Godly Hobbits
Lance Nixon on the Pentecostalism of Tolkien’s Inspired Heroes
An odd thing happens to Samwise Gamgee on the journey toward Mordor. Defending his wounded master, Frodo, from the attack of the giant spider Shelob, Sam is all but certain that he is going to die. Then a thought comes to him “as if some remote voice had spoken,” and Sam takes up the Phial of Galadriel, the gift of the elf queen, and speaks her name out loud. J. R. R. Tolkien goes on to say in The Two Towers:
And then his tongue was loosed and his voice cried in a language which he did not know:
“A Elbereth Gilthoniel
o menel palan-diriel,
le nallon sí di’nguruthos!
A tiro nin, Fanuilos!”
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Lance Nixon is a freelance writer based in Pierre, South Dakota, where he attends virtual services of New Life Assembly of God Church and also visits Trinity Episcopal Church virtually. He is also a fiction writer, and his latest stories about the Great Plains appeared in the November 2020 and November 2019 issues of Gray's Sporting Journal.
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