Thread: Outrage?
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Old 06-14-2005, 08:27 AM   #5
Anguirel
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We must also consider that when Lord of the Rings was published, the world, and the Christian community, were very different. People weren't so inclined to break into hysterics, lose their heads and shriek over a book written for entertainment of its readership.

Nor were Tolkien's the first books containing enchantment, and what we now odiously call "fantasy". Kipling, E Nesbit, Dickens, Williams, and of course CS Lewis had dabbled or were dabbling in these realms.

The post-war era was a nervous age, but it was concerned about politics, and the overhanging sceptre of communism. The Lord of the Rings provided an escape from these aspects of life; where it touched on political matters it was traditional, English, Monarchist, ecumenical and reassurring, even reactionary in the Scouring of the Shire. That's why it appealed to the reactionary elements of the Hippy movement.

Today, sadly, though democracy is generally recognised as a Good Thing, religious extremism is our new bogey man, the new Ring, the new Dark Lord, if you like. Just as Sauron's imminence made Denethor into a hard and harsh man, the terrorism of Islamic extremism has brought into being disturbingly similar feelings in Christianity. Why, it's enough for a whole other thread. "You serve the Dark Tower or the White." "You're with us or against us."

It is in these circumstances that certain people or groups have been stirred up into vitriolic hatred against a perfectly innocent, unpretentious series of books for children, one of a vast genre heavily influenced by Tolkien, and only distinguished from the rest of that genre by its extraordinary success. It is not fair to say that the Christian community as a whole, in any case, frowns on JK Rowling. The late Pope John-Paul II himself, hardly wishy-washy in such matters, defended her.

Had the Lord of the Rings been published today, I think, sadly, a similar backlash by the narrow-minded, few of whom deign to read the books they detest, would have been more than likely.
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