Show Notes
In this episode of Peaceable and Kind, Derek Vreeland continues the journey into Tolkien’s world this time joined by longtime friend and guest Walter Rogero. Together, they explore why The Lord of the Rings and Tolkien’s broader legendarium continue to matter for Christian faith today.
Walter brings both pastoral experience and deep familiarity with Tolkien’s writings, offering insight into how Middle-earth functions not just as a story, but as a world shaped by a distinctly Christian imagination stepped in the virtues and values of the Middle Ages.
The conversation also explores the role of imagination, story, and myth in shaping a mature and resilient faith. Derek and Walter reflect on their shared spiritual journeys from Pentecostal/charismatic roots into a deeper appreciation for liturgical traditions and how Tolkien’s work has brought them both enjoyed and helped form a richer imagination for the work of God in the world.
This episode is an invitation to see Tolkien not as an escape from reality but as a way of seeing reality more clearly.
Key Takeaways
Tolkien’s work reflects a deeply Christian vision without relying on direct allegory.
Imagination, myth, and story play a vital role in shaping mature faith.
Tolkien helps recover a sense of mystery, beauty, and moral depth often missing in modern faith expressions.
Spiritual formation is shaped not only by doctrine, but by the stories we inhabit.
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Transcript
Narrator: Welcome back. To another episode of Peaceable and Kind, where we are sowing seeds of peace and kindness in a world of discord and despair. And if you are new to Peaceable and Kind, welcome. My name’s Derek. I’m the host, and if you are new, let me invite you to subscribe wherever you’re listening to this podcast. And if you are enjoying these podcast episodes, would you mind leaving a rating or review that helps other people find Christian podcasts like this? And today we’re going to take another dip into Tolkien. I had already recorded a few podcasts. about the Lord of the Rings and Middle Earth. And I thought I was done, but then a friend of mine reached out and said, I want to have a conversation. So we’re gonna take another dip into Tolkien, but it’s not just me. I have invited a friend to join me My guest today is Dr. Walter Rojero. He has 22 years of pastoral experience serving in churches all over the U. S. Massachusetts, Virginia, Oklahoma, North Florida, and rural Kansas. He he even gave me a ride one time when I was hiking a trail in northern rural Arkansas Uh Walter holds three degrees from Oral Roberts University, including a Doctor of Ministry, a Masters of Divinity. and also a master of arts in missions. Additionally, he holds an undergraduate degree in music education from Stetson University in Dealand, Florida. And Walter’s doctoral work focused on creating faith and science dialogue in the local congregation. He has worked with the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences Dialogue on Science, Ethics, and Religion, and has presented nationally on developing meaningful faith and science conversation. Currently, he lives in his hometown of East Palatka, Florida, where he is a solo caregiver for his 17-year-old special needs son, and he’s also a vestry member of St. Mark’s Episcopal Church there. And Walter is a Lord of the Rings enthusiast, and I’m happy to call him my friend Walter. Welcome to Peaceable and Kind.
Derek Vreeland: Thank you so much, Derek. Exciting to be here. Uh you know, I’m a Lord of the Rings guy, kind of like that weird uncle who bought a train set and the next thing he knows his whole garage is full of trains and so probably the last uh twenty years or something I’ve been collecting this little bit and that little thing. uh not in figurines but in in deep dives and little reads of of different things around Tolkien. So I’m I’m kind of an advanced amateur in this whole whole arena.
Narrator: Well I love talking to people about what they’re really passionate about. And I am like Johnny come lately with the Lord of the Rings. I had this really nice box set that had been sitting on my shelf for years. And when I started, I was a hundred pages into the Fellowship of the Ring, and I couldn’t put it down. I would read at night and then wake up the next morning and it’s the first thing I’m thinking about. Like, I gotta get to the next chapter. And uh so I I’m excited to jump into this conversation about Tolkien, um sort of the man uh behind this wonderful epic tale, this universe that’s been created. But Walter, you and I have been friends. I cannot believe it, but this fall, it will be 30 years. How in the world did that happen? That’s insane. But uh yeah, yeah, it will. Thirty years ago. I can’t I can’t believe it. We met, um, I think it was both our first year at Royal Roberts University We were seminary students. And if I remember correctly, that first semester we had all the same courses. So we had all of the same classes.
Derek Vreeland: I’m pretty sure that the very first class that I had uh w was with you. I mean, I think we were both together. It was it was Greek. Right. And uh I I believe that that we were sitting uh maybe not that far apart in that first class there at ORU.
