Dear Tolkien-loving Christians,
Wesaþ ge, friend, hale! (“Be you well, friends!”)
I am sad to report that our planning team at Ancient Faith Ministries is canceling the conference.
This thing was conceived back in 2019, before the world was wracked with the chaos and death of a world-wide pandemic. With the onset of the pandemic, we subsequently postponed it twice. And even as I write, the region around our event site is now cascading with more COVID-related restrictions. Building momentum for a major new conference in the midst of all this uncertainty is very difficult.
That said, this idea is not dead, because we know that Christians who love Tolkien want to gather — to discuss, to celebrate, to share our thoughts and our stories, to form a properly hobbitish and/or Rivendellish community in-person. So we’re not canceling the idea. We’re just going to wait for when the time is right to make this conference happen. We don’t know when, though, so if you purchased a ticket, you will get it refunded.
In the meantime, we are still moving ahead with some of our plans, and we’re going to be adding some new ones. Here’s what’s happening:
- Those who submitted academic papers that were accepted will be contacted about having them published in Hælend, the new journal that our partner the St. Basil Center was already intending to create with the conference papers. So watch your email.
- We plan to create a blog to begin posting Christian reflections and comments on Tolkien.
- Discussions around founding a Christian Tolkien Society continue.
- The Christ & Tolkien Facebook group continues and just surpassed 3,000 members.
So, stay tuned. And please subscribe to the blog on this site for updates on all this.
Forth, Eorlingas!
Yours,
Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick
Chief Content Officer at Ancient Faith Ministries