There are so many analogies I could make, but I will just look at a couple of the mains ones in this blog.
Firstly, there are three Christ like figures: Aragorn, Gandalf and Frodo. They fulfil Jesus' three characteristics: priest prophet and king. Frodo sacrifices his whole way of life, security, comfort, friends and family, with almost certain death as a prospect to save Middle Earth from Sauron, a fallen spirit like Satan. Likewise, Christ sacrificed his whole being to save man from the dark powers. Both come with no armies, are not great military leaders or what you expect to take on the greatest evils, but humble lowly creatures. Gandalf fulfils the role of prophet. He is a teacher, a guide, someone who can be trusted, and teaches and supports the personal growth of the main characters, such as can be seen in the Hobbits. Finally, there is Aragorn, who is the missing King, returning to triumphant glory over the forces of darkness and establishing a new, glorious age of peace. Likewise, Jesus is returning to the people of Israel and the world as their King, after a period of their exile in Babylon and much suffering. So we can see direct links here.
Secondly, all three of these characters must go through some form of death and darkness in their journey. Frodo must take the greatest evil upon himself (the Ring) to its home and source (mount doom) and destroy it there, just like Jesus took the greatest evils upon himself and defeated them in hell (for clarification see the Christian Creed.) Gandalf takes on the Balrog, another dark power, and journeys to the very depths of the earth and highest peaks to defeat this monster to let his allies escape this fate. He dies, but returns similar but different... primarily he is now Gandalf the White and has more power. Likewise, Jesus died, was resurrected, but the eyewitness testimony claimed his body had supernatural abilities, such as walking through walls etc. Finally, Aragorn journeys through the realm of the dead and the cursed to rally an army against evil, and then marches and destroys the forces of evil. I think you get the idea. These three characters not only fulfil certain aspects of Jesus' character, but their own journeys are allegories of his.
Lastly, Christians, in particular Catholics, see evil as a privation of goodness. That is, a lack of goodness. Now the evil characters in LOTR lack being: Ringwraiths are neither alive nor dead and lack physical form, orcs are twisted forms of elves, lacking their good qualities, gollum was a hobbit but has been corrupted by the Ring, and as such lacks his former self. Finally, Sauron is just an eye, he also lacks his former self of greatness as a sort of angel for Illuvatar (read the Simirillion). So here is another aspect of the Christian story which Tolkien used.
Now sceptics may argue that I am reading to much Christianity into the text, and portraying my own conceptual scheme as what Tolkien meant. However, Tolkien himself was a Roman Catholic, and he said himself that by the end LOTR was explicitly Christian. So I think it is convincing that LOTR is a Christian work.
What strikes me is that despite the large scale rejection of Christianity by many of my peers, many seem to love this version of telling it. That is understandable, it is a brilliant work and really makes you think. But maybe those who enjoy Tolkien would like to enquire further into the beliefs and thoughts he based his books on, even if you do not believe it to be true. The Christian message is the most fantastic tale of them all, true or false, and LOTR embodies that too the highest degree.
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