Narrator: I think we may have been like on the front row. I think it was Dr. Grizzle’s Introduction to Greek or Greek 101. I think we were on the front row. And uh yeah, we were new and and we met, but So uh before we talk about Tolkien, I I wanted you to share a little bit about just your spiritual journey, um, sort of where you started in the faith. Of course, when I met you thirty years ago, we were um at a Pentecostal Seminary and now you’re the member an Episcopal Church. So talk to me a little bit about your spiritual journey
Derek Vreeland: Well, again, telescoping that down is gonna be uh a a real feat. And so uh I’m a little bit like uh tree beard the int when I start trying to tell these sorts of stories. So Oh ho. This is my best shot at at doing it quickly. Uh first off, I grew up Roman Catholic. My last name, Rojero, kind of gives it away. Baptized, confirmed, yada yada, went off to college, had a class in our Judeo-Christian heritage, which was a primer in classical liberal theology and uh walked away from that agnostic. And so I fell in with a professor and I got set up. in in in you know, God put me with this guy and I ended up in this incredibly, incredibly fundamentalistic, incredibly, incredibly Pentecostal home group And it was the sort of place where that demons were being cast out. Sure. You know, in the room uh people came in and and left completely differently. Prayers were answered and and you know I walked into this whole other experience. Uh you have to imagine I grew up kind of this redneck kid from the backwoods of Florida and uh was in this prayer meeting. It was all Puerto Ricans. And I didn’t even know there was such a thing as tongues. And so, you know, I didn’t know when we were talking in Spanish or tongues or whatever was going on, but all I know is at the end of the night I accepted Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior and I started this journey. And funny thing about it, uh very soon into that journey Uh I got rid of so many things as as you know many people who go through that experience do. And among them, among the books that I burned, along with my Dungeons and Dragons and and all of that, Tolkien. Burned my Tolkien. Oh, because there are wizards and things. I barely kept my Lewis Uh, you know, because there were witches and things. But uh but somebody else, you know, said don’t don’t know that he was Christian, he was okay. But uh Tolkien was not. He went up and smoked. And so uh Then I went through sort of a shepherding process. It was a a kind of very intense discipleship with this group. I wasn’t sure that anybody outside of our little group was Christian and and kind of going through life Uh with my whole world getting turned upside down just over and over and over. You know, what I understood reality to be, what I understood the big story of the universe to be, and that included faith in science and Yeah, one day I I read a young earth creationism uh book and I had wanted to be a a paleontologist at one time, and so I’d never had any problem with faith in science and Then I read a book on young earth creationism and realized, oh boy, I should have a real problem here. So anyway, uh my world kept changing and the story and the way that it was shaped and and bookended uh w was getting turned over. And in in this process, uh soon after I kind of went through this, my sister went through a different process with Mormonism. She ended up marrying her high school boyfriend and uh became a Mormon. And uh so it’s very strong still to to this day in the Mormon church. And so uh uh laid a lot of groundwork, the all of these experiences, for me to start asking, well, you know. Where where where do we put our flag in all of this? Where do we stand? Uh one of my one of my particular concerns my whole life has been I want to know what’s real. I want to know what’s really real and and truly true. And probably if I had not fallen in with a group of people who I saw the demonstrable power of God that was ja and and things that I just couldn’t explain in any other way, but that God was involved in this, then I don’t know that I could have become a Christian. Sure. One of the things about liturgical settings is that it’s possible to uh have the glass without the water, if you will. And so as an altar boy, I could fall asleep on the altar I would still wake up in time to stand, to kneel, to to to do whatever I had to do, but I would go straight back out. And so the liturgical tradition at that point was anathema. Particularly because this group that I was discipled with were anti-Catholic. And so I was looking for the living spirit, and I was looking for God, and and you know You know, what what’s he doing in the world? And uh so anyway, I end up at ORU. I get I get a dramatic call in the ministry is as uh, you know, you almost need in that kind of of heightened environment. And uh was trying to figure out of working in an entrepreneurial venture and then trying to figure out, well, you know, do I stay here? What do I do? And ended up in at ORU. Again Just that story, you know, a tree beard, I could be here a couple hours telling all the little bits about that. But uh Then at ORU something remarkable happened. Because ORU, as you know, the professors all came from a different tradition And so I got this Christian smorgasbord. It was unbelievable. And it was very disorienting for people who were coming. looking for a spoon-fed theology, this is what you believe, but it was exactly what I needed.
