Dave the Gnome:

You said you wanted to keep this thread off Tolkien, and I would have honored that, except that you said:

"He also manages to keep religion and Gods out of his works which few others have succeeded in."

WRONG, WRONG, WRONG! Tolkien himself, replying to a review (which had reflected pretty much your view, but as a criticism rather than a compliment), said something like, "Clearly the reviewer has not read the book."

If you had said "out of The Hobbit", you'd be close to right. But reading "his works" brings in a whole cosmogony and pantheon, in the Silmarillion and the Lost Tales and the Unfinished Tales. While Eru, The One, is not mentioned in either The Hobbit or The Lord of the Rings, there are a number of reverent references (particularly to Elbereth) in The Lord of the Rings to the Valar, the next supernatural level down (what we might call angels, but are sometimes mistakenly referred to as "the gods" by Men) and indeed Gandalf and Saruman and other Istari, as well as Sauron and the Balrog are lesser members of that order.

I will grant you that he seems not to dwell on formalized religion and ritual anywhere, but there certainly are religion and gods, both implicitly and explicitly.

Dave Oesterreich