[littlemanpoet]

Just for the sake of discussion, I'm preparing to plasy "Lewis and Lawhead Advocate"; I'm not ready yet.

But there is one point of contention that I'd like to pursue right now.

I'm not sure its as simple as that.

Missionaries 'targetted' the Royal courts because they knew that once they had converted the ruler the people would follow - either out of allegiance or fear of the consequences of not doing so. The 'Pagan' religions were quite as complex & capable of explaining the nature of the world & the human experience as Christianity. The 'explanation' offered by Christianity was hardly more 'empiric' than the ones offered by the Druids, Stoics, Epicureans, Manichaeans. In short, Christianity came to dominate over Paganism not because it offered a 'better' account of the world, but because, after Constantine, it became increasingly dangerous not to be a Christian.

Nor is it quite as simple as that.

In many of the instances of mass conversion, missionaries cut down the sacred oaks of a given folk; think "Tree of Life" here; or a sacred grove, pool, what have you. When the missionaries were not struck down dead on the spot by the tribes' gods/goddesses, the folk became convinced that this new religion was more powerful than their old one. That's empirical. Now, we moderns may look back at that and be convinced that the missionaries were just as superstitious to think that God was protecting them from being killed by the "demons" that the folk worshipped. Maybe we'd be right to think that, but maybe not. Many things that happen today cannot be explained by our natural laws.

Thanks, davem, for your succinct summary of the two main threads of argument in support of Tolkien's strategy of keeping overt religious emblems out of LotR.