SEMINAR RECORDINGS: Tolkien and Religion in the Twenty-First Century

On 26 November 2023, I was honored to co-organize a daylong, online seminar on the theme of Tolkien and Religion in the Twenty-First Century with the Tolkien Society (U.K.) and the Centre for Fantasy and the Fantastic at the University of Glasgow. The call for papers read as follows:

Although J.R.R. Tolkien deliberately excluded explicit religious references from his legendarium and rejected narrow allegorical readings of The Lord of the Rings, he made no secret of his devout Roman Catholicism and its importance to his sub-creative endeavor. From the creation myth of the “Ainulindalë” to the eucatastrophic destruction of the One Ring, Túrin Turambar’s doomed warrior courage to Frodo Baggins’s self-sacrificial humility, scholars have long examined the influence of Tolkien’s Christian faith and his abiding admiration for pre-Christian legends on the nature and history of Arda. Explorations of the legendarium from other religious perspectives or explicitly nonreligious perspectives have received less attention, however, as have studies of the reception of Tolkien’s work among (non)religious readers and communities.

Fifty years on from Tolkien’s death, as Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings films celebrate their twentieth anniversary and Amazon Prime’s The Rings of Power draws in new fans, Tolkien’s audience has never been wider nor more diverse. This presents Tolkien scholarship with an opportunity to bring varied and underrepresented perspectives on Tolkien and religion into conversation with longstanding currents in the field, thereby enriching our understanding of religious plurality in Tolkien’s secondary world and in our primary world as well. This seminar welcomes fresh and innovative treatments of the generative interactivity between Tolkien’s fiction, Tolkien’s faith, and the faith (or lack thereof) of the readers who draw deep wells of meaning from his tales of Middle-earth.

Our presenters responded with erudition and enthusiasm, from Mercury Natis’s re-examination of Tolkien’s Dwarves and Jewishness, to David Chambers’s conversation between Tolkien’s theory of euctastrophe and the Black Liberation theologian James Cone, to Rafael Silva Fauto’s interpreation of songs in the The Silmarillion through the lens of European pagan magical traditions.

Due to the winter holidays and some technical glitches, it took a while to get the seminar recordings online. Now, however, the wait is over, and you can view all thirteen presentations on the Tolkien Society’s YouTube channel! The papers are listed below with links to the corresponding video. (You can read the abstracts for each paper here.) Together, they represent a new frontier in the study of Tolkien and religion, providing new lenses on Tolkien’s Christianity even as they explore his non-Christian sources and, just as importantly, his reception among non-Christian readers. I hope you find them as exciting and enlightening as I did!

Ilana Mushin
Finrod the Mensch: A Jewish Perspective

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Sonali Chunodkar
Ilúvatar as a Reader/Listener-God: A Barthesian Interpretation of Sub-creation in Tolkien

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Alexandra Filonenko
On Some Esoteric Motifs in The Silmarillion

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Taylor Driggers & Mariana Rios Maldonado
Here at the End(s) of All Things: The Fall of Númenor as a Theology of Failure for Middle-earth

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Erik Jampa Andersson
‘With Furious Speed’ – Tolkien, Revelation, and the Tibetan Treasure Tradition

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Hollie Willis
‘Borne away like smoke’: Unpacking J.R.R Tolkien’s Depiction of Cremation in Middle-earth in the Context of Catholic Canon Law

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Adam Debosscher
The Pyre of Denethor: from suicide on the page to manslaughter on the screen

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Rafael Silva Fouto
Pagan Magic and the Marvelous: Songs of Enchantment in J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Silmarillion

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Brianna Burdetsky
Tolkien and Roth: The Legendarium Meets Jewish History

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Mercury Natis
Baruk Khazâd! Antisemitism, Jewish Joy, and Dwarven Contexts

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Tom Martin
The Tao of Tom Bombadil

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Jeffrey Moore
Where In the Story Are We?: The Epilogue of The Lord of the Rings and a Retrospective Apocalypse

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David Chambers
Black Eucatastrophe and Black Power