Thread by @KrisAtLarge

we still love @JRRTolkien, which is why we detest Peter Jackson so very much—we think he turned one our favorite childhood works of art into coarse crass (and racist) action trash, and for some reason hardly anyone's noticed. I suppose it's a sign we're in the Bad Place™.

(1/x)

it's one of the ill-kept secrets of the modern-day fascıst movement, by the way, that they *adore* the Peter Jackson #LOTR films—people like @MattWalshBlog and @Timcast and @benshapiro have probably watched those trashy movies a thousand times. they're big hits, after all.

(2/x)

and if someone like @benshapiro adores your movie, then you've done something dreadfully wrong—and I earnestly hope that Peter Jackson's treatment of #Tolkien one day gets a very thorough critical laceration. Jackson's a hacky director, and he made polished hackwork.

(3/x)

I'd like to return to Tolkien himself, who helped push me in the direction of Catholicism. #Chesterton was more influential there but I took note of Tolkien's Catholicism as well, when resolving upon adult conversion in early 200x.

also, I knew about that famous *talk*.

(4/x)

#Christians (especially American evangelical Christians like @Franklin_Graham and @RickWarren, who learned a thousand bad intellectual habits from #CSLewis) have eulogized The Talk™ between Tolkien and Lewis—the one that got Lewis to convert.

archive.is/xWlMS

(5/x)

the story of Jack Lewis's conversion after a conversation with J. R. R. Tolkien is probably one of the most powerful modern myths in Christianity. Lewis and Tolkien have _de facto_ sainthood in the eyes of today's Christians. (Charles Williams? Owen Barfield? not so much.)

(6/x)

I can honestly say that it indirectly affected *me*, because I found myself wanting to believe in Tolkien's premise: after a confoundedly unpleasant and messy collision with neo-pagan spirituality in 1999-2001, the simplicity of Christianity was suddenly more appealing.

(7/x)

even at the time I had difficulty with it. sure, Prof. Tolkien could *assert* that Christianity was somehow the summing-up or fulfillment of pagan spirituality—but was that TRUE? it never felt too convincing, but I was willing to compromise; I wanted *some* spiritual home.

(8/x)

I was willing to accept my Catholic godparents' attitude—the Catholic family who introduce me to the church and sponsored my decision to go through RCIA (that's "Rites of Catholic Initiation for Adults", I believe) and formally convert. I miss these folks a bit, still.

(9/x)

anyway they took a more *resigned* sort of approach: even if they felt pagan sympathies (as I did) they regarded paganism as basically dead, a broken line of tradition, and Catholicism was what we had now and it at least absorbed some aspects of pagan spirituality.

(10/x)

I was able to convince myself that if there was any line of tradition to follow from my earlier Hellenic interests to a modern religious tradition, it'd be through Christianity—so I basically accepted Tolkien's logic, in a more half-hearted way than Lewis, I admit.

(11/x)

and, well, I think he was wrong. I think Tolkien went out on a limb when he claimed that Christianity was the fulfillment or final draft of pagan spirituality. it's honestly a very Western, British sort of idea—oversimplifying everything to a simple formula or ruleset.

(12/x)

he wanted to win #CSLewis over—and then the [expletive deleted] fool converted to the Church of England instead! an _Irishman_ did that! I've heard that #Tolkien wasn't at all happy that Jack Lewis spurned Catholicism. I'm not happy either; the C of E is a sick joke.

(13/x)

maybe it would have been better for the world if The Talk™ with @JRRTolkien had never happened, and Jack Lewis had stayed a poetaster instead of transmogrifying into a secular preacher. "Apostle to the Sceptics" indeed. sorry, I think my spleen is showing.

~Chara of Pnictogen