Tolkien Society To Feature Paper Titled “J.R.R. Tolkien, Culture Warrior: The Alt-Right Religious Crusade’s Appropriation of ‘Tolkien'”

Hot off their Summer Seminar 2021 where they put the focus on “Tolkien and Diversity,” The Tolkien Society will now feature a paper at their upcoming Oxonmoot event claiming there is an alt-right religious crusade to appropriate J.R.R. Tolkien.

Source: Source: The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring

If you are unfamiliar with Oxonmoot, The Tolkien Society describes it as “an annual event hosted by The Tolkien Society which brings together Tolkien fans, scholars, students and Society members from across the world.”

Oxonmoot 2022 will be held beginning on Thursday September 1st and will conclude on Sunday September 4th. The event will take place in person at St Anne’s College in Oxford as well as online.

As part of the event’s programming, The Tolkien Society revealed they will feature a talk or paper by Robin Reid, a professor at Texas A&M University-Commerce, titled “J.R.R. Tolkien, Culture Warrior: The Alt-Right Religious Crusade’s appropriation of ‘Tolkien.'”

While it’s unclear what the actual contents of the paper or talk actually are, the title makes it very clear it appears to be a political piece and will more than likely highlight Robin Reid’s political views rather than any kind of actual discussion about Tolkien.

And this type of discussion is no stranger to Reid as she previously gave a talk during the New York Tolkien Conference at Baruch College titled “Atheists, Agnostics, and Animists, Oh My!: Secular Readings of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Legendarium” back in 2019.

Regardless of the contents of Reid’s talk or paper are, Tolkien made it very clear that The Lord of the Rings were a Catholic work.

In letter 142 to Father Robert Murray S.J., Tolkien wrote, “I have been cheered specially by what you have said, this time and before, because you are more perceptive, especially in some directions, than any one else, and have even revealed to me more clearly some things about my work. I think I know exactly what you mean by the order of Grace; and of course by your references to Our Lady, upon which all my own small perception of beauty both in majesty and simplicity is founded.”

“The Lord of the Rings is of course a fundamentally religious and Catholic work; unconsciously so at first, but consciously in the revision,” he declared. “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.”

“However that is very clumsily put, and sounds more self-important than I feel,” Tolkien wrote. “For as a matter of fact, I have consciously planned very little; and should chiefly be grateful for having been brought up (since I was eight) in a Faith that has nourished me and taught me all the little that I know; and that I owe to my mother, clung to her conversion and...

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