Observed one way, the 2004 election result wasn't all that different from 2000: Almost every state went the way it did four years ago, and the popular vote was still relatively close. Even the voters' ranking of undefined "moral values" as the top election issue is nothing new. In the 2000 and 1996 elections, "moral/ethical values" (again, without definition) rated as the No. 1 election issue in the Los Angeles Times exit poll.

Politically, the United States has gone from being a 49-49 nation to a 51-48 nation, with Republicans more firmly on top.

But beneath that veneer of stability, the tectonic plates of America's culture wars are shifting. Particularly among religious conservatives, the feeling is strong that this is their moment - that they have returned one of their own to the White House, and now it's payback time. Suddenly, with Supreme Court vacancies looming, the overturning of nationwide abortion rights seems within reach. In the states, more gay-marriage bans are in the works.

For social conservatives, the chance to turn back a cultural revolution that arguably began with the invention of the birth-control pill - which in turn launched the sexual revolution and the anything-goes sensibility of the 1960s - has been a long time in coming. And it has taken the steady growth of religious-conservative involvement in mainstream politics to bring the movement to where it is today.

Since the '60s, "the society and the culture have moved to the left, almost consistently, over the years, and as a result, Americans who have traditional views on social values have become increasingly alienated and even angry," says Larry Sabato, a political scientist at the University of Virginia. "That has now fully manifested itself in our politics."

The starkest example of that is the swiftness with which the gay-marriage movement has been stopped in its tracks. Only a year after the Massachusetts high court legalized gay marriage, 13 states have passed initiatives banning the practice. Gay-rights activists are now operating cautiously, seeking to preserve gains, such as benefits for same-sex couples, rather than push for new ones.

But for most politicians in most states, same-sex marriage is an easy issue; nationally, a clear majority opposes it - a consensus that goes well beyond the conservative religious community.

Other items on the religious-conservative agenda aren't so clearly in sync with mainstream opinion, including opposition to abortion rights. Though many Americans are uncomfortable with abortion, most oppose overturning Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court ruling that legalized it nationwide. In the 2004 election exit poll by a consortium of media, only 16 percent of voters said they oppose abortion in all circumstances, a figure that has largely held steady since the 1970s.

Even among social conservatives, the agenda is not monolithic. Several Republican senators who oppose abortion rights - including Orrin Hatch of Utah, Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas, and John McCain of Arizona - support expanded federal funding of embryonic stem cell research, in opposition to the president and the leadership of the religious right.

And remember that 16 percent of voters who oppose all abortions? Of those, 22 percent voted for John Kerry.

Within scholarly circles, there's even a debate over whether a culture war exists in America at all. Morris Fiorina of the Hoover Institution argues in a new book that while the political parties and pundits present a nation riven by a deep ideological divide, most people hold moderate views on even the stickiest social issues.

But even if most Americans are moderates, it's the so-called religious right - a highly motivated coalition of Evangelical Protestants, conservative Catholics, and Orthodox Jews - that is feeling the momentum.

Seat by seat, since the late 1980s, the movement has elected dozens of members to Congress and developed organizational talent now in the forefront of the Republican Party, such as Ralph Reed, the former Christian Coalition wunderkind who oversaw Bush's Southern campaign in 2004, including the race in Florida.

Of all the factions in the Republicans' winning coalition, religious conservatives were the most organized and energized. In many instances, grassroots efforts by churches to work for Bush's reelection were already up and running before the Bush campaign came to town.

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