The conservative faction called for withdrawing from politics and focusing instead on building up the church.
"Getting into politics didn't fix anything. It just diverted them from saving souls," said Jim Guth, a political science professor at Furman University in Greenville, S.C.
With the legalization of abortion in 1973, some fundamentalists began to argue that they had an obligation to try to arrest society's moral decay.
"We realized we [were] having our little holy huddles but not having any influence in Washington," said George Roller, a former public school teacher who now directs Kennedy's Center for Christian Statesmanship.
Ministers such as Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson jumped headlong into politics. They succeeded in helping to elect conservatives, starting with President Reagan. "But things haven't changed very much," said Robert D. Stacey, chairman of the government department at Patrick Henry College.
"Our candidates tick off the right policy positions, but it turns out, once they're in office, they're willing to compromise an awful lot -- not just to bend but to break," he said. "Now, religious conservatives are saying they want the real thing."
To develop such steadfast politicians, evangelicals are building on decades of work by nonprofit groups such as the Leadership Institute and Young America's Foundation, which train conservatives in grass-roots activism, effective campaigning, even how to launch a right-wing magazine.
The new evangelical initiatives reach out to the same up-and-coming leaders, but put them through courses that sound a lot like a seminary.
"If you're clinging to conservatism just because you like conservatism, you don't put yourself on the line for your beliefs," Stacey said. "Your positions need to come from something deeper and more meaningful."
That message resonates with Jessica Echard, 23, who completed the Statesmanship Institute last year.
Growing up in rural West Virginia, Echard believed passionately in her church's teachings against abortion, but thought little about such issues as economic policy or foreign trade.
The institute gave her a framework for evaluating those topics.
Now the director of the Eagle Forum, a conservative lobbying group founded by Phyllis Schlafly, Echard says Jesus would approve of a call for lower taxes: "God calls on us to be stewards of our [own] money."
