Tolkien lied!

[Laitoste]

Okay, I'm supposed to be doing a lab write-up right now, so I can't spend as much time on this as I'd like, but I want to address something quickly:

Why would he be so adamant about not wanting this to be a Christian work?

Probably because he didn't want it to be pigeonholed. Once you say, "The Lord of the Rings is a Christian book, a Christian allegory, with Christian themes" rather than, say, themes universal to humankind (or at least Western Civilization), people will tend to ONLY see it as such. They stop thinking about it, they stop trying to make other connections, and we all know that there certainly are other, possibly stronger connections to make. And if people aren't going to think about your text, what's the point in publishing it?