Imagine no religion

[Bêthberry]

Originally Posted by skip spence

Yet in Middle Earth, among the peoples described in LotR, there hardly a sign of religiousness of any kind and no-one makes any reference to any divinity or lesser spirits, direct or indirect. Well, there's Faramir looking West before eating, but that's it, to my knowledge.

Why do you think this is?

If I may interject, perhaps it's a question of defining or understanding what is meant by religion or religiousness.

We tend nowadays, especially in the west under Christian experience, to equate religion with formal belief. There's several creeds which Christians recite as part of their statement or expression of belief and centuries of theology have been devoted to developing precise notions of belief.

But not all religions (and not Christianity exclusively) place such a high value on orthodoxy. In fact, in may, orthopraxy is the more important value, the emphasis on right behaviour rather than right belief.

Karen Armstrong in The Spiral Staircase has a good discussion on the difference and the significance of orthopraxy as religious behaviour. Here's ye olde Wikipedia on orthopraxy (although I'm not sure this is the best discussion of it).

After all, religion need not be specifically about doing churchy things or religious acts or having a priestly hierarchy, but about living a way of life that brings one closer and closer to an ethical or moral standard. For some people, ritual, prayer, mantras, meditation help the individual achieve that desired status. These are acts which bring them closer to the ideal of an ego-free, selfless "Golden Rule."

It seems to me that LotR particularly is imbued with what can be called orthopraxy rather than orthodoxy. It is historically true that Judaism and Islam have placed greater emphasis on orthopraxy rather than orthodoxy, but that does not mean the concept would not be known to Tolkien. In fact, I rather think that his removal of overt, formal signs of religion would be very close to an exploration of orthopraxy, since "right behaviour" is so clearly an issue in the story. It doesn't matter what Frodo "believes" or even that he finally came under the domination of the Ring; his actions enabled the Ring to be destroyed. I think Tolkien actually explains Frodo's moral achievement in this way, that Frodo brought about the conditions which led to the Ring's destruction. I don't have the Letters at hand, but I recall strongly (which doesn't mean my memory's right! ) this as Tolkien's defense of Frodo. Sounds very much to me like a culture where right behaviour is the salient factor rather than church hierarchies and formal dogmas and codes of belief.

Tolkien's discussion of allegory and his explanation of the Allies' behaviour (in the Forward to the Second editon where he dismisses charges of topicality) suggest also to me that he was thinking clearly of right behaviour rather than formal belief.