Wow, you guys are taking my comments a bit further than I intended. I wasn't realy Christian bashing in my post. To answer Jon, see, I was raised in various christian sects through childhood, and I broke away from that as I got older. And its true, reading the books as a kid doesn't mean I shouldn't like them as an adult, in fact I thought I said that in my first post, guess I wasn't clear enough. Having going back and read the books recently, yeah, like Surgoshan says, there really is a lot of obvious stuff in there.
To answer Linds, yeah, Tolkien was christian before Lewis was. They were friends, and Lewis apparently one day had an epiphany for some reason. Gandalf being reborn is an obvious reference to Christ. Of course, it doesn't ruin my view of Tolkien either, but then I thought he was a better writer and I must've read the original Hobbit in excess of thirty times as a kid. My elementary school library gave me the book because I checked it out so many times. I still have it.
Edit: It matters Jon because we can see it. Why should it matter to a christian if the themes in Philip Pullman's novels are obviously atheist? Maybe it shouldn't, but that doesn't mean that it doesn't. A large part of it also is feeling tricked. If the themes and characters in the children's book you're reading at the time are drawing the same parallels as the bible study course you're in, it can reinforce those ideas on a somewhat unconcious level. True, just the fact that I'm atheist now means that that didn't necessarily work on me, but meh.
Talking about the Spoilers Below:
And also, hrivero, this version of Susan isn't married. If you'll remember, once they left Narnia they all became kids again, and forgot a lot about what had happened in the "years" that they'd spent there. She was a kid, it would've been creepier to think that she was still married. It sounds like a contrived plot idea, of course, but not really that wierd.
Also for the love of God the point of the post above yours has spoilers sectioned off for a reason! Fix your damn post before Hulk get angry!