Narrator: Me too.
Derek Vreeland: So, you know, you had one class that was Armenian, another that was Calvinist, a Catholic professor, uh Assemblies of God Methodist And and really that laid the groundwork for me getting my my ability to explore back. So at one point my Christianity had telescoped down Not really much larger than this little group that I ha was part of, maybe fifteen people. And I wasn’t sure if anybody outside that group was Christian. And then as I started seeing the wider expression of Christianity, it became such more such a a a Richer and deeper experience, but I also got my brain back. I got my intellect back. It was okay to ask questions. Yes. It was okay to explore things and to to struggle with things and wrestle with them and and so it it was a great experience for me being ORU and My background actually before I got to ORU, the Lord took me, I say, kicking and screaming into the Methodist church. I was a Methodist youth pastor. And then while we were at ORU, I was expecting to end up in a independent cre you know, I was looking for, you know, the the the real Tulsa experience and And I first ended up in an extremely traditional assemblies of God Church. Now the Assemblies of God Church that I was in in Florida was on the charismatic edge, and this was more on the traditional Pentecostal edge. And uh so then then I ended up in another Methodist church, and that Methodist church showed me the amazement of being able to balance So many disparate elements of Christianity in one congregation. It was a large congregation, and they had everything from ultra-conservative Pentecostals. to people that I I at that point would have thought of as very progressive, very liberal, a big tent sort of place. Right. And uh that kind of Christianity uh was part of my forging in those years And then I got out and uh found myself in the assemblies of God as a pastor. And uh literally when I was in Tulsa, there was at least one point where If somebody hadn’t said it, I remember them saying something so close to it that that I paraphrase it by them saying, in essence, why do you need all of the education, boy? All you need is a Bible. As I started spending time in that world, I started asking myself, when we collapse history when we lose the the roots of the faith, uh and and maybe it’s through some attempt to get back to what the apostles taught Or maybe it’s a sense that God is doing something new and we finally arrived at the end times. Or or however we do that, w by hitting the reset button and and jettisoning all of the history that’s come before, what really separates that drive and that philosophy f from the idea of of Mormonism? It basically said until Joseph Smith appeared on the earth there was this great apostasy of the church. And doesn’t make sense. And so I was asking, how do I connect again to this great heritage? And where was the spirit in all of this and and what was God doing through all of these ages And so, you know, history at at ORU and and some reading and things like that, all very, very helpful to me as I as I was parsing that And then I found myself desiring to do a PhD. I wanted to do a PhD. I’d gotten out of ORU and was saying, okay, well, what’s next? And just because of where I was living in Tulsa and and in youth ministry, I thought, well, I was prompted uh to instead of jumping into a PhD to do a doctor of ministry. And so initially uh I started out the Lord of the Rings was just coming out, and so were all the Harry Potter books and I was convinced that there had been a deposit made in my life by C. S. Lewis in the Chronicles of Narnia and and even in the characters in The Lord of the Rings. that after I came to Christ or or after I returned to my baptismal covenant or however we we want to talk about that, I don’t think God ever really let go of me, uh but After he really got a hold of me, there were many things that I found buried that surfaced and were a part of Christian formation. And so uh as I wanted to do a PhD, I thought, well, when I do this this D-Man, I will do it in something that I could turn into a PhD project. Sure. And so I was the youth pastor, all of these movies were coming out. And I actually went back and reread The Lord of the Rings just before the first movie came out. It’s the first time I I did that. And uh I was also taking D-Men courses, and one of them was was a psychology course, and I was really intrigued. by a um Dr. Decker, if you remember Dr.
Narrator: Decker.
