Cleander wrote:Weeelll... my family never got into the books that much because of the fact that Gandalf, one of the heroes, is a wizard, and we're sort of uncomfortable with witchcraft being condoned in literature. ( Narnia is OK by this standard because "Black Sorcery" is condemned.)
Besides that, I'm sort of concerned that the powers of good and evil are almost given equal footing, as though there were no authority that made one really better than the other, and one's choice between the two was just a matter of taste.
I just read this and thought, 'Oh dear, there is so much I want to say to that' - and then I read the rest of the thread and found that daughter of the King, coracle and johobbit have said most of what I wanted to say.
So I hope you'll feel safe about trying the books on those grounds.
I'll still add a few things, though.
I agree with them that most of his themes are more generally Christian than specifically Catholic. A couple of his female characters may be influenced by the Virgin Mary, though, although not so much in
The Lord of the Rings as in articles he wrote about those characters later in his life. One of them, called Elbereth, is a Vala, another sort of angelic being, and the Elves (and even some Hobbits) in LotR revere (but don't worship) her. The other I'm thinking about, is Galadriel, an Elf lady, almost a queen among the Elves, and an important character in LotR. (She's not a virgin, though, she's a mother and a grandmother.)
You might perhaps say that the powers of good and evil - as they appear in the world of Middle-earth - are almost given equal
strength, but not equal footing. This is much like we see those powers around us in our own time. They may look equal in strength, and we may wonder whether good will be able to prevail, but we have God's promise that he will punish evil in the end.
Eru Iluvatar (Eru means "the One" and Iluvatar means "Allfather" in a language called Quenya that Tolkien made up) doesn't appear at all in LotR, I think he is hardly mentioned in the book. There is a lot more about him in
The Silmarillion. Tolkien uses him very differently in his works from the way Lewis uses Aslan in his works. Tolkien is even more concerned with avoiding anything looking like allegory.
Eru also will punish evil in the end, at the end of the world. Morgoth has been defeated (and physically thrown out of the world) already, but minor enemies still exist, and Tolkien seems to be hinting that we won't get rid of all of those until the end of the world. Tolkien's initial idea (which he may have kept, only expressed less clearly over time) was that Middle-earth is our own world thousands of years ago, so the creator of that world is the same God as we know, only under an older name.
Tolkien has a story commonly called "The Athrabeth".
(That's a word from one of his own languages as well, and means 'debate'.)
It's a story of a discussion (from before the defeat of Morgoth) between an Elf and a mortal woman, a stand-alone story that didn't get into either the LotR or the Sil. In their discussion they discuss hope, and the woman tells that there is an old hope among her people that "the One will himself enter into [the world], and heal Men and all the Marring from the beginning to the end".
The Elf is encouraged by the news of this hope, and says that if Eru "will not relinquish His work to [Morgoth], who must else proceed to mastery, then Eru must come in to conquer him." And if any healing from all the harm that Morgoth has done, is to be found, "any new light to oppose the shadow, or any medicine for the wounds: then it must, I deem, come from without."
This is the closest Tolkien ever gets to referring to the redemption story in all of his fiction. He deliberately stops at this point, and is not even sure whether to include it in his greater works or not - and it ended up as a stand-alone story.
But that story is one of my favorite texts among everything Tolkien has written.