J. R. R. Tolkien

Life

Tolkien was born in 1892 in Bloemfontein, South Africa, and was baptized as an infant in January of that year in the city's Anglican cathedral. After his father's early death, his mother, Mabel, moved with her two sons to Birmingham, England. In 1900 Mabel converted to Catholicism despite strong opposition from her family, who were Baptists. As a result, her family reportedly cut off its financial support. Tolkien was confirmed in the Catholic Church at the age of eleven. When his mother died of complications from diabetes in 1904, Father Francis Morgan of the Birmingham Oratory (a community of Catholic priests) became his guardian. Tolkien regarded Father Morgan as a father, and he is said to have believed throughout his life that his mother had suffered for her faith.

He studied at Exeter College, Oxford. During the First World War he served as a second lieutenant in the British Army on the French front until he contracted trench fever in November 1916 and was evacuated from the front. He later married Edith, a Protestant whom his guardian had for a time forbidden him to court. For several years after leaving the army, he reportedly went through a period in which he practiced his faith very little. He went on to teach as a philologist at the University of Oxford. After retiring he moved to Bournemouth, and he died on September 2, 1973.

Work and Achievements

• Literature: Tolkien wrote The Hobbit while at Pembroke College, Oxford. He wrote its sequel, The Lord of the Rings, from 1937 to 1949, and it was published in three volumes in 1954–1955. These works, together with The Silmarillion, all set in the imagined world of Middle-earth, are regarded as having laid the foundation of modern fantasy literature.
• Faith and Work: In a letter, Tolkien called The Lord of the Rings "a fundamentally religious and Catholic work." At the same time, he stated that the work is not an allegory that recasts the Gospels in the form of another story. That is, he did not write it deliberately to teach Christianity; rather, his faith permeates the entire worldview of the work.
• Relationship with C. S. Lewis: Tolkien and his Oxford colleague C. S. Lewis were companions in the literary circle known as the Inklings. On the night of September 19, 1931, Tolkien and his colleague Hugo Dyson talked at length with Lewis about myth and Christianity. On that occasion Tolkien is said to have set forth the idea that Christianity is a "true myth"—that is, a myth that actually happened. A few days later Lewis wrote in a letter that he had come to believe in Christ, and he later stated that Dyson and Tolkien had been the immediate cause of his conversion. Tolkien, however, was reportedly deeply disappointed when Lewis returned not to the Catholic Church but to the Church of England of his childhood.
• Devotional Life: Tolkien prayed in Latin and held a deep devotion to the Virgin Mary. He called the Eucharist (the Blessed Sacrament in Catholic usage) "the one great thing to love on earth." For many years he attended the church of the Oxford Oratory.

Influence on the Korean Church

As a Catholic, Tolkien had no direct involvement in the history or institutions of Korean Protestantism. In Korea he became widely known to the general public through the box-office success of the Lord of the Rings film trilogy. Within the Korean Catholic Church he has been introduced from the standpoint of faith; for example, the Catholic Times discussed the Christian worldview in his works in a 2016 series of articles. His influence on Korean Protestantism has not yet been separately documented.

Assessment

Tolkien is generally regarded as the author who pioneered the fantasy genre. Scholars differ, however, on how to understand his faith. Humphrey Carpenter, author of the authorized biography, acknowledged that Christianity was extremely important to Tolkien but explained it chiefly as an emotional attachment to his mother, who had died young. Another biography treats his faith only in an appendix. By contrast, Holly Ordway's Tolkien's Faith: A Spiritual Biography (2023) argues that his faith was one he preserved through trials and that it is the key to understanding his works. Because his works are widely loved by readers without religious faith, and because Tolkien himself stated that they are not allegories, opinions remain divided over how far they should be read as Christian literature.