Worship (in the time of the LOTR)

[TheLostPilgrim]

In the era around the time of the Lord of the Rings, would the Elves/Men/Dwarves/Hobbits and so on have worshiped Illuvatar, or the Valar, as one would worship a God or God(s) now? By the time of the LOTR, would anyone but the Elves and possibly lore masters know of the Creation of Arda? Who would Hobbits, for example, see as their deity?

Basically I'm asking if "religion" or "cults" of any sort, or any sort of sense of the divine, would've existed in Third Age Middle Earth? Would the men of Gondor worship a certain Valar, or their own "man made" Gods, in utmost essence the Valar but with man made twists on whose those Gods were? And what of the Dwarves, and Hobbits?

[radagastly]

The only sense of "worship" that I immediately recall from the text of Lord of the Rings were the "moment of silence" that Frodo and Sam shared with Faramir and company in Ithilien, and possibly, Aragorn's coronation (in having Gandalf, as a representative of Valinor, place the crown on his head.) I don't recall any mention, at least directly in the text, of the dwarves worship of Aule, their creator/sub-creator. Gimli was rather close-mouthed about his own culture, but was no doubt well educated in this matter by Dwarf standards.

Frodo could speak and, presumably, read Sindarin and appears to have had at least a halting grasp of Quenya. This seems to me to be equivalent of a medieval nobleman learning Latin, Greek and Hebrew to read the Bible in It's original language. He and Bilbo would have been the best educated among the hobbits in matters of faith, but none of the hobbits seemed to be surprised by the act of faith represented by Frodo and Bilbo sailing into the west, never to return, which tells me that they knew something about the Valar and the Undying Lands, at least, and perhaps Iluvatar.

I don't have Letters, but I think Tolkien deliberately avoided any overt displays of religious ritual, though I can't recall the reason. Being a devout Catholic, he probably did not want to risk any perception of satirizing the Sacrament of Mass by adapting it into a subcreated fiction, though I don't know that for sure.

[Legate of Amon Lanc]

Basically what radagastly had said.

Originally Posted by radagastly

I don't have Letters, but I think Tolkien deliberately avoided any overt displays of religious ritual, though I can't recall the reason. Being a devout Catholic, he probably did not want to risk any perception of satirizing the Sacrament of Mass by adapting it into a subcreated fiction, though I don't know that for sure.

I believe Tolkien simply felt a bit "shy". Had he decided to put the faith element into the world more strongly, he would basically have had two options: either make a world with religions totally different from our own, totally fantasy and totally unlike - in his belief - that of ours. That he probably had not dared to do. Or - the second option - make the explicit religion there purely Christian. Which he also dared not to do, unlike his friend C. S. Lewis. So he did the, in my opinion very admirable thing, to leave the matter "hidden". Almost no talk about religiosity whatsoever, with a few exceptions here and there. The closest he got to the explicit description of Middle-Earth rituals in the Third Age is the part radagastly mentioned, the "looking westwards" of Faramir and his company. In Second Age, there is the really strong and even more explicit description of the ritual of the Kings of Númenor praying and giving thanks to Eru himself (! the only instance I'm aware of something like that happening in the Legendarium) on top of Meneltarma three times per year.

The only thing I recall about Valar-worship, or straightforward Valar-worship, is the Dwarven reverence of Aulë (or Mahal, as they call him) as their maker. There are of course things like praise to Elbereth otherwise, however once again, it seems to me that Tolkien is very careful about making this a god-worship. At most, it might resemble, say, Catholic prayers to saints. (There are all those talks about the parallels of praise to Elbereth and Catholic prayers to Virgin Mary.)