Derek Vreeland: And he gave a map of kind of the human psyche, uh the way the brain works. I’m not sure how to describe it exactly. uh and there was the unconscious mind and then there was the conscious mind and then there was like this phantom zone and in it it was written the word fantasy and I thought You know, Pullman uh wrote the books, his dark materials and all of that. Uh he kind of got this idea that things were getting smuggled into people’s lives. He was an atheist And he didn’t like the way that things were getting smuggled into people’s lives by Lewis. And so he thought, I’m going to do the same thing as an atheist. And I got intrigued uh about how these stories, how these these ways of being, these kind of tapes get packed right past our conscious mind into our into the deepest parts of who we are. and affect us in ways that we really don’t fully understand. And so that word fantasy for me was was interesting. I thought, well. You know, what’s that what’s the role of fantasy in faith development? Oh yeah. And that that’s where I started my doctoral research Uh it didn’t go very far because uh life being what it was, I found myself in the senior pastorate somewhere else and And you know, if I had sat and just done what I needed to do there, I probably could have finished that thing and gotten out of seminary and and maybe even gone on to do the PhD. Yeah Uh, the long story short on that is while I didn’t and and I got in with adults, I I then thought, Well, they’re not going to want to talk about fantasy so I’ll look at another area that that really fascinates me, faith and science, and that’s something adults, you know not realizing what on earth I’d signed myself up for. And it took something like fourteen or fifteen years for me to get through all of what I needed to do to to be at a place where I I wasn’t a complete moron in that area. And so I am now able to sit in a room And be the stupidest person in the room, but at least know what I don’t know, which took me about fifteen years to get to that place.
Narrator: For sure.
Derek Vreeland: Oh no, no. That’s just being around so many people who are so far so far beyond where I am and and being in places that I have no business being other than that God put me there. Uh which has happened more times in my life uh than than I can express. I’d just had so many weird things happen. But Tolkien, uh Tolkien’s walked along with me. And so Tolkien, of course, was Catholic, Lewis was Anglican, and uh you know I just always found the portrait of of Jesus in Lewis, uh the Aslans, you know, the that analogue to be so winsome. And so there was always kind of this open door to me towards Anglicanism Uh but I didn’t know what Anglicanism was. And so uh when I found myself in DC, uh I found myself uh first off doing a lot of research around faith and science and Inevitably, I found the people who had really wrestled with that in a deep way were Anglican theologians. And or at least they’re the ones who kept puffing up in my research. And so that that whole world kept speaking to me through the doctoral work I was doing. But parallel to that, um My my wife at the time uh went through a a postgraduate certificate in spiritual formation. And so then all of these um all of these really old ways of of connecting with God, um, I won’t go into them. They they came into my home. And about the same time I started renting our church building out to uh a a an Anglican church uh for their youth ministry and my kids got into this private school and everybody seemed to be Anglican everywhere. I couldn’t seem to quite get away from it. And uh So uh it just seemed that everywhere I turned here was this Anglicanism and it and at first uh you know, as we went through these liturgical sorts of things uh it it churned up a lot of things that I had walked away from. Sure. I don’t recommend this, but the the day after I got saved I called my Catholic mother And I told her, Mom, I’m never going to church with you again. Oh my. Don’t recommend it. Don’t do that. Don’t recommend it. But uh again, it was just, you know This that was me saying I made a commitment. And and you know, really I was breaking with the whole tradition of my heritage. I mean it wasn’t about my my my family. This was about my roots going back centuries And uh and yet this whole liturgical tradition uh started calling. Yeah. And uh again, I had been in these anti-Catholic, really anti-liturgical sort of circles. And um and I just found myself again and again uh being exposed to it Yeah. And I know that you’ve done a a great electionary. Yes. And and you put that together and it’s a fantastic thing, uh which I now pray from, not yours, but the one that you drew it from in the Book of Common Prayer But before I did that, um, you know, these these liturgical threads that were running through my life uh led me to put together my own lectionary. And so there was a time, you know, as a as a young pastor thinking I don’t know the Bible hardly at all. I’ve got all these degrees and I don’t know anything about the Bible. And so I put together a lectionary and I was reading the New Testament complete four times a year. Uh, the Old Testament complete four times a year And Psalms and Proverbs every month. Wow uh when I did my lectionary. It took me forever to put it together, but but there was some something. And of course, uh Wesley’s, you know, uh being in Methodist churches, Wesley’s uh devotion to or or Maybe a better way of saying it is his uh emphasis on on methodology on discipleship. Anyway, that all was laying in the background for me and and all of a sudden I realized as I’ve been kind of spinning through all of these different denominations, all of these different places, there’s a place where all of these threads somehow coalesce and come together. and uh and and become a a a whole uh unity. Yeah. The Anglican Church in North America talks about the three strands that they bring together. And uh and I felt You know, all of a sudden I’ve got something that I’m not struggling with uh intellectually, spiritually. You know, people who really were open to the move of the spirit and Yet they weren’t afraid of really embracing ideas and the history of the church and the messiness of that history and and and what we do in today’s world. And so You said I was I’m in an Episcopal church, so I moved back home. Uh in between, uh I ended up uh pastoring a a Disciples of Christ church. And that was a whole other side trip and I was trying to figure out what God wanted and that’s the door he opened up and and I I I guess that’s really been the whole journey is just trying to figure out where God’s got me, what he’s doing. And so when I ended up back here Uh, in my hometown, I walked into an Episcopal church and I had intended to go to another church down the road. As a matter of fact, it was my plan to walk out of that church and get to another church that day. And somebody stopped me and grabbed my hand and said, Hey, I was friends with your mother in high school and they never let me go. I missed that service. And then they embraced me and my son and and so here we are. All right, I’m Still kind of wondering why it is and what it is and what’s going on, but it’s the Lord and that’s what we do.
