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Tolkien's Faith - a Spiritual Biography · Mythmakers

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  Hello and welcome to MythMakers. MythMakers is the podcast for fantasy fans and fantasy
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  creatives brought to you by the Oxford Centre for Fantasy. My name is Julia Golding. I'm
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  a writer of many novels but I also run the centre where we teach creative writing and
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  do this podcast amongst many other things. And today I am joined again. I'm delighted
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  saved by Holly Ordway who we first met when we were talking about her book Tolkien's Modern
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  Reading but her next book which comes out at the end of August is an exploration of Tolkien's
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  faith and it does what it says on the tin because it is called Tolkien's Faith, a spiritual
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  biography. Now Holly do you want to tell us a little bit about your own story about how you came
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  to write this and where you sit within the academic world as well so we got a sense of where
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  you're coming from? Right well first of all it's a pleasure to be back on the show and to be talking
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  about my favourite author and as we come up to the 50th anniversary of his death which is September
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  2nd of 2023 it's a good moment to kind of try and take stock of the full picture of his life
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  and one of the things that I realised as I was researching and writing Tolkien's Modern Reading
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  which was a 10 year project that that book took a long time to to write into research.
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  I kept discovering along the way lots of references to his faith that we're kind of adding up
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  to a richer picture. I knew already that he was a Catholic that he was a devout Christian
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  and that's why they recognised but I had gotten the impression from the biographies that I had read
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  that it was a bit compartmentalised and of course there's the debate you know to what extent is
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  the Lord of the Rings a Christian book. This is a very complex question because Tolkien himself says
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  very famously in a letter that the Lord of the Rings is a fundamentally religious and Catholic work
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  unconsciously in the writing but consciously in the revision.
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  Wow that's that's a pretty firm statement yet he goes on to say that's why I've cut out all the
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  overt references to religion which okay that's interesting choice and the book itself as with all
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  of his writings is accessible to writers of any faith and to to no faith as I know myself from personal
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  experience because I you know I am myself now a Catholic but I grew up sort of agnostic
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  nothing particular and none became an atheist when I was undergraduates and was reading Tolkien
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  during all this time you know as a as an agnostic as an atheist and then later as a Christian.
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  So I know first hand that you can love Tolkien and be moved by him without even having much
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  awareness of his faith let alone sharing it. I mean I was quite hostile to his faith for much of
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  you know my early life yet I still loved him so how do we make sense of this how do we make sense
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  of this question and that's been in kind of the back of my mind and then as I researched Tolkien
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  on a reading coming across so many references to the depth of his faith and the way that it was
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  such an important part of his life many realize that that there needed to be a reconsideration
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  a re-examination of a spiritual life to get the big picture of it. Now along with this there comes
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  the fact that I'm I'm I'm obviously an American but I spend a great deal of time in England I spend
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  time there every year and have done for about 15 years now you know I spend several months every
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  year in Oxford and so I worship in the same church as the Tolkien worshiped as a Catholic I'm
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  I've been deeply influenced personally by English Catholicism and I began to realize that for
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  American Christians English Catholicism is a is a whole different world and that's the world
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  that Tolkien grew up in and then specifically within that the oratorians the Birmingham oratorians
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  realizing that this the Birmingham oratory wasn't just the name of a church where his guardian
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  happened to be a pastor it's the congregation of the oratory of St. Phil of Neary which was brought
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  to England by John Henry Newman which is a whole congregation it has a spirituality of its own
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  and a very distinctive spirituality and I remember one time I had gone to mass I think I've gone
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  to confession and mass at the St. Aloysius which is now the Oxford oratory although it wasn't in
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  Tolkien's day and I remember walking out and thinking to myself wow the oratorians their their
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  spirituality their their liturgy is a very Tolkienian and then I stopped and said to myself wait a
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  second I got that reversed and that was one of the things that started to make me interested and
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  exploring not just the biographical fact that Tolkien had been raised effectively by an oratorian
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  priest but what was the influence of oratorian spirituality on him and what was the influence of
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  being raised of growing up as a convert because he was a convert he was he he became a Catholic
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  when he was old enough to remember what was the impact of growing up as a Catholic in English
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  Catholicism and that became a major part of the research for Tolkien's faith putting Tolkien
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  into his context especially of Catholicism as an utterly marginalized and and socially you know
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  minimal and socially disliked and and marginalized community I mean they didn't even have full
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  civil rights until well into Tolkien's adulthood which was a sort of shocking fact to realize
