Not even typical American. It's a certain limited group of
   American fundamentalist Christians. Usually Southern Baptist or
   somehow related to that particular movement, or the churches
   that aren't churches at all really, just "hey I'm a guy who
   called myself a pastor". Those aren't churches. They're
   mini-cults.

   To me a church is organized. Outside of the Southern Baptist
   denomination and the "stick a nail on a sign and call myself a
   church for tax purposes" , I don't know who else would take this
   stuff literally.

   I was raised Methodist. Not literal at all. Experimented with
   Unitarian, Quaker, Roman Catholic - even settled with Eastern
   Orthodox for 5 years and spent some time in a monastery.

   After a bit of fun with that stuff, I left it. All fond
   memories. Agnostic for a long time now. No hard feelings towards
   those groups 'cause they never did me any wrong.

   The loudmouths on TV give off the IMPRESSION that they're big
   and important, but they're not. NORMAL churches are not
   literalist. A TV Evangelist is _not normal_.

   I give exception to Southern Baptist because they ARE pretty
   literal.

   THe Bible literalists don't know crap about theology either.
   Even basic theology they get totally wrong.

   Then again, when Hawking tried to prove God-need-not-exist, he
   only showed me he never took a basic theology class either.

   The stuff that gets railed against isn't the stuff regular
   historically founded splintered denominations typically believe
   anyway.