[Music]
Hello and welcome to Myth Makers.
Myth Makers is the podcast for fantasy fans and fantasy creatives
brought to you by the Oxford Centre for Fantasy.
My name is Julia Golding.
I'm a writer of many novels, but I also run the Centre
where we teach creative writing and do this podcast amongst many other things.
And today I am joined again, I'm delighted to say, by Holly Ordway,
who we first met when we were talking about her book, Tolkien's Modern Reading.
But her next book, which comes out at the end of August, is an exploration of Tolkien's faith.
And it does what it says on the tin, because it is called Tolkien's Faith, a Spiritual Biography.
Now, Holly, do you want to tell us a little bit about your own story about how you came
to write this and where you sit within the academic world as well, so we've got a sense
of where you're coming from?
Right. Well, first of all, it is a pleasure to be back on the show and to be talking about
my favourite author. And as we come up to the 50th anniversary of his death, which is
September 2nd of 2023, it's a good moment to kind of try and take stock of the full
picture of his life. And one of the things that I realised as I was researching and writing
Tolkien's Modern Reading, which was a 10-year project - that book took a long time to write
and to research - I kept discovering along the way lots of references to his faith that
kind of adding up to a richer picture. I knew already that he was a Catholic, that he was
a devout Christian. That's widely recognized. But I had gotten the impression from the biographies
that I had read that it was a bit compartmentalized. And of course, there's the debate, you know,
to what extent is The Lord of the Rings a Christian book? This is a very complex question
Tolkien himself says, very famously in a letter, that the Lord of the Rings is a fundamentally
religious and Catholic work, unconsciously in the writing but consciously in the revision.
Wow, that's a pretty firm statement, yet he goes on to say, "That's why I've cut out all
the overt references to religion." Which, okay, that's an interesting choice. And the
book itself, as with all of his writings, is accessible to writers of any faith and
to no faith, as I know myself from personal experience. Because I am myself now a Catholic,
but I grew up sort of agnostic, nothing particular, a nun, became an atheist when I was an undergraduate,
was reading Tolkien during all this time as an agnostic, as an atheist, and then later
as a Christian. So I know firsthand that you can love Tolkien and be moved by him without
even having much awareness of his faith, let alone sharing it. I mean, I was quite hostile
to his faith for much of my early life, yet I still loved him. So how do we make sense
of this? How do we make sense of this question? And that's been in kind of the back of my mind.
And then as I researched Tolkien's modern reading, coming across so many references to
the depth of his faith and the way that it was such an important part of his life,
made me realize that there needed to be a reconsideration, a re-examination of his
spiritual life to get the big picture of it. Now, along with this, there comes the fact that I'm
obviously an American, but I spend a great deal of time in England. I spend time there every year
and have done for about 15 years now. I spend several months every year in Oxford. So, I worship
in the same churches that Tolkien worshipped as a Catholic. I've been deeply influenced personally
by English Catholicism. And I began to realize that for American Christians, English Catholicism
is a whole different world, and that's the world that Tolkien grew up in. And then,
specifically within that, the Birmingham Oratorians, realizing that the Birmingham
Oratory wasn't just the name of a church where his guardian happened to be a pastor. It's the
congregation of the Oratory of St Philip Neary, which was brought to England by John Henry Newman,
which is a whole congregation that has a spirituality of its own - a very distinctive
spirituality. I remember one time I had gone to mass - I think I'd gone to confession and mass
at St Aloysius, which is now the Oxford Oratory, although it wasn't in Tolkien's day.
I remember walking out and thinking to myself, "Wow, the Oratorians, their spirituality,
their liturgy is very Tolkienian." And then I stopped and said to myself, "Wait a second,
I've got that reversed." And that was one of the things that started to make me interested in
exploring not just the biographical fact that Tolkien had been raised, effectively, by an
oratorian priest, but what was the influence of oratorian spirituality on him? And what was the
influence of being raised, of growing up as a convert? Because he was a convert. He became a
Catholic when he was old enough to remember. What was the impact of growing up as a Catholic in
English Catholicism? And that became a major part of the research for Tolkien's faith.
putting Tolkien into his context, especially of Catholicism, as an utterly marginalised and
socially minimal and socially disliked and marginalised community. They didn't even have
full civil rights until well into Tolkien's adulthood, which was sort of a shocking fact
to realise. Yeah, so just to set the...I mean, it goes back to Henry VIII, everybody.
