People all over the world know the name of J.R.R. Tolkien as the author of The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit. What many do not know is that the creator of Middle-earth was also a devout Christian.

Looking back on his life at the age of 61, Tolkien wrote a friend about how grateful he was for having been brought up in the Christian faith. “A faith,” Tolkien explained, “that has nourished me and taught me all the little that I know.”

On Jan. 3, 1892, just three days into the new year, John Ronald Reuel was born in Bloemfontein, South Africa, to Arthur and Mabel Tolkien. Two years later, the Tolkiens had a second son they named Hilary. Economic opportunity had drawn Arthur to relocate his family in the dust and heat of Bloemfontein. The temperature proved to be particularly hard on Ronald, as they called him. So in 1895, Mabel sailed back to England with the boys for an extended visit. While Arthur had plans to join them, he became ill and died before these plans could materialize, leaving Mabel husbandless and the two young boys without a father.
Mabel Tolkien, now dependent on help from relatives, rented a small cottage in the village of Sarehole Mill, a location which would later serve as a model for the idyllic setting of the Shire. Mabel’s Christian faith became more and more important to her. Though the family had been Anglican, in 1900 she and her two sons converted to Catholicism.

On Nov. 14, 1904, Ronald Tolkien received the second major blow of his young life: His mother died of complications related to her diabetes. She was 34. Ronald was 12.

With both parents gone, guardianship of the boys was given to Father Francis Morgan, their priest at the Birmingham Oratory. In the coming years, Tolkien would graduate from Oxford and fight in World War I. He would marry and have four children of his own. He would become an Oxford professor. All during this time, he continued with pious devotion to pray, attend church and receive communion. He raised his growing family to share his deep religious convictions.

In the curious creation of Tolkien’s two best-known works, The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, it seems as if God had a plan. In a real-life story as fascinating as the imaginary ones they would later write, J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis became friends, Tolkien became instrumental in Lewis’ conversion to Christianity, and Lewis became the primary source of encouragement in Tolkien’s writing his great works. Together they formed the Inklings, the reading and writing group which met at a pub named The Eagle and Child. At these meetings, early versions of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings were read aloud and made into what they are today.

Unlike Lewis, Tolkien neither went through a dark and stormy phase of atheism followed by a return to belief, nor did he become a great spokesperson for the faith, as Lewis did. Tolkien lived a life of quiet devotion and wrote two of the greatest fantasy works of all time. Though he died in 1973, his works live on and are loved all around the world today.