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I'm doing some reading on Pullman's life. Some personal issues there, leading to vitriolic hate... and not for churches per se, but for, literally, God...

Pullman and his younger brother went to live in Norfolk while their mother went to London to look for work. Shortly thereafter, Pullman's mother received a letter saying that her husband was to receive the Distinguished Flying Cross, an award that was presented to the family by Queen Elizabeth at Buckingham Palace. Later, Pullman discovered that his father, who had incurred gambling debts and was involved in extramarital affairs, was suspected of committing suicide by crashing his plane. Pullman wrote, "Sometimes I think he's really alive somewhere, in hiding, with a different name. I'd love to meet him."

When Pullman was nine, his mother married an airman friend of her late husband's.

Source: http://www.answers.com/topic/philip-pullman

Yeah, that's just what I was talking about. Realizing the presumption of playing Junor Psychiatrist, I nevertheless can't help thinking that there's a HUGE load of hatred of God in the HDM series, even spilling over into a HUGE load of hatred of C.S. Lewis, based on an astonishingly distorted perception of both the Bible and the Narnia series, and I have to wonder where the sheer emotional fury comes from.

Parallels:

His father = God, supposed to be noble but turns out to be adulterous, drunken, debt-ridden, pathetic, possibly suicidal --- like 'god' in The Amber Spyglass who was so feeble and almost relieved to die
His grandfather = Metatron (the false God's viceroy): also seemingly good, but actually lied and lied and lied about the fake nobility of his father, and thus all of his admirable qualities are just despicable deceptions
His mother = Mrs. Coulter, attractive, smart, an ambitious woman navigating in an all-male heirarchy (BBC in the the 1950's)-- also "abandoned" Pullman in Norwich while she was pursuing her career (and her new love) in London
Lyra = Pullman's daemon: female (daemons are the opposite sex), an accomplished liar (Lyra=liar), story-teller, intellectually and sexually awakening adolescent...

Now the question is, what happened to Philip Pullman when he was an adolescent which wounded him so badly he hated the male "authority" with a passion that lasted the rest of his life? Did his adored Anglical minister grandfather outrae him by dashing his youthful romance with some girl?

If you have any insights?