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  yeah so just to set the I mean it goes back to Henry VIII everybody so if you're listening to
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  this in America you probably well you're probably aware of Henry VIII and his wives but how that
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  all kicks off is he doesn't have a legitimate heir and his first wife who's a Catherine of
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  Aragon she is getting a bit old and he's he's not going to work and so he wants to get a divorce
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  he's not allowed a divorce because it's a legitimate marriage in the eyes of the church and she's
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  well connected so this forces the rupture where you get this division where you get the Church of
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  England set up separately which allows him to go ahead and sort of basically undo the power of
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  the Catholic Church because after that point the Catholic Church was very much part of the state
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  and the Anken Church the Church of England then was set up as the the state church and still is our
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  established church so at the coronation that is what King Charles III swore that he would be head of
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  because it has the monarch at the head that isn't like the pope at all he doesn't then decree
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  on things it's just a figurehead role the Archbishop of Canterbury is ahead so there's a whole
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  separate history that then sets off and the Catholics are seen as the enemy like insurgents really
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  for quite a few years and a lot of the history of the next 300 years for 100 years is explained by
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  this including things that people would have heard of like the Gump out of Plot and Guy Fawkes
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  and the Jacobite Rising and things like that it's all to do with this split so roll forward
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  and I'm sure a lot I'm teaching a lot of people here with things they already know so I won't
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  go on about it but just it's an interesting context that the Catholics were regarded as other
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  so when his mother becomes a Catholic which wasn't the faith of her family it sets her apart it's a
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  bit like I don't know a child now converting for say Muslim to Christian or Christian to Muslim
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  it it was a division whereas now we don't see much of a difference at the time it would have been
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  regarded as quite a big step which made her quite an isolated figure and it also under sort of
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  explains why it was the church fathers who became the guardians for the boys because that's
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  where she had had her family so that's just a yeah trying to explain why being a Catholic wasn't
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  just a kind of shrug thing which is now as fine you know nobody nobody bats an eyelid then there
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  was still the hangover of these centuries of problems between the church and the state that thing
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  you said about how the liturgy is very talkinian or talking was inspired is fascinating I can't wait
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  to read your book so that I can find out the detail of that but what do you think
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  that there was in the English version of Catholicism in particular that inspire talking creatively
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  is there anything you can think oh yes there's some kind of aesthetic here some sort of
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  feeling about his faith that then becomes that in woven into the creation of Biddle Earth
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  well yes this is a huge huge question um I to kind of narrow it down a little bit
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  you know to to be a Catholic in England was its own experience which which we've already sort of
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  lightly lightly touched on um but specifically I think he was really influenced by the by
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  oratorian spirituality which is a charism within yeah Catholicism I think often people who are not
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  Catholics and many who are tenethe of Catholicism as as uniform like well this is what all
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  Catholics do there are obviously many things that all Catholics do um but there's a lot of
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  diversity of sort of spirituality is within Catholicism you know the Dominicans are very much
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  you know their ministry is preaching their church is going to be much sort of simpler like
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  block fires in Oxford very sort of simple plain design you know there's the Franciscans with
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  emphasis on poverty of life um and so there's different sort of spirituality within Catholicism
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  and oratorian spirituality is not very well known this is the the congregation founded by
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  Saint Philip Neary who was a Italian saint um 16th century who inspires the oratorian
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  Rome and it goes it spreads to other places and John Henry Newman brought it to England
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  and there are a couple of interesting points about the oratorians one is that they place a
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  particular emphasis on um ministering to the more highly educated in the community they always
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  go into cities and they so Birmingham for instance and they all they place a great emphasis on
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  music um and beauty and liturgy and this is then an aesthetic he grew up in in this this real
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  sense of beauty and we can't take that for granted because not all English Catholic churches
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  are or certainly would have been then um beautiful or with good music because as partly as a
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  result well as a result of the reformation and the establishment of the uh of the church of
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  England all of the existing churches which had been Catholic up to that point were converted to
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  Anglicanism Catholics no longer had places of worship um and even after meaning for and for a long
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  time it was illegal to be a Catholic to to attend mass um even after those penalties were lifted
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  it wasn't until 1791 that Catholics could even build churches again and even then there were
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  restrictions they couldn't for instance put steeples on them for a long time so it would
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  call too much attention to these you know these Catholic places and of course Catholics
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  in England were much poorer significantly poorer than their Anglican counterparts so the churches
