Online Class Explores The Queer Themes In Tolkien's LOTR

First Congregational Church of Long Beach is offering an online class with the young Rev. Tom Emanuel - Queer And Back Again: The Gospel According To J.R. Tolkien. Sundays at 3pm on Zoom: Jan 9th through Feb 13th.

“You can say what you like, Gaffer, but Bag End’s a Queer place, and its folk are queerer.”

Twenty years on from Peter Jackson’s blockbuster film adaptations, J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings is more popular than ever. As Amazon releases a mammoth five-season Middle-earth series in September 2022, an increasingly diverse audience is discovering Tolkien’s world of hobbits and heroes, dark lords and deep magic, elves and orcs and talking trees, for the very first time. But whenever someone tries to interpret the text in a progressive way, a chorus of naysayers emerge from the woodwork to shout: “Stop trying to ‘woke-wash’ LOTR! Don’t you know Tolkien was a Catholic???”

J.R.R. Tolkien was indeed a devout Roman Catholic. He once described LOTR as “a fundamentally religious and Catholic work.” And that’s exactly what makes it “woker” than its critics think.

Join Rev. Tom Emanuel for Queer and Back Again: The Gospel According to J.R.R. Tolkien. Each Sunday at 3 pm PT from Jan 9th to Feb 13th 2022, we’ll explore spiritual and religious themes in Tolkien’s life and work from an open-minded, open-hearted, progressive Christian perspective. (Including, you guessed it, queerness!) Every class session is meant to stand alone, so you can drop in and out as you have the time and inclination.

If you’d like to be added to the class email list, contact Rev. Tom at temanuel@firstchurchlb.org. More than 20 people have already signed up online – all of them from beyond First Church!