How Faith Shaped JRR Tolkien’s Great Fantasy World

by Gunther Simmermacher · Published December 11, 2023 · Updated September 11, 2024

Günther Simmermacher looks at the Catholic faith of the Bloemfontein-born author JRR Tolkien, and how it shaped his fantasy world.

The Hobbit and the The Lord of the Rings trilogy are a hugely popular series of books and films. And the story the series tells is profoundly Catholic. That is in the estimation of the South African-born author himself.

JRR Tolkien, a devout Catholic throughout his life, once said that The Lord of the Rings is a “fundamentally religious and Catholic work; unconsciously so at first, but consciously in the revision”.

Tolkien died on September 2, 1973. The writer was born in Bloemfontein on January 3, 1892. The Tolkien family had its paternal roots in German East Prussia, until JRR’s great-grandfather moved to London.

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien was born in the Free State because his father had been posted to Bloemfontein to head the branch of the British Bank of Africa (located on the corner of West Burger and Charlotte Maxeke Streets). His parents had married in 1891 in Cape Town’s old Anglican St George’s cathedral.

JRR, known as Ronald, left South Africa with his mother and younger brother at the age of three, settling in a village near Birmingham, England, after his father’s sudden death in South Africa. In 1900 his mother, Mabel, converted to Catholicism, even at the price of losing the financial support of her Baptist family. Mabel died of diabetes in 1904, aged only 34. Before her death, she had assigned the guardianship of her sons to a priest, Fr Francis Xavier Morgan (1847-1935) of the Birmingham Oratory, so that they might be raised as good Catholics.

The Spanish-born Fr Morgan, who once had been an associate of St John Henry Newman, was a kind and conscientious guardian. He taught the boys Catholic virtues of charity and forgiveness, and gave them a good education, partly financed by his share of his family’s sherry business in Spain.

The priest was also strict. When JRR was 16 he fell in love with Edith Bratt, a young Protestant woman three years his senior. Fr Morgan forbade any contact with Edith until the boy turned 21. JRR obeyed. After almost five years, JRR found his old flame and proposed marriage. A few weeks after his 21th birthday, they married. They went on to have four children and remained together until her death at 82 in 1971.

Top left: The Tolkien family’s Christmas card in 1892 from Bloemfontein, with staff and baby JRR in his nanny’s arms. Bottom left: Edith Bratt, Tolkien’s future wife, aged 17 in 1906. Right: Tolkien in his thirties, around 1925.

Success as an author

After JRR fought in the First World War, he progressed into academia, eventually becoming a distinguished English professor. In 1937 he published the fantasy novel The Hobbit, which was a hit. He immediately set to work on a sequel, a mammoth undertaking that would become the Lord of The Rings trilogy — The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, and The Return of the King. The books were published between July 1954 and October 1955, and as one volume (as Tolkien had intended) in 1968.

Tolkien did not quite acknowledge it at the time, but his faith had a significant influence on his writing. It shaped both the themes and the moral framework of his fantasy novels.

Tolkien’s Catholic worldview embraced the concept of creation as a divine act. As an author who invented a detailed alternative, fictional world, he saw himself as a “subcreator”, reflecting God’s creative power within the confines of his own imagination.

Catholicism’s emphasis on a moral order and free will is reflected in Tolkien’s narratives. Characters often face moral choices and their consequences. The struggle between good and evil is a central theme, and characters such as Frodo Baggins exemplify the power of individual choices in the face of great temptation.

Tolkien had a sacramental vision of reality, seeing the material world as a means through which the divine could be encountered. This perspective is reflected in the way he describes the natural world, emphasising the beauty and significance of even the smallest elements of creation.

Tolkien’s Catholic faith influenced his portrayal of redemption and sacrifice in his stories. Characters like Gandalf and Aragorn exhibit selflessness and are willing to lay down their lives for the greater good. These sacrificial acts echo Christ’s redemptive sacrifice. Frodo carries the titular Ring, which represents sin, and must destroy it, much as Jesus defeated sin. And “lembas”, the bread that sustains the protagonists, greatly resembles the Eucharist.

The Catholic emphasis on hope and resurrection also finds echoes in Tolkien’s works. Despite the trials and darkness his characters face, there is always an underlying sense of hope and the possibility of renewal. This is evident — Spoiler Alert! — in the eventual triumph of good over evil and the restoration of peace and harmony.

Movie posters for Peter Jackson’s classic Lord of the Rings trilogy, released from 2001-2003.

Faith and fantasy

While Tolkien’s faith strongly influenced his writing, he was also careful to distinguish between his writings as works of fiction and his religious beliefs. He stated that The Lord of the Rings was not intended as an allegory of Christianity — Tolkien once said that he loathed allegories — but rather as a myth that echoes Christian themes and values.

The quote in the second paragraph of this article, from a letter to a Jesuit friend, continues: “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, there are a few delicate but unambiguous nods to Catholic theology in the trilogy. For example, Tolkien provides a date for the destruction of the One Ring — the central object of power and temptation. The ultimate triumph of good over evil is dated March 25, the feast of the Annunciation and the initiation of the Incarnation, and the date on which medieval Catholics believed Christ was crucified.

Some critics have claimed to have identified racist themes in the trilogy, charging that the portrayal of different races and cultures in Middle-earth, such as the depiction of Orcs and the Easterlings, may contain racial or ethnic stereotypes. Defenders of Tolkien’s work argue that these depictions are not based on real-world race groups or ethnicities but rather represent fictional creatures or cultures within the author’s invented world.

Moreover, the underlying themes of unity, cooperation, and the rejection of power and domination in Tolkien’s works, counteract any potential racist interpretations. Tolkien, an outspoken opponent of apartheid in the land of his birth, was appalled by the idea of applying classifications to his fictional races.

A Catholic life

It is interesting to note that a fellow writer of beloved fantasy fiction, CS Lewis, attributed his conversion from atheism to Christianity to Tolkien’s Catholic example. Tolkien, however, was dismayed that Lewis chose to join the Church of England instead of the Catholic Church.

Tolkien wrote about his faith in many of his letters, a collection of which was published in 1981. He wrote about his devotion to the Blessed Sacrament (“There you will find romance, glory, honour, fidelity, and the true way of all your loves on earth”), the importance of prayer, and how his faith related to his fiction. He had a profound devotion to Our Lady and to St John the Evangelist.

Towards the end of his life, Tolkien struggled with the liturgical changes that followed the Second Vatican Council, much as his fellow Catholic scribes Graham Greene and Evelyn Waugh. At Mass in the vernacular, the multilingual author and inventor of fictional languages would defiantly shout out the responses in Latin.

Published in the September 2023 issue of The Southern Cross magazine