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  tended to be cheaper and uglier generally speaking and so there's a real cost in lots of ways
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  to becoming a Catholic not just socially but even aesthetically and that would have been something
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  that Tolkien would have been well aware of in the oratory he had the great privilege of being
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  able to grow up surrounded by beauty um and interestingly he would also have seen that happening
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  because when he and his mother and his brother started worshiping at the Bermam oratory it was not
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  the big beautiful church that we see now if we go and visit it that was built um during Tolkien's
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  teenage years he was originally a very small shabby kind of blah um building that was then
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  rebuilt into this big beautiful church sort of built up around him so he has this early exposure
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  to beauty um and music and a sense that it's important it's not just a little optional extra
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  that it's an important way that we worship that we express our faith and one other point they'll
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  just make briefly although I talk about it at much greater length in the book oratory and spirituality
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  really puts a great emphasis on joy um it's a spirituality of joy but it's a spirituality
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  that incorporates sorrow joy is not the same thing as happiness and I think that this has
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  profound influence on Tolkien and we can see it in many ways throughout his whole his whole work all
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  his his ability to to get through these sorrowful periods and still have a sense of joy that's
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  very that's very much in line with with the spirituality of the Oratorians I suppose the one big
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  difference thinking about it between middle earth perception of faith and what we might or might
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  not believe is um they knew the gods were there the valla were over in the undying lands
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  and there's nobody who says oh Eru Eluvatar doesn't exist it's not a world of doubt
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  do you agree um it can be a world of despair but well that's a really interesting question um
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  I mean Tolkien is obviously writing middle earth from a point of view of natural theology this
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  is a pre-Christian world he's very clear it's pre-Christian world um so so there obviously there
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  isn't any Christ figure in it um and he's also very clear that the valla are angels angels are
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  archangels um and he makes the point in one of his letters that um the that um the inhabitants
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  middle earth might call on the valar as a Catholic wood on a saint so they're intercessory figures
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  but of course Eru Eluvatar you know the who told his quite clear is is god as he as he understands
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  and the one god the god um I mean he's he is not visible to the people of middle earth in that sense
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  just as you know just as now um may perhaps much less so because this is pre-incarnation
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  and we see not so much in the Lord of the Rings but in the in the legendarium
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  you know the story of of Numenor is a story of um you know worship of Eru perverted into you know
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  you know you do human sacrifice and and worship of uh of uh Morath so I think Tolkien's not
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  specifically working in the modern um very modern struggle with does god exist because he's
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  working in a natural theological framework in which he's taking it for granted that god does
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  but he's still certainly giving plenty of room for the people of middle earth to act as if god
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  doesn't exist yeah no that's true and there's and there's also plenty of room for the bad guys
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  and the fallen good guys to try and you know achieve a power that is not appropriate for mortal
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  or immortal people even um you know like the ring for example because it corrupts
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  but but this theme is making me think some interest it's intriguing me and I'm sure is it
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  this is what I'm going to be reading your book to find out is things like well why can't men
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  um and other races go to the land the undying world why can't they go there why they separated
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  why are only elves allowed because that's the place where the angels uh hang out
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  why do men not know what happens happens to them after death whereas elves do know that they
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  wait in the halls of mandos um and there's some suggestion that they sort of come back again they
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  don't leave the confines of the world he's already perplexing theological questions in a sense um
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  but they're very different from the kind of theological questions we would be asking in our
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  well because we don't have those dilemmas um maybe disagree because i think we're asking those
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  questions i mean we don't ask them the same way as the elves because we were humans not elves
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  but what happens when we die is quite possibly the question right you know what what does happen
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  can we be sure where where do we go um that's as profound a question now um as it would be for
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  you know barren um in middle earth but what i meant was there isn't a group of people who have
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  like special access you know like a that part the big division between elves and men the mortal
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  and that obviously isn't our lived experience so right the the theology of that why that is set
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  up like that is something which is made up for middle earth uh and that's i think talking's his
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  way he's exploring he's exploring certain what now obviously fundamentally talking is telling a
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  story yeah he's yeah it's the narrative of the characters i mean his his elves come out of his
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  languages um so we mustn't ever ever fall into the trap of thinking that he had a theological
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  puzzle he wanted to work out and so therefore he he acts winds he characters utterly antithetical