Narrator: Yeah, th I think God is at work in some type of let’s just maybe call it a convergence of traditions. Um and I think if you can pull together sort of like the the Pentecostal expectation for for God’s power and presence and you and you sort of mix that with episcopal liturgy, I think beautiful things could happen. I want to move on to talk a little bit about uh Tolkien. And in particular, here’s what I want to ask you about Tolkien, and that is what is it? about Tolkien’s work that beckons us. That’s the way I feel, that it it invites us to visit and revisit his material. What is it in Tolkien that keeps calling us back? Hey friends, I want to pause this episode for just a moment to let you know that Resurrection, eight lessons on how God restores us, the third and final book in the God in the Neighborhood Bible. Bible study series is out now. Go to the show notes for ordering information.
Derek Vreeland: Well, I think you get a lot of different answers from a lot of different people for that question. Obviously there’s a depth there. I mean Tolkien started writing these things way back in the early 1900s and he didn’t even publish I think until was it the thirties and the you know, the fifties. Right.
Narrator: Something like late thirties, I think.
Derek Vreeland: Uh and so uh y you know, there’s this this immense history and immense amount of work that he did. He was He was actually trying he was a young man and and going through college at a time where people were rediscovering national myths. Nationalism was an emerging trend and and they were establishing uh national identities around these myths And he felt England is impoverished because we have had so many other people and our myths have been erased by all of these others who’ve come through And so part of what he wanted to do was create an an entire mythos for England And so, you know, we get the tip of the iceberg uh when we read The Hobbit or The Lord of the Rings, and he’s got all of these other things that he he he had been writing. And so the depth of it, the completeness of it, but I think one of the things that, well, one of the things that really draws us to it as well is. the number of touchstones it has with the Western literary canon.
Narrator: Right.
Derek Vreeland: It it’s become a part of the canon, uh although many literary scholars would have disagreed with that idea probably twenty, thirty years ago. Uh but it really has become a part of the canon and it’s based in the canon in a lot of ways, so there are echoes of things. There are myths, there are so many parts of Tolkien that I wouldn’t say were borrowed so much as processed through him into something unique. And it all came packaged in a Christian imagination that was shaped Through conversation with other devout Christians who are asking, how do we engage the things that we enjoy and how do we engage those in ways that are truly and authentically Christian and and you know Tolkien is more reserved in that than Lewis.
Narrator: I I think uh you know Lewis
Derek Vreeland: being a a little more direct in that and and Tolkien being a good Catholic, maybe even taken aback by some of that.
Narrator: And isn’t it true that Tolkien had said that He does not like allegory and doesn’t want readers to read Lord of the Rings as an allegory, where I think Lewis is in the it’s in his forward. It’s in the forward, okay It’s in his forward to the Lord of the Rings.
Derek Vreeland: Yes. And so Of course, it came out after World War Two and everybody wanted the ring to represent the bomb or the the Mordor to represent the Nazis or something like that. And Uh I believe his phrasing is something along the the um the lines of I’ve I’ve always dite detested allegory in all of its forms. from the time that I was old enough to discern it or something like that. I don’t know. He did his level best to say there’s nothing allegorical about what I’m doing here. And uh and so yes. Another thing that happens in Tolkien though is he is someone operating from a medieval worldview. Right. And uh I mean Lewis’s last book. was called the discarded image, where he argued that we’ve lost something profound and valuable when we moved away from and wholly abandoned uh the Middle Ages for the Enlightenment and Modernist thought.
Narrator: Right.
