Christians and LOTR

[Amy Z]

Holly wrote:

> My husband's ex-mother-in-
> law is an obsessed Pentacostal Christian.  Yet, I find, that she 
> contradicts herself all the time.  She "found" God after years of 
> alcohol and drug abuse.  She will not let my husband's children 
> watch, read, talk about Harry Potter (they live with their mother 
> and their maternal grandparents) nor are they allowed to watch 
> Pokemon, YuGiOh, etc.  They are encouraged to watch Lord of the 
> Rings.

Can someone articulate why some Christians approve of (or encourage, 
in Holly's ex-mother-in-law-in-law's case) LOTR who condemn HP?  Is 
it because Tolkien was a devout Catholic?  (Hm.  That might not 
actually cut much ice with all Protestant fundamentalists, some of 
whom put "Papists" just after goat-blood-drinking Satanists in the 
queue for Hell.) 

You can certainly see a Christian allegory in LOTR, as in most tales 
of redemptive sacrifice.  But it isn't at all simple.  Especially 
difficult is the fact that that slimesucker Gollum seems to be the 
sacrificial lamb, while Frodo the Good goes over to the demonic at 
the crucial moment.

But what I most wonder about the HP-hating Tolkien lovers is whether 
they have ever read the Ainulindale (the creation story in The 
Silmarillion--the part you skip to get to the good stuff about the 
Silmaril).  JKR's world is ours, created however you imagine ours was 
created, and you can even believe it was created 10,000 years ago if 
you choose.  Tolkien, on the other hand, had the hubris to posit a 
very different cosmology in which the timeline of our world 
completely fails to match up with either the geological or the 
creationist version.  And then there are all those gods.  No matter 
how much you may try to make the Creator equivalent to the Christian 
God, you have some rather un-Christian loose ends.  And wizards are 
angelic beings?  JRRT seems to be risking his immortal soul with that 
idea.

I see no problem with reading and learning from this fantasy and 
being a Christian; but I'm curious about those who shun the fantasy 
of HP and embrace that of LOTR.

Can anyone point us to an explanatory article, or explain it 
themselves?

Amy Z