J.R.R. Tolkien

Review of Hillsdale professor Brad Birzer’s book on Christian humanism

Tolkien and Lucas have tales of myth, but they have been so popular because their themes resonate so clearly with real life.

We need to become outposts of intellectual seriousness and Christian virtue and moral sanity that expose the darkness of our generation.

The world is watching as Beijing hosts the XXIV Winter Olympiad. There is something about the Olympics that elicits national pride. But is sport a form of patriotic action?

Veterans of the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry Regiment, more commonly known simply as the “Ox and Bucks,” hosted our small US military contingent. The locus for the day’s ceremony was the gravesite of Major John Howard, commander of D Company of the Ox and Bucks.

Perhaps an insight from the character of Elrond in J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, about the nature of our mortal lives, offers a measure of Christian realism in the face of Versailles: “And the Elves believed that evil was ended forever, and it was not so.”

While Lewis and Tolkien’s faith and contributions are well-known, most do not realize they both fought in the First World War as young men. Even fewer recognize how their time in the western front’s trenches influenced their faith and later works. However, in A Hobbit, A Wardrobe, and a Great War, Providence senior editor Joseph Loconte explains in his typical, approachable prose how the war affected these two men deeply and how those experiences influenced their writings and faith.

Contrary to detractors like George R.R. Martin who say that Tolkien’s works are simplistic with a black and white view of morality, Tolkien wasn’t oblivious to how terrible the world can be, having been on the front line of the First World War.