[goldwine]

I appreciate your reply, Maril, and I think you have summed up a lot of Christians (and others!) quite well! As a Christian know I can swing from spiritual to political myself!<BR>I can see your parallel about Gandalf from the Silm. I would recommend that people read the Silm for themselves but it is always out these days....! <P>As our discussions in "trilogy and bible" prove, there are no difinitive answers and people will read in a lot of what they bring to it. My general discussions include such comments as "well, Tolkien was a Christian"... On the whole I don't feel the need to defend it. I am so biased about LOTR etc. that I can get a little too passionate!