After our The Lord of the Rings book club wraps up, the Tea with Tolkien community will be reading and discussing this brand new Tolkien biography by Dr. Holly Ordway.

My Interview with Dr. Ordway about “Tolkien’s Faith”:

Book Club Timeline: Members of our community can begin reading the book now to prepare for our discussion(s) in January. The text channel of our discord server is open now for ongoing discussion as you read, and the voice channel chats will be scheduled as we get closer to January. The book is quite long so I recommend getting started sooner than later.

Giveaway: We are currently hosting a giveaway in our discord server. Any member is eligible to enter. To join our discord, click here to sign up with your email address. You’ll receive the link to join our server in your inbox. The giveaway will end on the 22nd of October. The giveaway is currently pinned in the #tea-with-tolkien channel - if you have trouble finding it, please contact a moderator and they’ll help you out.

Where to purchase your copy: Amazon (affiliate link) or directly from Word on Fire

About this book:

Tolkien described The Lord of the Rings as “a fundamentally religious and Catholic work” and declared, “I am a Christian (which can be deduced from my stories).” Yet he insisted his writings were not allegories, and Middle-earth is loved by millions who do not share his religious beliefs.
How were his faith and his fiction related? Holly Ordway answers that question biographically, focusing on Tolkien’s spiritual development, a dramatic story that previous accounts of his life have left largely unexplored.
Here we find that Tolkien’s faith was hard won. His Anglican upbringing was overturned when his mother converted to Catholicism. Soon afterward, she died, leaving Tolkien under the guardianship of a Catholic priest, who forbade him to see his Protestant girlfriend, whom nonetheless he eventually married. The Great War, in which most of his close friends were killed, deepened Tolkien’s reliance on his faith, but then for a decade he “almost ceased to practise” his religion. Friendship with C.S. Lewis and success with The Hobbit were followed by another war and by turmoil in the Church that sternly tested Tolkien’s commitments.
The challenges and triumphs in his religious life are reflected in his masterpiece, The Lord of the Rings, that epic tale of endurance against the odds. As Ordway shows in her expertly researched and richly illustrated study, Tolkien’s faith and Tolkien’s fiction are intimately related, though in subtle and complex ways. This long-overdue spiritual biography gives new insight into his works by shedding fresh light on their author’s deepest-held convictions.