Christian Tolkien scholarship and fandom is often marginalized or even met with hostility in some quarters, which makes little sense, since Professor Tolkien himself was such a committed Christian and was explicit about the internal Christian themes of his work. This conference aims to create a space where Christian Tolkien scholars and fans can come together and share their love for both Christ and Tolkien.
I am a lifelong Tolkien fan, but now that I have a Tolkien podcast, I’ve found more time to explore how my love for Tolkien fits into my spiritual life as an Orthodox Christian. And it turns out that there is actually a specifically Orthodox Christian reason to love Tolkien and other works of imaginative fiction.
Well, it’s time for a good Christmas rant. This requires a rant, because every year, we see the same ignorant silliness. (Sorry, but it’s just true.) Supposedly, Christmas is secretly pagan, secretly syncretist, secretly a co-opting of pagan stuff and ignorantly claiming it to be Christian. But the truth about these things is so available that it’s literally staring out at you even from…
There are generally three approaches that Christians have taken when it comes to their surrounding cultures: 1) Rejection, resistance, and hostility: This approach sharply distinguishes the Church from the world, emphasizing that the Church is so much “not of this world” that the world must be fled and an alternate community established. It is a posture that is fully closed to the world —…
The following is from a larger talk I am working on about Orthodoxy in the West. Secularism is essentially the idea that one can conceive of a world without God. It is the belief in an autonomous order existing apart from the divine order. It is not necessarily a denial of God’s existence, by the way. Such outright atheism has never been that attractive…