(CNN) -- The question of whether the Tea Party will have a real impact on American politics (yes!) has evolved into a new debate: Is the Tea Party really about more than taxes? Glenn Beck, who invokes the semi-mythical "Black Robe Brigade" -- fighting preachers he claims led the American Revolution -- as a model for a new generation of activists seems to think so. On public radio, Bryan Fischer, a leader of the fundamentalist American Family Association, sternly instructed a libertarian Tea Party activist that her movement was religiously rooted whether she wanted it to be or not. A recent poll by the Public Religion Research Institute backs him up, revealing that 57 percent of self-identified Tea Partiers agree that "America is and always has been a Christian nation."
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Jeff Sharlet says anti-tax Tea Party shows signs of evolving into religious movement
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He says GOP star Sen. DeMint is gatekeeper for Tea Party candidates to establishment
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Price of admission, he says, is fealty to DeMint's religious vision of Tea Party
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Sharlet: Putting government in service of religion tends to align it with interests of wealthy
The Republican Party -- at least, the establishment @placeholder -- doesn't have a lock on that energy.