[Lalwendë]

Originally Posted by Raynor

All in all, I don't think he disliked the presence (and the detection) of christian elements in his works; he stated that "I am a Christian (which can be deduced from my stories)" and he called LotR a "fundamentally religious and Catholic work".

Full quote goes thus:

The Lord of the Rings is of course a fundamentally religious and Catholic work; unconsciously so at first, but consciously in the revision. That is why I have not put in, or have cut out, practically all references to anything like ‘religion’, to cults or practices, in the imaginary world. For the religious element is absorbed into the story and the symbolism.

So many people just include that first clause in discussions, but taken that way it loses its meaning. As Tolkien says above - he made the effort to cut out religious elements, leaving in only the most fundamental elements. The story itself - the battle of little people against big baddies - is the Christian element.

He was probably quite pleased when people wrote him letters saying "Oooh, such and such is like x biblical character", what with being Catholic and all. So no, he didn't dislike this. But the knots he ended up tying himself into over Galadriel at a later stage proved that some things, such as trying to 'build in' Mary Myth to his story weren't working; that whole struggle could even be why he never got round to finishing the Silmarillion, which began as a very pagan work, but which grew more and more thorny as he tried to 'Christianise' it.