The Religious Imagination of The Rings of Power
I recently finished rewatching The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power’s first season and found myself quite moved by a theme that comes unexpectedly to the forefront in the final two episodes. The tragic climax of the main storyline – the eruption of the volcano later known as Mount Doom – is placed unusually early, in episode six (of eight), leaving the last two hours for the characters to grieve and reflect. In this emotional space, which onscreen fantasy epics rarely stay in for more than a scene or two, the theme of Providence, so essential to Tolkien’s work, emerges with surprising clarity. Three lines of dialogue, in particular, stood out to me:
The elven commander Galadriel tells the young boy Theo, whose home has just been destroyed: “There are powers beyond darkness at work in this world. Perhaps on days such as this, we’ve little choice but to trust to their designs and surrender our own.”
Míriel, Queen Regent of Númenor, tells her captain Elendil, who has just lost his son in a failed military campaign: “My father once told me that the way of the Faithful is committing to pay the price, even if the cost cannot be known, and trusting that in the end it will be worth it.”
And, the mysterious wizard known as the Stranger tells the Harfoot Nori Brandyfoot, who is about to leave her home and family: “Betimes our paths are laid before us by powers greater than our own. In those moments, it’s our task to make our feet go where our hearts wish not to tread.”
In all three scenes, one character consoles another by invoking a sense of deep faith in a transcendently good higher power. This higher power requires commitment and surrender; its designs are ultimately for the good, but nonetheless involve sacrifice and real heartache. (The dialogue between Míriel and Elendil is couched explicitly in terms of religious devotion, as both characters are members of a traditional religious group known as the Faithful.) This is unusual territory for a big-budget pop culture production in the Year of Our Lord 2024!
As far as I know, only one of the artistic voices behind The Rings of Power is on record about his religion: J.D. Payne, one of the show’s two creators (with his writing partner Patrick McKay). Payne is a Mormon, not a Catholic Christian like Tolkien; though many Mormons consider their religion just one more denomination of Christianity, the theological differences are so great that Tolkien would consider Payne’s beliefs beyond the pale of orthodox Christianity (as do I). Nevertheless, I think The Rings of Power compellingly captures a certain elusive quality of Tolkien’s work – what we might call a religious quality – and it has crossed my mind to wonder if this can be traced to Payne’s imagination and its roots in his Mormon religion.
I have had this thought in the back of my mind for a couple years, since The Rings of Power began airing in 2022 and I started reading interviews with Payne and McKay, but I was fortuitously (providentially?) reminded of it lately – on the eve of season 2! – while reading an essay by Josh Herring in Theology, Fantasy, and the Imagination.
Herring’s essay draws a connection between Tolkien’s writing and the fantasy novels of Orson Scott Card and Brandon Sanderson – both of whom, like J.D. Payne, are Mormon. Herring writes that Tolkien’s fantasy “developed from his understanding of the fundamental nature of reality. Out of Tolkien’s Christian convictions about the Fall, sin, redemption, and restoration grew a fantasy about human frailty and greatness, and the necessity of fighting sin balanced against the impossibility of its eradication through purely human means.” Herring goes on to clarify that Tolkien “did not write his stories to didactically teach Catholic doctrine. Instead, because his convictions were held so deeply, everything he wrote was inevitably shaped by his convictions.”
According to Herring, “Tolkien connected an author’s understanding of primary reality, which lay within the religious answers to fundamental questions, to his literary productivity.” In other words, Tolkien saw his Catholic theology as the fertile ground in which his fantasy was rooted; Catholicism gave him a profound understanding of the nature of the real world, and he built on this firm foundation to create his imaginary world of Middle-earth. If Tolkien’s theory is correct, Herring extrapolates, “an unintentional consequence of secularism is a dearth of strong sources from which story-tellers draw.” By discarding religion, secularism loses the ability to provide firm answers to the fundamental questions of reality – and in so doing, perhaps, uproots the imagination from the soil in which it could flourish.
Herring is upfront about the fact that “Mormonism differs from Christian theology in significant ways, so much so that Tolkien would not recognize it as a source of thought connecting the author to primary reality.” However, he suggests that “Mormonism is also a fruitful source of literary creation” because, as a general rule, “religious faith serves as a fruitful foundation for imaginative literature” and “convictions matter for literary fruitfulness.” In other words, a religious imagination is distinct from a secular imagination, such that “authors with deep spiritual heritages are more equipped to create literature than those who reject a spiritual foundation.”
This is not to say that religious artists are setting out to make religious art, per se; much like Tolkien, Herring argues, “neither Card nor Sanderson attempt to draw on their faith in utilitarian ways; they are authentically Mormon by conviction, and their writings are Mormon because those ideas well up from within the authors.” In an interview for the website Mormon Artist, Payne voices similar thoughts when asked, “In what ways does the gospel affect your storytelling?”:
Think about asking the same question of those in other professions: “How does the gospel affect your dental-practice? Astrophysics research? Mountain climbing?” Is there a particularly Mormon way to go about climbing a mountain? Perhaps the answer is “absolutely,” but not in the way people might expect. The gospel affects you as a person, and that affects everything you do.
In light of all this, I was very interested to hear Payne and McKay interviewed on a podcast for Christianity Today this week – and sure enough, Payne had some rather striking things to say about his relationship to Tolkien’s work:
These books touch on the sacred for us... And I firmly believe that one day, after this life, I will look Tolkien in the eye and he'll say, like, “What did you do with your stewardship over Middle-earth?” And I'm going to have to make an accounting for it, you know?
It is more or less obligatory, in a time when most big Hollywood productions are remaking someone else’s intellectual property, for creative types to make a point of their respect for the original work they are rebooting or adapting – but you seldom hear anyone talk about it like that.
It seems to me that Payne’s imagination has been shaped by his Mormon religion to treat sacred texts with a certain reverence – and that he treats The Lord of the Rings a bit like one of those texts. He can rattle off chapter-and-verse quotes from Tolkien at the drop of a hat in interviews, the same way he quotes the Mormon Scriptures, and the Rings of Power writer’s room, where each day of work begins with a discussion about a quote from Tolkien, sounds like a Bible study! As The Rings of Power begins its second season, I am eager to see how this religiously-inflected imagination continues to bear fruit.