he just wasn't necessarily "your" kind of Christian.
Not everyone who reads the Bible and prays to Jesus sees oaths as a big fat
no-no, the way the Quakers do. Tolkien belonged to one of the Churches
that doesn't see them as a big fat no-no, he was a student of a period in
history that saw the concept of oath-taking and oath-keeping as vital to
personal and social integrity, and his fiction reflects that.
Implicit in his works is the idea that being willing to bind yourself to a good
cause or a good person in that way in an honorable trait. Only fat safe
people w/ no concerns at all never take oaths in his world; only cowards and
traitors break oaths for any other reason than the best interests of those
they've sworn service to.
The social universe Tolkien creates IS IMPOSSIBLE WITHOUT OATHS. It's
that simple. The fact that he chooses to focus on the extraordinary cases
where oaths produce serious conflicts of interest is no excuse to misread him,
or pretend that his universe is not essentially feudal (ie oathbound) in its
social
structure.