Derek Vreeland: And so uh Tolkien Is completely immersed in that world, and what makes the Hobbit and then the Lord of the Rings so powerful and and honestly more powerful than his other writings Is that he gives us basically a a middle class English gentleman who that we can then be with. And he becomes our stand-in And that middle class English gentleman in the Hobbit, his living room is invaded by all of these mythical people, and then he’s hauled out of his bedroom uh out of his out of his house on this quest that becomes increasingly epic, uh moving from a kind of childhood tale to something that really is profoundly, profoundly adult, statements on war and and on on the role of of that. But it does something brilliant. And and The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit both do that, which of course The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit were the only two books that Tolkien himself published. Right. So he had all of these writings and they were noodlings and they went here and there and and so the old writings were literally his attempts uh in in even in his invented languages to create epic poetry like the Iliad or the Odyssey that was rhythmic and and and so I mean he went and tried to create, you know, these old tales And uh so then he comes along and he writes on someone’s exam paper, in a hole in the ground lived a hobbit. And then he kind of asked himself, well, what on earth is a hobbit? And and that’s kind of the running joke from there on out.
Narrator: Yeah.
Derek Vreeland: Is this hobbit uh then because again he was a tale teller. Right You know, when his son went off to war, he was sending him stories from The Lord of the Rings and back and forth in World War Two. And when his children lost their their dog, uh this little toy dog at the beach, He invents this whole tale. You can read it uh today. You can buy it. It’s called Roveron Roverendum or something about all of the adventures, the toy dog. He ran off to be on all of these adventures. And so Tolkien was telling these tales to his kids. And he had immersed himself and created but not only in the mythologies of the world, he was deeply influenced by like Kivalu, I can’t r don’t know how to pronounce it. the Nordic Scandinavian epic that uh that was was uh a key in in kind of forging that nation and that was a lot of sort of the th things that went off in his brain and there’s elements of those tales in some of these old tales from what he calls the first age of Middle Earth. Right. Uh and so The roots of this go all over the place. Yeah. And the reason it speaks to us is not only that he was a a first-rate intellect deeply steeped in a tradition that speaks to things that the modern world has in has largely thrown away. And and we have to also remember uh he was anti modern in some ways because he watched what happened in World War One, which is unfathomable even to us, th the way the entire world was changed. Uh we live in in the world of of World War Two. And w uh we understand that, but World War One, the world was completely different before World War One. And war was completely different. And he witnessed death and mechanization in different ways. Anyway, uh so he reaches then back into this this older tradition But he does so using modern literary techniques. And he he brings us an a narrow narrator that’s incredibly relatable and surrounds him in by these these heroic people. But the real heroes are never the heroic people. Right. They’re just the people that the real heroes get to hang out with.
Narrator: Exactly.
Derek Vreeland: And so here we’re along with the Hobbits on this wondrous journey that just keeps spinning unexpected things. And and Tolkien himself Seems to have discovered his way along through these things. And so there are so many quirks and turns and unexpected things that happen that make them just profoundly interesting in and of themselves. But uh and and he wrote the Hobbit to kind of be its own thing. Right. And then when he started writing The Lord of the Rings basically because everybody wanted to know more about Hobbits He got to the place where he’s writing about parties and hobbits doing this and that, and and then he gets to this chapter, The Shadow of the Past. and invents this ring or or comes back to the ring and invents how it fits to everything uh or fits with everything, I suppose I should say. And all of a sudden this vast, vast legendarium that he has but’s been alluded to here or there, you know, these swords from Gondolin are mentioned in the Hobbit But all of a sudden that past reaches through and and draws us in. I had the uh actually I had the opposite experience of you the first time I read The Lord of the Rings because I hadn’t seen the movie. This was back in the seventies And so I’m wading through all of this lore and these places and these people and what are the how does this all and Yeah. And so the great thing that the movie did was it created a ready-made experience.
Narrator: Sure.
Derek Vreeland: The horrible thing that the movie did was we lost all of this kind of crawling through dark tunnels wondering who on earth and what on earth and why and source some some of the mysteries. It looked like
Narrator: Oh exactly.
Derek Vreeland: But then you have to get into the indexes to learn how to pronounce it in anyway. Um so so for me it took a month Or maybe it was two or three months to get through the fellowship. And then it was like a couple weeks to get through two towers. Yeah. And then it was like three days. And I read all of Return of the King because By then I knew it I wasn’t learning lore and all of that.
Narrator: Yeah.