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  it's Tolkien's way of thinking but that doesn't mean that he didn't think about these things and
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  weave them in because he he writes for instance that the the main theme of Lord of the Rings is death
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  and the desire for deathlessness and this is a theme that he explores throughout the whole
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  legendarium and the elves allow him to do this in a really interesting way because the elves
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  don't experience death in the same way that that humans do so what it effectively allows him to do
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  by contrast is to explore what does what does death mean in what way is is death a gift
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  to human to the human race why might elves view it as a gift when we might view it as a burden
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  that so the separation of the elves as these as these people who did have a chance to see the light
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  more directly and yet they still manage to to fall in rebel i mean the whole the holster is
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  similarly and is fan or please stop it yeah exactly fan or no fan or give up then not yours
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  yeah so i mean in a sense um you know Tolkien is exploring this idea of you know what do we do with
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  the light that is given to us um just because the elves had a more privileged access to that light
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  did not immediately empower them to lead perfect lives his elves are so far from being
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  seamless perfect people they're they're really not um but they have different gifts and
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  different temptations and i think that allows him to explore things like temptation and
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  and grace um i mean grace much grace is given to the elves to think with it well that's exactly
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  the question that any Catholic would have to answer like well we have all this abundant grace
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  coming to us in the sarkmas what am i doing with it am i attempting to conform to it or am i
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  just saying whatever and entering away from it so i think this gives him a freedom work with
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  these themes because which is the freedom of the fantasy gives i think that's a probably more helpful
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  way um the way you're talking about it is you you see a theme like grace that is playing amongst the
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  elves and you then take that out i was just getting a bit annexed by thinking about the other way
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  in you know when you're sort of looking for how it goes the other way and i think that
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  so the idea of overweening ambition um the numinole story uh the falling for the
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  temptor the corruption um it's not really a question of what a why question it's uh oh yeah i've
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  seen that before and isn't it like isn't it that that particular thing um of the fool and of course
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  the numinole is interesting it's the only place with an actual mentioned place of worship isn't it
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  sort of escapes the escapes the delete line so um holly i'm really looking forward to reading this
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  but we also have to of course face up to the fact that for some people uh in the Tolkien fandom out
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  there find mention of um Tolkien's faith and Catholicism um not something that's empathetic with
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  and and indeed something which scares them or makes them feel a bit outside uh you know the
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  Tolkien's world in a way so how do you feel he handles his faith and the way it touches
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  into his creativity that actually suits our diverse world you said at the beginning that you had
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  your own experience of sort of coming through various stages of faith no faith to be in Catholic
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  so you obviously were able to um navigate that yourself but for someone who's listening who
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  doesn't have a faith or is from another faith is Tolkien still okay to read or is he only talk
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  is he only preaching to the choir should we say well he is you should read him he is he is he
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  yet read Tolkien um and this is something that i found very encouraging for me as i researched this
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  this book um and i wouldn't think i i want to know when i when i wrote Tolkien's faith i'm very
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  keenly aware that you know he has a readership of so many people who don't share his faith um who
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  may be as you noted a little bit maybe nervous about it or off-putting and so as i as in this interview
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  i've been quite straightforward in the first chapter i say look i i am myself a Catholic i share
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  his belief but but and i say this right in the beginning in the first chapter it has been my
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  effort in the book to be just treating of his faith as he understood it i neither critique it nor
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  recommend it my ancestors are what did it mean to him because he's a genius he's a if you're
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  listening to this podcast you probably don't have any you know i think with that he's a brilliant
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  writer so if it was important to him i think it should be important to us we don't have to share it
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  we don't have to like it um but i think it's really important to approach his faith
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  without any presumption of of either affirming it or rejecting it because both of those attitudes
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  lead to distortions where you the find what you want to find whether it's positive or whether it's
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  negative and as i looked at Tolkien's life i realized that he had grown up really in such a way as to
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  have a lot of sympathy and openness to all sorts of different people he had the experience of being
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  a convert who then was mentored by the oratorians who were themselves nearly all converts and had a great
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  deal of sympathy for angthinism so from the beginning he was not raised by by men who thought oh the
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  Church of England is evil Protestants are all heretics no they said well we we have this blessing
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  of becoming Catholics but the Church of England is are still there still Christians and they are
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  you know in some sense really anticipating what will be explicitly taught at Vatican 2 that was
