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Hookbill, I've read Finding God in LotR, but I have to say it seems to be more about 'Finding God' than 'LotR' - which is either a good, or a bad thing, depending on your position. I'd point you to 'Following Gandalf' by Matthew Dickerson, or 'Splintered Light' by Verlyn Fleiger, which both go much more deeply into Tolkien's religious side, & how it affected & came through in his writings. Also, if you can get hold of it, 'Secret Fire: the spiritual vision of JRR Tolkien' by Stratford Caldecott, which is a very insightful exploration of Tolkien's Catholicism.
Drigel, fate, or Doom, is one of the most complex issues in Tolkien's work, as far as I'm concerned, because we don't know to what extent people have any choice in what they do, so it makes it difficult to judge their motives. Only Men are said (in Ainulindale) not to be bound by the Music, so how can we judge the Elves. Its almost like the Music sets out everything, & all the beings of ME, apart from Men, have to go along with it. Then men, or a man, come along, do something outside the Music, & so change it, & therefore change the fate of the Elves, & the Elves suddenly get shifted in a different direction, a direction which they are then 'bound' to follow, until men again change things.
But this takes away both freedom & responsibility from the Elves, which makes them little better than robots, which isn't what Tolkien intended, -imo. Flieger does go into this in her two books, but I'm not sure I go along with her totally - though having said that, I haven't got my own explanation all formulated yet.
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