Tolkien Reminds Us God Still Controls History

In 1975, CT assistant editor Cheryl Forbes offered an incisive review of J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. Her words, written during the Cold War, reflect the tensions Christians often feel as they approach the end of one year and the beginning of the next. God calls his followers to active faith, desiring that they move forward with free will while trusting in his providential hand. Tolkien “gives us a world that is graciously ordered by a beneficient Creator,” writes Forbes. His timeless story and Forbes’s accompanying insights bring that word afresh to us still, 50 years later.