very clumsily put, and sounds more self-important than I feel. For as a matter of fact, I have consciously planned very little; and should chiefly be grateful for having been brought up (since I was eight) in a Faith that has nourished me and taught me all the little that I know; and that I owe to my mother, who clung to her conversion and died young, largely through the hardships of poverty resulting from it.

Tolkien elaborated on this a little bit more in a letter that is preserved only in draft form (Letter No. 153, written in September 1954):

As for ‘whose authority decides these things?’ The immediate ‘authorities’ are the Valar (the Powers or Authorities): the ‘gods’. But they are only created spirits – of high angelic order we should say, with their attendant lesser angels – reverend, therefore, but not worshipful*;…

* There are thus no temples or ‘churches’ or fanes in this ‘world’ among ‘good’ peoples. They had little or no ‘religion’ in the sense of worship. For help they may call on a Vala (as Elbereth), as a Catholic might on a Saint, though no doubt knowing in theory as well as he that the power of the Vala was limited and derivative. But this is a ‘primitive age’: and these folk may be said to view the Valar as children view their parents or immediate adult superiors, and though they know they are subjects of the King he does not live in their country nor have there any dwelling. I do not think Hobbits practised any form of worship or prayer (unless through exceptional contact with Elves). The Númenóreans (and others of that branch of Humanity, that fought against Morgoth, even if they elected to remain in Middle-earth and did not go to Númenor: such as the Rohirrim) were pure monotheists. But there was no temple in Númenor (until Sauron introduced the cult of Morgoth). The top of the Mountain, the Meneltarma or Pillar of Heaven, was dedicated to Eru, the One, and there at any time privately, and at certain times publicly, God was invoked, praised, and adored: an imitation of the Valar and the Mountain of Aman. But Numenor fell and was destroyed and the Mountain engulfed, and there was no substitute. Among the exiles, remnants of the Faithful who had not adopted the false religion nor taken pan in the rebellion, religion as divine worship (though perhaps not as philosophy and metaphysics) seems to have played a small part; though a glimpse of it is caught in Faramir’s remark on ‘grace at meat’.

There are, in fact, other references to religion — such as the hymns that the Elves sing to Elbereth, and the pilgrimages that some High Elves (such as Gildor Inglorion’s group) occasionally made to use the Palantir of Elostirion (in the Tower Hills to the west of the Shire).

Some people, more learned than I (or perhaps more opinionated on these matters), have written essays and books exploring the deep religious themes in The Lord of the Rings (and also The Silmarillion). If you are really interested in the religious aspects of Tolkien’s fiction you should find plenty of reading material.

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