Derek Vreeland: You know, Peter Jackson did something brilliant with these films in giving us that prologue and and and we’re off to the races now when we pick up the Lord of the Rings. But It’s that depth and and th that history and there’s so much that’s alluded to. Right. uh that’s that’s somehow enchanting in it.
Narrator: There’s an there’s an there’s like an allure There’s an allure to that sort of Built-in history because things feel ancient. And this kind of ties back to a little bit what you were saying, just about your spiritual journey Is that I think that there is a longing for Christians that are in low church traditions for something that feels old and ancient and sacred. And you kind of feel that in reading Lord of the Rings. Like there’s this because they’re in the third age. There’s these other two ages that come before us all this lore that that happened before our characters are on their on their quest. Absolutely.
Derek Vreeland: And there’s more to it than that. Again, there’s these conversations and even academic conversations. So uh Tolkien was a Beowulf scholar. He was his scholarship, is one of the reasons that Beowulf became the uh the pillar of English literature that it’s considered to be today. It was kind of a side issue, and uh he was asking questions about the the Christian roots that were in these uh these these sort of half kind of half pagan, half Christian uh thing that had happened in England and so he’s trying to answer his own questions and he’s also trying to answer questions about story. Right. One of the words that that you’ll hear very quickly if you start reading about Tolkien is this word eukatastrophe.
Narrator: Right, right.
Derek Vreeland: I’m sure you’ve heard that. The happy accident. the the good that comes out of the bad somehow. And you know, without Christ dying on the cross there is no resurrection. Yes. And that’s the ultimate real Yucatastrophe. Yes. But, you know, his his philosophy is that every story should have a good ending. And but there should be some disaster and the the good ending somehow comes out of that disaster.
Narrator: Right. And that’s that’s akin to the gospel itself, as you mentioned. You know, one of the things that I really loved in my reading of Lord of the Rings Was Tolkien’s use of virtue. And for me, this is one of the things that the post-Enlightenment modern world left behind Because for medieval Catholicism, um, ethics was a matter of virtue, of these character traits. And again, uh Tolkien’s not giving us a lecture on virtue ethics, but he puts it in narrative form. And to me, I don’t know if you would agree or not, but for me in my first reading of Lord of the Rings, This is why Tolkien matters for Christian faith, because he writes stories about characters, not all humans. Um, but they display the virtues that for me are at the very heart of the Christian faith. How how do you see virtue at work in The Lord of the Rings?
Derek Vreeland: Well, just in that statement, you’re showing me how far ahead of where I started you are when you’re starting. I mean when I first I I didn’t see virtues or any of that. Now I saw archetypes. I know you’ve mentioned archetypes before and that sort of thing. Uh and uh You know, I was profoundly interested in Jung and and some other things. Uh you know, Campbell’s monomyth, uh, which is a whole other thing that you’ve mentioned in your podcast. Yeah. But uh it was when I started and this is some of the value of coming to these uh stories in different ways. It was when I started reading people who were writing about the Lord of the Rings Uh and I read a book called The Philosophy of the Lord of the Rings that’s written by a Catholic philosopher. And And then it was as plain as the nose on my face. Oh yes, look at these virtues that are everywhere. And and and I agree completely. There’s both positive and negative virtues that are being displayed throughout all of Tolkien’s work. Right. And y uh case studies, if you will, of of where where it goes right and and where it goes pretty wrong.
Narrator: Of course, of course. Yeah, because in the w in the world of of virtue ethics there is the opposite side, which is which is vice, and that can form us uh one way or another. Um if you were to talk to someone who is a Christian, they’re a believer, But they haven’t yet even opened one page from The Hobbit or The Lord of the Rings. Why would you tell that Christian reader why they should start this uh deep dive into Tolkien. Why should modern Christians read Tolkien?
