The thing to remember is that the powers that be within Christianity have a long and very successful track record of appropriation. However, coupled with that, they have a recent history of having their belief system appropriated by the forces of liberalism, commerce, and science.
So what you have is a history of being able to take things and make them your own: think of the appropriation of pagan observances and making them into convenient Christian observances. (What, you thought the Christmas tree was Christian?) Then you have the 20th-century practice of essentially secularizing these same observances: they become about family, materialism, and pleasure more so than atonement or other such goal.
So what you get is a very frustrated set of Christians who feel they are being squeezed out. Well, perhaps they are. But this makes them feel as though they are being persecuted for their beliefs, and I'm sure many of them think the recent trends are transgressions, and so they react in their own Christian ways.
So you get Creationist fundies who attack the ideas of evolutionary theory because they don't mesh with the Bible. But I doubt this is their only plight. They are also concerned with putting the "Christ" back into "Christmas" and reminding children that Easter isn't to celebrate the Easter Bunny and his chocolate bounty.
For centuries, Christians held a cultural hegemony over many parts of the world. And over the course of just one century, much of that was undone by pragmatism, commercialism/capitalism, and the scientific method.
Unfortunately, this desperation leads them to mix physics with metaphysics, which only muddies the waters of truth.
Creationism has an impact on wider society. It will be interesting to see what happens down the road. Maybe the LHC will be a turning point.