If you're listening to this in America, you're probably aware of Henry VIII and his wives,
but how that all kicks off is he doesn't have a legitimate heir and his first wife, Catherine of
Aragon, she is getting a bit old and he thinks this isn't going to work. So he wants to get a
divorce. He's not allowed a divorce because it's a legitimate marriage in the eyes of the church
and she's well connected. So this forces the rupture where you get this division where you
get the Church of England set up separately, which allows him to go ahead and basically undo the
power of the Catholic Church because up to that point the Catholic Church was very much part of
the state. And the Ankin Church, the Church of England, then was set up as the state church and
still is our established church. So at the coronation, that is what King Charles III
swore that he would be head of because it has the monarch at the head. That isn't like the
Pope at all. He doesn't then decree on things. It's just a figurehead role. The Archbishop of
Canterbury is a head. So there's a whole separate history that then sets off. The Catholics are
seen as the enemy, like insurgents really, for quite a few years. A lot of the history of the
next 300 years, 400 years is explained by this, including things that people would have heard of
like the gunpowder plot and Guy Fawkes and the Jacobite rising and things like that. It's all to
do with this split. So roll forward, and I'm sure I'm teaching a lot of people here things they
already know, so I won't go on about it. But it's an interesting context that the Catholics were
regarded as other. So when his mother becomes a Catholic, which wasn't the faith of her family,
it sets her apart. It's a bit like a child now converting, say, Muslim to Christian or Christian
to Muslim. It was a division, whereas now we don't see much of a difference. At the time,
it would have been regarded as quite a big step, which made her quite an isolated figure. It also
explains why it was the church fathers who became the guardians for the boys,
because that's where she had her family. So that's just trying to explain why being a Catholic wasn't
just a kind of shrug thing, which is now. It's fine. Nobody bats an eyelid. Then there was still
the hangover of these centuries of problems between the church and the state. That thing
you said about how the liturgy is very Tolkienian or Tolkien was inspired is fascinating. I can't
wait to read your book so that I can find out the detail of that. But what do you think
that there was in the English version of Catholicism in particular that inspired Tolkien
creatively. Is there anything you can think of? Is there some kind of aesthetic here? Some sort of
feeling about his faith that then becomes woven into the creation of Middle Earth?
Well, yeah, this is a huge question. To kind of narrow it down a little bit, to be a Catholic
in England was its own experience, which we've already sort of lightly touched on. But specifically,
I think he was really influenced by Oratorian spirituality, which is a charism within...
And Catholicism, I think often people who are not Catholics, and many who are, tend
to think of Catholicism as uniform. Like, well, this is what all Catholics do. There
are obviously many things that all Catholics do, but there's a lot of diversity of sort
of spiritualities within Catholicism. You know, the Dominicans are very much, you know,
their ministry is preaching, their churches tend to be much sort of simpler, like Black
fires in Oxford. Very simple, plain design. There's the Franciscans with an emphasis on
poverty of life. So there's different sorts of spiritualities within Catholicism. Oratorian
spirituality is not very well known. This is the congregation founded by St Philip Neri,
who was an Italian saint, 16th century, who inspires the oratory in Rome and it spreads
to other places and John Henry Newman brought it to England. And there are a couple of interesting
points about the oratorians. One is that they place a particular emphasis on ministering to
the more highly educated in the community. They always go into cities and they, so Birmingham,
for instance. And they all place a great emphasis on music and beauty in the liturgy. And this
is then an aesthetic he grew up in - this real sense of beauty. And we can't take that
for granted because not all English Catholic churches are, or certainly would have been
then, beautiful or with good music because as partly as a result - well, as a result
of the Reformation and the establishment of the Church of England, all of the existing
churches which had been Catholic up to that point were converted to Anglicanism. Catholics
no longer had places of worship. And even after...and for a long time, it was illegal
to be a Catholic, to attend Mass. Even after those penalties were lifted, it wasn't until 1791
that Catholics could even build churches again. Even then, there were restrictions. They couldn't,
for instance, put steeples on them for a long time because it would call too much attention
to these Catholic places. Of course, Catholics in England were much poorer, significantly poorer,
than their Anglican counterparts. So, the churches tended to be cheaper and uglier, generally
speaking. And so, there's a real cost in lots of ways to becoming a Catholic, not just socially,
but even aesthetically. And that would have been something that Tolkien would have been well aware
of. In the oratory, he had the great privilege of being able to grow up surrounded by beauty.
