One Does Not Simply Walk Into Thinking Lord of the Rings is Pagan

A recent episode of the ThoughtCrime podcast set conservatives on X abuzz.

The spark that lit the flame: conservative firebrand Jack Posobiec declaring that J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Lord of the Rings” is not only not Christian, but in fact “overtly pagan.”

.@JackPosobiec: Lord of the Rings is overtly pagan. pic.twitter.com/OiNMWC7HbP

— Human Events (@HumanEvents) March 26, 2026

Tolkien has returned to mainstream conversation after reports that the Trump Derangement Syndrome patient and former comedian, Stephen Colbert, is helping develop a new Middle-earth film with Peter Jackson’s team.

Posobiec, no stranger to controversial takes, made the following case:

‘Narnia’ and ‘Lord of the Rings’ were, you know, kind of, kind of written almost not, you know, concurrently in a sense. And Tolkien always said that he didn’t like Narnia because he thought that it was too overtly Christian. And 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. There’s nothing overtly Christian about ‘Lord of the Rings.’ 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.

Posobiec is right about one thing: “The Lord Of The Rings” doesn’t have a Christ figure. It has three.

Tolkien distributes the threefold office of Christ between Gandalf, Frodo, and Aragorn: prophet, priest, and king.

Gandalf (not a wizard, actually) is an angel sent, literally from the heavens, to Middle-earth to counsel its people. He meets death and returns transformed and renewed. Frodo bears a burden of suffering he did not choose but accepts for the salvation of others. Aragorn is the self-exiled king whose healing hands and rightful claim to a throne can restore a fading kingdom and fallen world.

Yes, a fallen world — where could that concept come from?

Let’s also consider that Frodo’s journey to Mount Doom begins on December 25th and concludes on March 25th, the Feast of Annunciation, the date of Christ’s crucifixion, and the beginning of death’s defeat.

Tolkien’s monarchist vision of the good is something of a modern fixation amongst conservative Catholics, weary of liberal democracy’s slow decline into Denethor-level despair and unwillingness to “conserve” anything in the face of evil rising in Mordor.

But Posobiec prefers C.S. Lewis’s “Chronicles of Narnia” series, as do I. There the Christian imagery is more overt. Aslan is not even a “Christ figure,” but Christ himself operating in a multiverse with layer upon layer of reality waiting to be peeled back like an onion. What the heroes of Lewis’s story learn is that London is an echo of Narnia, and Narnia is but an echo of another place even more glorious.

For his part, the irascible Tolkien didn’t care for Narnia. But Lewis very much cared for Middle-earth.

“The value of the myth is that it takes all the things we know and restores to them the rich significance which has been hidden by ‘the veil of familiarity,’” Lewis said of his friend’s world. Tolkien dips Christian truth in a stew of medieval mythology, indeed drawing on imagery from pagan stories and making them submissive to Christian belief.

Posobiec mistakes the absence of overtly Christian imagery for the lack of Christian themes. But just because no one takes the Eucharist in Gondor does not mean Tolkien’s world must be pagan. Quite the contrary. Middle-earth in all its strangeness speaks to the imaginative hunger of people’s hearts, calling them to see with fresh eyes the Truth they so often take for granted.

In Western books and films, Christian morality and themes are the default setting — we often become “nose-blind” to it in the same way you can’t smell the distinct odor of your own home until you return home from vacation. In that way, Tolkien and Lewis both favored dressing stories in ways that lower the defenses of the reader and free our God-given imaginations to know Him in different contexts. It’s a beautiful idea.

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Stephen Kent is a conservative commentator and host of Geeky Stoics on YouTube. Follow him @StephenKentX.