No, Tolkien’s mistake was not in being religious. That is to his credit. As a Christian myself, I agree with adherence to faith in God, even if I disagree with his adherence to Roman Catholicism.

Rather, Tolkien’s mistake was his avoidance of religion in his most widely-distributed works: The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. While Tolkien at no point denigrates religion, he prefers to focus on wonder and mythology. His work on The Lord of the Rings is, in many respects, a work of mythology in and of itself. And, herein lies the problem in my mind. While there is nothing wrong with focusing on the wonder and mythology of the world, Christian writers should feel more comfortable bringing their characters’ religious beliefs to light.

One key issue is that writers before Tolkien were already addressing religion, even if doing so subtly. Robert E. Howard, for example, mentioned religion repeatedly in the context of Conan. It’s just not Christianity or any analogue thereof. Rather, the view which Howard took with Conan (as far as I’ve read) is a cynical one. Crom, the deity of the Cimmerian people–from whom Conan originates–is mentioned as a cold and distant being who answers followers’ prayers with dooms and trials.

This isn’t exactly a trend that stops at any point in the rise and fall in popularity of The Lord of the Rings or The Hobbit. In fact, polytheism and cynicism towards religion as a whole are sufficiently common themes in modern fantasy that they’ve become stale tropes. Churches being hotbeds of corruption and hypocrisy, especially if they are a direct analog to Christianity, has become a sufficiently stale trope that people on the internet are complaining about it. (Of course, many Protestants have happily gone along with and enjoyed that trope for the simple reason that it’s usually an analog of the Roman Catholic Church being lambasted, not understanding that the same material denigrates all churches in the long run. But, I digress.)

Polytheism, often steeped in apparently esoteric beliefs, is a trope in fantasy which has been left almost completely unchecked by Christian writers. For example, in David Eddings’ work, which I enjoy, we see not only varying sizes of pantheons made up of “good” gods and “evil” gods, but we see a unified “prophecy” or similar creative force being “shattered” at the beginning of the universe with equally (potentially) valid forces becoming unified (The Belgariad and The Mallorean) or one triumphing over the other (The Elenium and The Tamuli).

Of course, then there’s worlds such as Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time, which is the silliest take by far. In the world of Wheel of Time, the closest thing touching on religion is entirely relegated to a small group of fanatics calling themselves The Children of the Light. That’s it…in a world that literally has a Satan-like figure. So, yeah, gee…another fun fantasy trope: “yes, folks, the devil is real and very powerful. No, there’s no God to counter him. There’s just people who are every bit as messed up as people in real life. Good luck.” Yeah…not sure exactly what type of heresy that worldview springs out of, but do we not have at least some counterpoint to make? Not much, it seems…at least not much that takes up space on bookstore shelves. If you’re a Christian, you should be asking yourself, “is this what we should be ceding ground to?”

No. You shouldn’t. A world with a Satan yet without a God is a mockery at its core. In such a world, mankind must contend against forces of supernatural evil while being abandoned by any force of supernatural good. And, yet, by avoiding religion, this is exactly what a Christian author cedes ground to.

And, no, this was not the kind of world that was unknown in Tolkien’s day. It’s a mythological structure that’s downright ancient.

This is one point that I’m getting at with Tolkien’s error. By not addressing religion or religious beliefs, Tolkien left the playing field in a position where Christians were discouraged from taking to the field in force. Fantasy became no different from the average dinner conversation where religion was one of the forbidden topics. This isn’t as it should be.

Look, if it’s okay for fantasy to include polytheistic or esoteric beliefs, then it shouldn’t be such a stretch for Christian writers to include some form of One God. It shouldn’t be such a stretch to present a Church which isn’t wholly corrupt. Nor should it be such a stretch to present said Church as a close analog to real-world Christianity, including its moral teachings. It definitely shouldn’t be such a stretch to present that Church, the God being worshiped, or its moral teachings as correct.

This is, of course, only the first angle to Tolkien’s error. The second is that religion is a large part of what makes us human.

A lot of people today like to pretend that they are above religion somehow, when the fact is that they are not. They have simply replaced ancient or traditional religions with a combination of the dogmatic atheism, materialism enforced with a religious fervor, an odd form of scientism (often based on a poor understanding of science), and replacing powerful deities with an all-powerful State. (With things like Flock and Palantir, they even get an all-knowing State, but I digress.) Remove God, and people simply find some other idol to worship: celebrities, sportsmen, online personalities, politicians, scientists, the list goes on. It’s just the way that people are.

Here’s the core of the problem: a world without religion isn’t just unrealistic…it’s empty, no matter how much people try to fill the void with alternatives. By not addressing religion in The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien failed to address one of the key pieces that makes us human to begin with.

Finally, there is the historical (or even, dare I say, evolutionary) error.

