The Emblems of Religion don't belong ... or do they?

[Estelyn Telcontar]

I'm reading Patrick Curry's Defending Middle-Earth and found some passages there which apply to this topic. He feels that there is no obvious use of one religion and its symbols (despite what Tolkien said about consciously revising it to be consistent with Catholic belief) because it is not limited to one specific set of doctrines. Here is one thought that I find particularly interesting:

The Lord of the Rings transcends any strictly monotheistic reading. Instead, it manifests an extraordinary ethico-religious richness and complexity which derives from the blending of Christian, pagan, and humanist ingredients. It is all of these, and no single one of them.

He also quotes Tolkien himself, from one of his Letters:

Myth and fairy-story must, as all art, reflect and contain in solution elements of moral and religious truth (or error), but not explicit, not in the known form of the primary "real" world.

That would definitely preclude outward signs of a specific religion.

It is his combination of mythological and religious elements that I find so fascinating in Middle-earth. The idea that the old "gods" are angelic beings works for me without requiring too much "willing suspension of belief". Yet there can be no usage of the most important icon of Christian faith, the cross, for example, since there is no incarnation of God himself there. He did try to include that possibility in his later writing, especially the Athrabeth.