Derek Vreeland: Well, the reason that I came back to Tolkien initially was that Tolkien has become a touchstone in our culture. And one of the marvelous things about Tolkien is that everybody can read Tolkien, everybody can see the movies and find something that they connect with. Sure. Maybe not everybody, but m a lot of people can do that. And so one of the best reasons that I can think of For someone who is is really a strong evangelical Christian who wants to share God’s word of breeding token is to have a conversation with someone About God in a way that is missional. Sure. It’s a way of talking about the Christian message in the way that we are Uh that, you know, i it it’s a it’s a great conversation starter. Absolutely and uh you know I I don’t know that the idea of re reading Tolkien devotionally uh is is the best reason to read Tolkien. I would agree. I think if I think if you open Tolkien, you start reading him And you find pleasure. Yes. Uh and and you find joy in the way that he uses the language in in seeing these virtues played out. Um If you even find enlightenment, uh one of the questions that Tolkien and Lewis, for that matter, were asking was Uh where was God in all of these quote-unquote godless ages and all of these godless cultures where they worshiped other gods? And uh in in Lewis, uh you see this blending and Narnia of kind of what we would think of as the Roman pagan world, but it’s it’s it’s you know, real leader is the king over the sea who sends his son Aslan, you know, as Jesus. In Tolkien, uh, it’s it’s obscured in the Lord of the Rings and in And in the Hobbit, but you do see this hand of Providence throughout. Yes. And it’s Often a mediated providence, although again without an understanding of some of his mythology behind it it’s it’s hard to understand the mediation. So you’ll notice that again and again evil characters are afraid of water. And it’s because uh in the initial creation in Tolkien’s in the Silm Sil Silmarillion Uh god, Ilvatar, the high god, the god, uh basically creates angelic beings. And another wonderful thing about Tolkien in his philosophy is that he he believes that the Christian is invited into God’s creation as a sub-creator. And so that was very freeing to me, the idea that it’s okay to be creative. It’s okay to have ideas. It’s okay to wrestle with things that are that are a little weird. It’s perilous. I mean, one of the collections of uh Tolkien’s work it are is Tales from the Perilous Realm. And he describes fairy, this kind of of calling to us from an otherworldly sort of thing, as a perilous sort of uh thing to enter into. And so just to blithely say that whatever Tolkien says to us is going to automatically be Christian. I I think we do need to be careful. That fact that I burned token at the fact that I burned token at one time was something I personally probably needed.
Narrator: Sure.
Derek Vreeland: Because I was I was involved in some things that needed to to leave my life.
Narrator: Of course.
Derek Vreeland: And so for the Christian going into Tolkien, we bring our Christianity first and foremost and we’re looking. through that lens, like Lewis said, we see all things through the Christianity. Sure. For the non-Christian coming to Tolkien, they don’t necessarily see it, but I think it still calls to them.
Narrator: Yeah.
Derek Vreeland: And becomes an opportunity for us to have a conversation with them.
Narrator: Yeah, I think for a Christian to read Tolkien, you know, looking for explicit Christian imagery is going the way of allegory that Tolkien says to avoid. For me, the reason I picked up The Lord of the Rings, as I said, I had it on my shelf for years, is I was feeling convicted that as a pastor, I wasn’t reading enough fiction. And I heard Eugene Peterson years ago say that when he was a pastor, he regularly read fiction, in addition to nonfiction, because fiction stirs our imagination. And, you know, for my Southern Baptist early days, you know, we were taught imagination is bad. It’s all perilous, you know, it’s the devil’s work. Right. But actually, I think there is some spiritual maturity that takes place when we have a developed imagination. And yes, it can go wrong. It can be perilous. But imagination also opens up our thinking towards solutions that are not right in front of us. So there’s such value. I think in Christians Reading Tolkien just to have their imaginations opened up. And so I know you’re encouraging people to read Tolkien. I’m encouraging people to read Tolkien. And here’s what we’re gonna have to do, Walter. We’re gonna have to have another conversation because we’re coming to an end of this one. Um, but thank you so much for joining me. Let me ask you, um If people want to connect with you online, what’s the best way for them to do that?
Derek Vreeland: Well, very honestly, I’m not I don’t have a huge online footprint right now. Okay, you’re off. Right now, I’m mostly, you know, I’m I’m I’m in a season right now where I’m I’m cocooning if I can. And uh so if someone does want to reach me, it’s it’s reaching out through Facebook, putting in my name And uh you know, I’ve got uh got large plans for one day, and we’ll see if that one day uh materializes. And Right now I’m just tending my vineyard where I’m at, if you will.
Narrator: Hey, I understand that. Well, if you are listening to the podcast and you are interested in connecting with Walter, find him on Facebook, send him a message. Uh Walter, let’s do this. again but thank you so much for joining me for this episode. I appreciate it Derek and it’s so good to see you again. Alright well that’s all that we have for this episode. Thank you for joining us. Go in peace And be kind.
This transcript was generated with AI and may contain errors.