The Supreme Court did more last week than hand a victory to supporters of school vouchers. Its controversial 5-to-4 ruling presented a heady breakthrough for advocates who seek to expand the place of religion in American public life.

Christian organizations and scholars have been working to nudge the court into a new interpretation of the First Amendment that would open the door to widespread change, putting faith institutions on an equal footing with secular groups as recipients of public funds. They've had small victories in recent years, but hope this serves as the "tipping point."

The shift away from strict separation of church and state could signal a new era of religious accommodation or of religious divisiveness – but more likely both.

"This decision by the court together with the faith-based initiative will, in the long run, show that the roughly 50-year period of strict separationism is an aberration from what the First Amendment is about," predicts James Skillen, president of the Center for Public Justice (CPJ), a Christian policy research group.

Other Christian advocates claim the court decision also removes any constitutional hurdle to President Bush's faith-based initiative for social programs, which stalled in the Senate after months of bitter wrangling.

Supporters of church-state separation, however, say it is a significant but limited decision, in which the court accepts for the first time that large amounts of tax dollars will end up in religious coffers, but not by direct government decisionmaking.

"This only applies to vouchers," says K. Hollyn Hollman, general counsel for the Baptist Joint Committee. "It doesn't further the desire some people have to give public funding directly to religious institutions."

"They can try to put Charitable Choice on a voucher basis, but that's difficult to do for practical reasons," says Marc Stern, legal director for the American Jewish Congress. As the cornerstone of the faith-based initiative, Charitable Choice aims to give religious groups access to a wide array of federal grants for social service, housing, and justice programs.

Opponents worry that in an increasingly diverse society, it will lead to religious competition and favoritism. In his vigorous dissent, Justice Stephen Breyer emphasized the role the First Amendment has played in "protecting the nation's social fabric from religious conflict."

The question is whether the new thinking on church-state relations will become the wave of the future through court appointments. Mr. Bush, for example, has nominated Michael McConnell, a constitutional scholar and perhaps the lead proponent of funding to religious groups, to the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals.

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