And interestingly, he would also have seen that happening, because when he and his mother
and his little brother started worshipping at the Birmingham Oratory, it was not the
big, beautiful church that we see now if we go and visit it. That was built during Tolkien's
teenage years. It was originally a very small, shabby, kind of blah building that was then
rebuilt into this big, beautiful church built up around him. He has this early exposure to beauty
and music, and a sense that it's important. It's not just a little optional extra,
that it's an important way that we worship and express our faith.
One other point I'll just make briefly, although I talk about it at much greater length in the book
Oratory and spirituality really puts a great emphasis on joy. It's a spirituality of joy,
but it's a spirituality that incorporates sorrow. Joy is not the same thing as happiness.
And I think that this has profound influence on Tolkien, and we can see it in many ways throughout
his whole work. All of his ability to get through these sorrowful periods and still have a sense of
joy. That's very much in line with the spirituality of the Oratorians.
MG: I suppose the one big difference, thinking about it between Middle Earth's perception of
faith and what we might or might not believe, is they knew the gods were there. The Valar were over
in the undying lands and there's nobody who says, "Oh, Eru, Ilúvatar doesn't exist." It's not a world
of doubt. Do you agree? It can be a world of despair, but...
Well, that's a really interesting question. I mean, Tolkien is obviously writing Middle-earth
from a point of view of natural theology. This is a pre-Christian world. He's very clear. It's a
pre-Christian world. So, obviously, there isn't any Christ figure in it. And he's also very clear
that the Valar are angels. Angels are archangels. He makes the point in one of his letters that
the inhabitants of Middle-earth might call on the Valar as a Catholic would on a saint.
So they're intercessory figures. But of course, Eru Uluvatar, who Tolkien's quite clear is God,
as he understands them. The one God, the God. He is not visible to the people of Middle-Earth
in that sense, just as now. Perhaps much less so, because this is pre-incarnation.
We see not so much in Lord of the Rings, but in the Legendarium, the story of Numenor is a story of
worship of Eru perverted into, you know, human sacrifice and worship of Morath.
So, I think Tolkien's not specifically working in the modern, very modern struggle with does
God exist, because he's working in a natural theological framework in which he's taking it
for granted that God does exist. But he's still certainly giving plenty of room for the people of
Middle Earth to act as if God doesn't exist. MW - Yeah, no, that's true. There's also plenty of
room for the bad guys and the fallen good guys to try and achieve a power that is not appropriate for
mortal or immortal people even. Like the ring, for example, because it corrupts.
But this theme is intriguing me and I'm sure this is what I'm going to be reading your book to find
out. It's things like, "Well, why can't men and other races go to the land, the undying world?
Why can't they go there? Why are they separated? Why are only elves allowed? Because that's the
place where the angels hang out. Why do men not know what happens to them after death, whereas
elves do know that they wait in the halls of Mandos? There's some suggestion that they sort of
come back again. They don't leave the confines of the world. These are all really perplexing,
theological questions in a sense, but they're very different from the kind of theological questions
we would be asking in our world because we don't have those dilemmas.
MG: We maybe disagree because I think we're asking those questions. I mean, we don't ask
them the same way as the elves because we're humans, not elves. But what happens when we die
is quite possibly the question, right? What does happen? Can we be sure? Where do we go?
That's as profound a question now as it would be for Baron in Middle Earth.
>>ALICE: Yeah, but what I meant was there isn't a group of people who have special access.
That part, the big division between elves and men, the immortal and...that obviously isn't our
lived experience. The theology of that, why that is set up like that, is something which is made
up for Middle Earth. MW: And that's what I think Tolkien's way, he's exploring certain
questions. Now, obviously, fundamentally, Tolkien is telling a story. It's the narrative,
the characters. His elves come out of his languages. So, we mustn't ever, ever fall
into the trap of thinking that he had a theological puzzle he wanted to work out, and so therefore he
could keep the X, Y, and Z characters. Utterly antithetical to Tolkien's way of thinking.
But that doesn't mean that he didn't think about these things and weave them in. Because he writes,
for instance, that the main theme of Lord of the Rings is death and the desire for deathlessness.
