Toby Lucas

Few people dominate their field quite as much as J. R. R. Tolkien dominates the fantasy genre. The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings have captured countless imaginations with their vivid worldbuilding, their gentle balance of grand themes and familiar feelings, the rich stories and characters, and the timeless struggle between good and evil. All these years after their initial publication, we keep returning to Tolkien's Middle Earth, in books, films, games, and recently Amazon's The Rings of Power TV series, reportedly the most expensive ever financed ($58 million per episode). Tolkien's stories seem timeless, always relevant and fresh. To have created such a rich world (with its own languages and histories) that has sparked so manyother people's creativity is a fantastic legacy, and in my opinion, cements Tolkien as one of the most brilliant artists of the last century.  With all this in mind, I was fascinated to come across an interview with Tolkien that briefly touche

In the final part of my series Culture in the Christian Worldview , I outlined four principles for how Christians might engage with our culture. I would like to consider the last of these, the call to ‘create culture’, in more detail. I wrote: Christians can also participate in this conversation by creating art of their own. We are creative by nature and should think critically and purposefully about what we create, and perhaps, even gently, we can help steer the conversation, and lift our collective gaze in a heavenward direction. So, as people who are creative by nature and determined to direct our efforts for God’s glory, how should the Christian faith impact our creative expressions? What makes art ‘Christian’? Immediately we encounter an issue of definition. The most obvious Christian distinctive is the gospel, but this has so permeated our culture that concepts of sacrifice, for instance, are part of everyone's vocabulary. S ome of the most affecting films and books directly