Join us on Thursday, April 4 at 7:00 p.m. in the Lower Campus Center as Dr. Holly Ordway will present the lecture, "Tolkien’s Faith and the Formation of Middle-earth." This lecture on J.R.R. Tolkien will allow our students and the community to hear and appreciate this great author (Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit).
Sponsored by Catholic Studies. Free and open to the public.
Tolkien’s Faith and the Formation of Middle-earth
Fifty years after Tolkien’s death, his writings are more popular than ever; The Lord of the Rings and his other Middle-earth writings are internationally beloved, loved by millions who do not share his religious beliefs. Yet Tolkien declared, “I am a Christian (which can be deduced from my stories).” His writings were not allegories, so how, then, were his faith and his fiction related? We will explore this question biographically, looking at some of the ways that Tolkien’s dramatic life story, including his being raised by a Catholic priest at the Birmingham Oratory, and his experiences in the Great War, shaped his faith and found their way – in a subtle and complex manner – into his writings.
About Holly Ordway, Ph.D.
Holly Ordway is the Cardinal Francis George Professor of Faith and Culture at the Word on Fire Institute, and Visiting Professor of Apologetics at Houston Christian University. She holds a Ph.D. in English from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She is the author of Tolkien’s Modern Reading: Middle-earth Beyond the Middle Ages, which received the 2022 Mythopoeic Scholarship Award in Inklings Studies. Her book Tolkien’s Faith: A Spiritual Biography was released in time for the 50th anniversary of Tolkien’s death.