And this is a theme that he explores throughout the whole Legendarium. And the elves allow him
him to do this in a really interesting way, because the elves don't experience death in
the same way that humans do. So what it effectively allows them to do, by contrast, is to explore
what does death mean? In what way is death a gift to the human race? Why might elves
view it as a gift, when we might view it as a burden? So the separation of the elves as
these people who did have a chance to see the light more directly, and yet they still
managed to fall and rebel. I mean, the whole story of the Cimmerillion is "Faenor, please
stop it!"
Mae: Yeah, exactly!
Talia: "Faenor, no! Faenor, don't!"
Mae: "Give up! Give up! They're not yours!"
Talia: Yeah, so in a sense, Tolkien is exploring this idea of what do we do with the light
that is given to us. Just because the elves had a more privileged access to that light
did not immediately empower them to lead perfect lives. His elves are so far from being sinless,
perfect people. They're really not. But they have different gifts and different temptations,
And I think that allows him to explore things like temptation and grace. I mean, much grace
is given to the elves. What do they do with it? Well, that's exactly the question that
any Catholic would have to answer. Like, "Well, we have all this abundant grace coming to
us in the sacraments. What am I doing with it? Am I attempting to conform to it or am
I just saying whatever and turning away from it?" So I think this gives him a freedom to
work with these themes, which is the freedom of the fantasy gives.
MG: I think that's a probably more helpful way. The way you're talking about it is you see a
theme like Grace that is playing amongst the elves and you then take that out. I was just
getting a bit panicked by thinking about the other way in, you know, when you're sort of looking for
how it goes the other way. I think that the idea of overweening ambition, the Numenor story,
the falling for the tempter, the corruption. It's not really a question of a why question. It's a
"Oh yeah, I've seen that before and isn't it like..." That particular thing of the fall.
Of course, the Numenor is interesting. It's the only place with an actual mentioned place of
worship, isn't it? It sort of escapes the delete line. So Holly, I'm really looking forward to
reading this. But we also have to of course face up to the fact that for some people in the Tolkien
fandom out there, find mention of Tolkien's faith and Catholicism not something they're
sympathetic with and indeed something which scares them or makes them feel a bit outside
the Tolkien's world in a way. So how do you feel he handles his faith and the way it attaches
it to his creativity that actually suits our diverse world? You said at the beginning that
you had your own experience of coming through various stages of faith, no faith to being
Catholic. So you obviously were able to navigate that yourself. But for someone who's listening who
doesn't have a faith or is from another faith, is Tolkien still okay to read, or is he only
preaching to the choir, shall we say? -Well, you should read him. You should read Tolkien.
And this is something that I found very encouraging for me as I researched this book.
And one thing I want to note, when I wrote Tolkien's Faith, I'm very keenly aware that
he has a readership of so many people who don't share his faith, who may be, as you noted, a little
bit nervous about it or off-putting. And so, as in this interview, I've been quite straightforward.
In the first chapter, I say, "Look, I am myself a Catholic. I share his belief." But, and I say
this right in the beginning of the first chapter. It has been my effort in the book to be just
treating of his faith as he understood it. I neither critique it nor recommend it. My
interest is exploring what did it mean to him? Because he's a genius. If you're listening to
this podcast, you probably don't have any kind of argument for that. He's a brilliant writer.
So if it was important to him, I think it should be important to us. We don't have to share it.
we don't have to like it. But I think it's really important to approach his faith
without any presumption of either affirming it or rejecting it, because both of those attitudes
lead to distortions where you find what you want to find, whether it's positive or whether it's
negative. As I looked at Tolkien's life, I realised that he had grown up really in such a way as to
have a lot of sympathy and openness to all sorts of different people. He had the experience of
being a convert, who then was mentored by the oratorians who were themselves nearly all converts
and had a great deal of sympathy for Anglianism. So, from the beginning, he was not raised by men
who thought, "Oh, the Church of England is evil. Protestants are all heretics." No, they said,
"We have this blessing of becoming Catholics, but the Church of England is still Christians."
In some sense, they were really anticipating what would be explicitly taught at Vatican II.
