It's an older and deeper distinction than the pagan/Christian distinction, which actually matters a great deal more to The Enemy. And why it's so important to The Enemy to destroy/ruin Tolkien's legendarium for everyone who loves it.
Remember:
It is a great deal harder to subvert an entire People and their history and intuitions
than it is to subvert their overt professions of faith.
I know this because when my Serbian college girlfriend threw a pinch of salt over her left shoulder, and I asked her why, she looked at me like I was stupid. She could rationalize that it was something about The Devil, but it was older than that word. You could say it was a 'pagan' custom that her medieval ancestors' Eastern Orthodox priests had to make peace with and rationalize away. You couldn't beat it out of them.
(I don't think you could beat any behavior out of a Serb, but that's a separate discussion.)
I came to understand this phenomenon at a deeper level because when I read my small children Rumpelstiltskin, or Hansel and Gretel, or Little Red Riding Hood, they weren't perplexed when Jesus failed to appear. They took to those ancient stories because they are THEIR stories. OUR stories. They aren't less true or less ours because they predate Christianity.
Tolkien did something impossible with his legendarium: he reconciled his People's ancient past with their Christian destiny. He placed the all-powerful and mysterious Eru Ilúvatar above and behind all events and all powers of the world, and placed the events in which Eru overtly intervened in the matters of the world in a distant past (which is also how we see God's interventions in the lives and world of Men). No character in LOTR has spoken with Eru, and the characters who have walked with The Valar remember it as if from a dream.
The Men of the West going into The Fourth Age of Middle-earth are not overtly Christian, but their history, and the bloodlines of their High Kings, and the implicit morality which they have absorbed during their trials has PREPARED them to receive Christ, as our European ancestors were uniquely prepared to not only receive Christ, but to carry his light to all corners of the Earth and to the stars.
Our People were MEANT to find Christianity, in which case Tolkien's Men of the West were meant to have it.
And that is an encouraging thought.
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