Humans have always had some degree of religious belief. Various groups can be animistic, shamanistic, polytheistic, or monotheistic. For that matter, some degree of ancestor-worship isn’t uncommon. Whether we know it or not, we generally seek a connection with something higher than ourselves, be it through a church, the rituals and dances of a shaman, the worship of spirits ascribed to every rock and tree, or treating material explanations of the world as the be-all and end-all of moral thought. Religion, in some form or fashion, is a part of who we are, whether or not we would wish it to be so.

But, it’s a little more than that. I’m going to go out on a limb with this bit. See, despite the “thoughts” of a bunch of enlightenment-era half-wits, modern Western civilization didn’t begin with the Greeks and Romans. It didn’t start with The Illiad and The Odyssey. It starts on a hill outside of Jerusalem in roughly the year 33 A.D. Greco-Roman influence on Western civilization effectively died out as the Franks, the Goths, the Angles, the Saxons, the Lombards, and others increasingly moved west into what is today France, Spain, England, and Italy. Though the Catholic Church made effort to preserve the literary and political history of Greco-Roman civilization, that really wasn’t the main influence on the societies that developed into the middle ages. Christianity was far more influential. Even in the Renaissance, where societies began looking to the Greeks and Romans, the influence of Christianity, especially Roman Catholicism, remained prominent, even well after the Wars of Reformation culminated in the brutal Thirty Years’ War. The Passion of the Christ (the original plays and liturgies, not the 2004 movie) had more influence on Clovis I than the tale of Romulus and Remus. The Christianization of the Anglo-Saxons and the Germans had more bearing on the future of Europe than The Illiad or The Odyssey. In fact, even Roman histories were viewed through a medieval lens rather than the other way around, as evidenced by Roman legionnaires being referred to as “knights” by medieval writers such as Sir Geoffroi de Charney.

Here’s what I’m getting at. There really aren’t an infinite number of paths which lead to the social, governmental, and even military structures of the various nations of medieval Europe. There is really only one path which leads in that direction. Frankly, that is through Christianity. Without that, you get an entirely different picture. Case in point, Scandinavian pagans traded slaves and practiced ritual human sacrifice. I would daresay that Scandinavian paganism was modest in comparison with some of what was going on along the Baltic Sea. Without Christianity, those practices continue.

Here’s the bottom line: if you want something that even vaguely resembles Western civilization, it has to pass along similar pathways. Frankly, that means the development of some analog of Christianity.

Before I close, I want to admit that this is something that I, too, am guilty of; and, yes, I still believe that it is a mistake. I also still believe that the best example of Christianity that a Christian can carry forward into the world is to assure that his work is the best that he is able to do. There’s a quote attributed to Martin Luther along the lines of, “a good Christian cobbler does not glorify God by putting tiny crosses on his shoes; he does so by making the highest quality shoes which he is capable of making.”

I still think that’s good advice. However, I also am coming to the conclusion that it is also good advice to include (or develop) characters who are positive religious role models as well as behavioral role models. The religious beliefs and practices of a character are just as much open to be aspects of character development as any other trait or flaw. A character who does not pray or is overly reliant on their own strength can, and should, develop into a character who does pray and is more reliant on God. Obviously, none of this has to be done in a ham-fisted way. Nor does it have to be “preachy.” All of the rules of decent, or even high-quality, storytelling still apply.

I’ve saved the castigation for this last bit. See, there’s this covey of Christians (largely Baptists, though I see much of the same behavior across denominations) who are, quite frankly, moral cowards in this regard. These are people who refuse to seriously engage with fantasy (and often science fiction) at all for usually nebulous reasons that basically stack up to being afraid. To those people, I have this to say: grow a spine.

Look, I understand your objections to many elements of contemporary fantasy, and I don’t even always disagree. (I mean, that’s about half my point here.) I understand the impulse to want to distance your church from beliefs in magic or whatever the logic is. That isn’t a sufficient justification to not only cede cultural space but to tuck tail and run at every turn. You’re not just refusing to fight a battle (if you really think that’s what it is). You’re allowing the other side complete control over the field. That’s not being “better.” That’s not being “Christian.” That’s moral cowardice. Simple as.

Here’s the thing: fantasy covers a very wide range of worldbuilding types. I’ve taken a shot across Conan’s bow, but do you know what’s very interesting? The fact that magic and magicians are (again, so far) depicted in a very dark light. Magic comes from unknown sources which Conan doesn’t understand. Magicians are power-hungry at best and often portrayed as downright evil. And, Conan (until very recently) has been a relatively popular fantasy staple since the Great Depression. Do you have to have Harry Potter good-guy wizards? No. You don’t. You can easily borrow a page from Robert Howard’s book and portray magic as something dangerous or even outright evil. You can even have it coming from demonic sources. You could portray magicians as people who have been lured into magic through curiosity and demonic promises of power. You can even *gasp* show that they can still be redeemed!

In other words, you, yes you can flip the normal script, build a world in accordance with your church’s doctrine, and actually make those bad people bad guys.

Do you do that?

Do you?

No! You sit and quake in your boots. So, grow up already. Engage with speculative fiction or continue to have your opponents monopolize the space. Those are your choices. Pick up the glove already.