That was what was lived out in Tolkien's life in the influence of John Henry Newman,
was a kind of early ecumenism. Saying, "Okay, well, we differ, but we're not enemies." He
went to school at a Protestant school - King Edward School - which I learned was distinctive
in that not only did it have both Catholics and Protestants, but even Jewish students.
that is very not typical of English schools of his day. So he grows up with friends from diverse
backgrounds, and throughout his whole life, he has friends who are Protestants of all different kinds,
and also he has friends and acquaintances who are not believers. He's always quite forthright.
"Well, this is my faith." No one ever thought he wasn't a Catholic. But he's always able to relate
other people and not to let it be a barrier between them. It's quite moving, really, some of
the things that he writes and says about his non-Catholic friends. So I think that folks who
are a little bit worried, like, "Oh, if I read a book about Tolkien as a Catholic, am I going to
learn that he was really a bigot who thought that everybody was going to go to hell if they weren't
a Catholic, I can give a little bit of a reassurance. He was serious in his faith, and some of what he
believed might be challenging or a little bit difficult. How did he believe those things?
But he definitely had an openness and a respect, and a sense that God is working in people's lives
in all sorts of ways that he can't judge, and he didn't try to judge. So, you need to have no fear,
Dear Reader. I think you'll find that you get a much better picture of who he was and what was
important to him. That's, I think, useful for any reader of Tolkien, whatever their faith background
might be. Yes, thank you. That's a very good place to land this discussion. We look forward
to seeing that book and having a reset. I particularly like the idea of actually being
a bit more clever about understanding what Catholicism is rather than just saying, "He's a
Catholic." Saying, "Actually, there are many flavours and this particular one is the one that
we see working its way through his work." In honour of this discussion, we're going to do
our special segment on where in all the fantasy worlds is the best place for something to choose
best place for a place of worship. Now, this does not have to be in any sense a world religion.
It can be a made up one on a moon. It's just the idea of where do you think would be a good
place to go in and experience the worship of that world in whatever context that is.
Well, you did give me warning on this, and so I was able to think about this. I think
I will pull up a Tolkien example. I would go to the passage in The Lord of the Rings where Frodo
and Sam have been going through Ithilien. They've encountered Faramir and his crew, and he's brought
them to their secret cave. Then they're about to have the meal. I'll go ahead and I'll just read.
I pulled up the passage. It says, "They were led then to seats beside Faramir,
barrels covered with pelts and high enough above the benches of the men for their convenience.
Before they ate, Faramir and all his men turned and faced west in a moment of silence.
Faramir signed a photo and saying that they should do likewise.
"So we always do," he said as they sat down. "We look toward Numenor that was,
and beyond to Elvenholm that is, and to that which is beyond Elvenholm and will ever be."
B. Very liturgical.
B. Very much so. Very much so. And this is in fact one of the instances of religion that
Tolkien chose to leave in. This is an example of a sort of natural theology of worship.
And I think I like that as an example of a place or occasion of worship because it kind
gets to the foundations. It isn't necessarily just about the place. This is about a recognition of
what was and what is and what is to come. Whatever that might mean to you at that particular moment,
it's a good thing to be reflecting on. I think it's a very inviting moment in The Lord of the
rings. So I would pick that. I would join in that.
MW: Yeah, no, I think that's a perfect example. So I've got to choose something different.
So the thing that came to my mind is early on in Out of Silent Planet by C.S. Lewis,
when Ransom, who's been basically kidnapped and taken on board a spaceship - it's very Flash
Gordon in its kind of technology. Anyway, this spaceship has a sort of deck where you can see out
and the great revelation that Ransom has is that ours is the dark, silent planet.
The solar system he's traveling in is the singing spheres. It's using that medieval
idea of the heavens and giving it a sort of sci-fi makeover. But there's a description of
Ransom lying naked, bathed in this light and just sort of absorbing the praise of the universe.
It's a marvelous piece of writing. It's when C.S. Lewis seems to really take off
and produce some amazing word pictures. So it's like a moment of worship on a spaceship.
So that's my offering. Oh, and that's a passage that's such a such a great, a great scene.
Yeah. That great line where, you know, the idea of space emptiness is a blasphemous libel,
because that's not what it is. It's full of the it's the heavens, which is why we should call it
the ransom trilogy or the cosmic trilogy and not the space trilogy. Yeah. Yes.
That's a great passage.
Thank you so much, Holly, for joining us.
And we wish you all the best with that new book.
And yeah, I'm waiting to get my hands on a copy.
Excellent. Well, my pleasure.
Thank you.
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