Tolkien -- Enemy of Rome

[Primitivus]

The fact that he did not "promote" his faith overly in his fictional work is simply a matter of choice - he found the overt Christian allegory in the work of his friend C.S. Lewis rather clumsy. Despite this, he wrote in one letter that The Lord of the Rings was "a fundamentally religious and Catholic work; unconsciously so at first, but consciously in the revision".

As a "fan" of both Tolkien and Lewis, I have to concur with this statement. I might go so far as to say that he considered some of Lewis' writing rather pedestrian. Nevertheless, the two remained lifelong friends (although the marriage of C.S. Lewis to a divorcee greatly saddened J.R.R. Tolkien)...