“You can say what you like, Gaffer, but Bag End’s a Queer place, and its folk are queerer.” 

Twenty years on from Peter Jackson’s blockbuster film adaptations, J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings is more popular than ever. As Amazon releases a mammoth five-season Middle-earth series in September 2022, an increasingly diverse audience is discovering Tolkien’s world of hobbits and heroes, dark lords and deep magic, elves and orcs and talking trees, for the very first time. But whenever someone tries to interpret the text in a progressive way, a chorus of naysayers emerge from the woodwork to shout: “Stop trying to ‘woke-wash’ LOTR! Don’t you know Tolkien was a Catholic???” Continue reading Queer and Back Again: The Gospel According to J.R.R. Tolkien →