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Someone asks what the Silver Chair had to do with Christianity. When I read it as a child it was simply one of the seven enthralling Narnia books. I absolutely loved the salamanders, and still do.
As an adult, however, having lost my faith, I found the central interaction in the story between the Emerald Witch and the children to be deeply troubling. After imprisoning the children in her underground world, the Emerald Witch attempts to brainwash the children into believing that the aboveground world doesn't exist--that there is now and has only ever been the underworld, and that the world above is only a pleasant dream, a fantasy, until Puddleglum the Marshwiggle sticks his foot in the fire and makes his speech about knowing that there must be a world above ground, even though he can't see it. The Emerald Witch eventually shows her true form and turns into a snake.
To me, the Silver Chair became a specious allegory about faith and rationality, casting the Emerald Witch in the role of the rationalist and materialist (which Lewis turned into a straw figure) and implying that, at best, the world that those of us without religious faith inhabit is bleak and miserable and dark, that we are brainwashed by our belief (comforting, if you can believe it) that this beautiful universe is all we have; and at worst, that we ourselves are seductive snakes and devils. This attitude--alternately condescending and pitying toward freethinkers and downright hostile toward and even fearful of them--seems to pervade much of Lewis's writing.
I still enjoy the Narnia books though, and like Miller try not to let Lewis's own theological insecurities ruin my pleasure in them.
On a side note: as for liberal Christians who complain that the Left looks down its collective nose at them: why does "the Left" need to "reach out" to you? You *are* the Left. Where were you when we were fighting the religious right in 2004 and passionately supporting our pro-choice Catholic candidate? Why didn't you speak up then, instead of allowing the Right to claim the language of religion? Or was it you who didn't want to align yourselves with us nonbelievers? Were you, like Lewis, afraid that we would seduce you into nonbelief? Or, like Lewis, did you pity us because we could not, in good conscience, accept the existence of the "nonrational"? Glad you're making your existence known now, but we'd like a little respect, please.