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  what was lived out in Tolkien's life in the influences john Henry Newman was a kind of you know
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  early ecumenism saying okay well we differ but we're not enemies he went to school at a Protestant
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  school king Edward school um which i learned was distinctive in that not only did a half both
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  Catholics and Protestants but even Jewish students and that is very not typical of English you
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  know grant schools of his day so he grows up with friends from diverse backgrounds and throughout
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  his whole life he has friends who are Protestants of all different kinds and also he has friends
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  and acquaintances who are not believers and he's always quite forthright well this is my faith
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  no one ever thought he wasn't a Catholic but he's always able to relate other people and not to
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  not to let it be a barrier between them um it's quite moving really some of the things that he writes
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  um and says about um his non-Catholic friends so i think that folks who are a little bit
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  maybe worried like oh if i read a book about Tolkien as a Catholic am i going to am i going to learn
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  that he was really a bigot who thought that everybody was going to go to hell if they weren't a
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  Catholic i can give a little bit of a reassurance he was serious in his faith and some of what he
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  believed might be challenging or a little bit difficult um how did he believe those things
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  but he definitely had an openness and a a respect um and a sense that God is working in people's
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  lives in all sorts of ways that he can't judge and he didn't try to judge so you need to have no
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  fear dear reader um i think i think you'll find that you get a much better picture of who he was
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  and what was important to him and and that's i think useful for any any reader of Tolkien
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  whatever whatever their their faith background might be yes thank you that's a very good place to
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  you know land this discussion so we look forward to seeing that book and having a reset
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  particularly like the idea of actually being a bit more clever about understanding what Catholic
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  ism is rather than just saying he's a Catholic saying actually there are many flavours and this
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  particular one is the one that we see working its way through his his work in honor of this
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  discussion we're going to do our special segment on where in all the fantasy world is the best
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  place for something to choose best place for a place of worship now this does not have to be in any
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  sense a world religion it can be a made up one on a moon it's just the idea of where do you think
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  would be a good place to go and experience the worship of that world in whatever contacts that is
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  well you did you did give me warning on this and so i was able to think about this and i i think
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  i will pull up a Tolkien example and i would go to the passage in the Lord of the Rings where
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  Frodo and Sam have been going through it really and that they've they've encountered
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  pharamer and his crew and he's brought them to their you know their their secrets cave
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  and then they're about to have the meal and then i'll go ahead and i'll just read i pulled up
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  the passage so they were led then to seats beside pharamer barrels covered with pelts and high
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  enough above the benches of the men for their convenience before they ate pharamer and all his men
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  turned and faced west in a moment of silence pharamer signed a Frodo as Sam that they should do likewise
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  so we always do he said as they sat down we looked toward new menorah that was and beyond
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  to elven home that is and to that which is beyond elven home and will ever be very liturgical
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  very much so very much so and this is this is in fact one of the instances of religion that
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  Tolkien chose to leave in this is an example of a sort of natural theology of worship and i think
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  i like that as an example of a place or occasion of worship because it kind of gets to the foundations
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  that it isn't necessarily you know it isn't just about the place this is about a recognition of
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  what was and what is and what is to come whatever that might mean to you at that particular moment
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  it's a good thing to be reflecting on and i think it's a very inviting moment in the Lord of the
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  Rings so i would pick that i would i would join in that yeah no i think that's a perfect example so
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  i've got to choose like different so the thing that came to my mind is early on in out of silent
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  planet by cs Lewis when ransom who's been basically kidnapped and taken on board a spaceship it's
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  very flash Gordon in its kind of technology but anyway this spaceship has a sort of deck where
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  you can see out and the great revelation that ransom has is that ours is the dark silent planet
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  and the solar system he's traveling in is the singing spheres it's using that medieval
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  idea of the heavens and giving it a sort of sci-fi makeover but there's a description of
• 31:52
  ransom lying naked in bathed in this light and just sort of absorbing the praise of the universe
• 32:00
  it's a marvelous piece of writing it's when cs Lewis seems to really take off
• 32:07
  and produce some amazing word pictures so it's like a moment of worship on a spaceship so that's
• 32:14
  my own free oh and that's that's such a such a great a great scene yeah you're like great line where
• 32:23
  you know the idea of space emptiness is a blasphemous libel because that's not what it is it's
• 32:29
  full of the it's the heavens which is why we should call it the ransom trilogy or the cosmic
• 32:34
  trilogy and not the space trilogy yeah yes that's a great passage thank you so much Holly for
• 32:41
  joining us and we wish you all the best with that new book and yeah I'm waiting to get my hands
• 32:47
  on a copy excellent well my pleasure thank you
• 32:56
  thanks for listening to MythMakers podcast brought to you by the Oxford Center for Fantasy
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