Podcaster Jack Posobiec stirred controversy last week with an explosive accusation: J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings is pagan.

“I’ve heard people try to make the argument that ‘Lord of the Rings’ is overtly Christian and I hate to burst the bubble, guys, but you’re just wrong,” Posobiec said. “There’s nothing overtly Christian about ‘Lord of the Rings.’ Uh, there’s no church in it, there’s no faith in it, there’s no Christ figure — there’s none of these things. And honestly, ‘Lord of the Rings,’ if it’s anything, ‘Lord of the Rings’ is overtly pagan … You have a pantheon of powerful creatures, and figures.” The fact that Stephen Colbert likes the trilogy is further proof that Lord of the Rings is bad, Posobiec added. He doubled down on X, arguing that the Lord of the Rings couldn’t be Christian with “no Christ figure, no religion, not even prayer.”

First, let’s dispense with the baffling Colbert argument. Stephen Colbert is a liberal moron. But “something must be bad because a liberal moron likes it” is the logic of a child. I’m sure there are plenty of liberal morons who love their children, but that doesn’t mean loving your children is bad.

Moving on — sure, you could say that Tolkien’s masterpiece isn’t a Christian work because there’s no explicit Christ figure in it. You could also say that The Old Man and the Sea is a book about fishing. But in both cases, you would sound like an idiot.

For starters, there’s what the author himself said about his work: Tolkien doesn’t beat you over the head with religious allegories precisely because the book is shot through with his Christian worldview.

In a 1953 letter to a priest friend, Tolkien made that clear: “The Lord of the Rings is of course a fundamentally religious and Catholic work; unconsciously so at first, but consciously in the revision. 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.”

Or, as Tolkien said elsewhere (emphasis mine): “I am a Christian (which can be deduced from my stories).”

Tolkien’s work backs up his words. After all, in the trilogy’s final book, Return of the King, it’s the Christian virtue of mercy that ultimately saves the day.

Frodo journeys to the fires of Mount Doom to destroy the ring, only to succumb to temptation at the last moment and claim the ring for himself. But in a twist of fate, Gollum — whose life Frodo spared earlier in the trilogy — bites off Frodo’s finger (and the ring) before falling into the fire, thereby completing the mission of destroying the ring. If not for Frodo’s mercy towards Gollum, Tolkien notes in a letter to a fan who questioned whether Frodo had “failed” as a hero, Frodo or Samwise Gamgee may well have had to cast themselves with the ring “into the fiery abyss” in order to destroy it.

“Frodo indeed ‘failed’ as a hero, as conceived by simple minds: he did not endure to the end; he gave in, ratted. I do not say ‘simple minds’ with contempt: they often see with clarity the simple truth and the absolute ideal to which effort must be directed, even if it is unattainable. Their weakness, however, is twofold. They do not perceive the complexity of any given situation in Time, in which an absolute ideal is enmeshed. They tend to forget that strange element in the World that we call Pity or Mercy, which is also an absolute requirement in moral judgment (since it is present in the Divine nature),” Tolkien notes in the letter.

He goes on to add: “Frodo had done what he could and spent himself completely (as an instrument of Providence) and had produced a situation in which the object of his quest could be achieved. His humility (with which he began) and his sufferings were justly rewarded by the highest honour; and his exercise of patience and mercy towards Gollum gained him Mercy: his failure was redressed.”

Mercy. Redemptive suffering. Providence. Those are all Christian themes — you just have to look a little harder beyond “Is Jesus in this book?” to find them.

Finally, I’ll leave you with what Tolkien wrote about the Eucharist — what Catholics believe is the true body and blood of Jesus. Tolkien wrote about his love for the Eucharist in the most emotional, passionate terms — the way a romantic might write about his lover (or the way Jim Acosta might write about himself).

Here’s a sample, from a long letter that Tolkien wrote to his son: “Out of the darkness of my life, so much frustrated, I put before you the one great thing to love on earth: the Blessed Sacrament… There you will find romance, glory, honor, fidelity, and the true way of all your loves on earth, and more than that: Death: by the divine paradox, that which ends life, and demands the surrender of all, and yet by the taste—or foretaste—of which alone can what you seek in your earthly relationships (love, faithfulness, joy) be maintained, or take on that complexion of reality, of eternal endurance, which every man’s heart desires.”

Are we seriously supposed to believe that the man who wrote that used his pedestal to promote paganism?

The Lord of the Rings is a Christian masterpiece. The trilogy’s fans know it. Tolkien knew it. And hopefully Jack Posobiec will read this piece so he can know it too.

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Peter J. Hasson is an editor at The Washington Free Beacon and author of The Manipulators: Facebook, Google, Twitter, and Big Tech’s War on Conservatives.

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The Lord of the Rings Reminds Us That Great Stories Have Christian Roots