Biggest loser in South Carolina isn't Santorum. It's evangelical leadership.

Last week, ahead of the South Carolina primary election, 114 evangelical leaders gathered in Texas to determine which GOP presidential candidate they would collectively endorse. The Christian right vanguards voted 85 to 29 to anoint Rick Santorum. As it turns out, their constituency wasn’t listening.

Two-thirds of voters in the South Carolina primary described themselves as Evangelical or born-again Christians according to exit polls. Yet 44 percent of Evangelicals voted for Newt Gingrich while Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum – the chosen evangelical candidate – nabbed 21 percent each.

Turns out that Evangelical heavyweights like former Focus on the Family president James Dobson, Gary Bauer of American Values, Tony Perkins of Family Research Council, and others no longer have the uniform sway over Christian voters en masse. This marks a dramatic shift in the movement – with far-reaching implications for American political contests to come.

The evangelical movement emerged in the 1970s under the leadership of such visionaries as Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, and soon became an animating force in American political life. After registering millions of Christian voters, the movement was partially credited with the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980.

[Editor's note: The original version of the piece misstated the year of Ronald Reagan's election.]

Evangelical Christian leaders continued to flex their political muscles in the 1990s, mobilizing voters, winning elections, and giving Bill Clinton hell at every turn. Conservative Christians maintained momentum through 2004 when they helped orchestrate George W. Bush’s re-election.

During President Bush’s second term, however, the tectonic plates of change began shifting. A new generation of Christians was coming of age that had less tolerance for partisan, polemical, and power-hungry expressions of faith. Influential Christians both young and old signed An Evangelical Manifesto in 2008, which repudiated attempts to politicize the faith. The Christian base in general was expanding, diversifying, and developing independence.

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