"Jesus Christ, Superstar"

That's the title of this piece by Amy Sullivan in this month's Washington Monthly, and raises some important points about - but not limited to - the way ultra conservative, ultra-Bible as unerring word of God born agains have rushed into to become the identifiable portrait of Christians while the rest of us have debated the role of God in our lives.

Indeed, the sometimes lunatic fringe of the pentecostals accounts for a sizeable amount of the US population, and one of the strongest religion-affiliated political organizations of all. They see public school as an evil, and often opt to home school their children. They see lots of things differently than most of us do, Christian and non-Christian alike. Most of us, for example, would not say comfortably that the Bible or the Torah or the Q'oran or any other book is an unerring representation of what our maker thinks and says. Most of us understand that there is a divide between real science and the Bible (women were not, after all, taken from the spare rib of Adam).

But while we can stereotype them, ridicule them, and try to disenfranchise them, Christians who take "an eye for an eye" all too literally and believe that the woman is supposed to be subject to her man are with us and they're very powerful. Especially powerful with the Bush White House in place.