But watching Capitol Hill shift to Democratic control this week has challenged assumptions about Evangelicals and the GOP. According to the Associated Press, one-third of Evangelical voters supported Democrats this year, up more than 10 percent from 2004. And while many election-watchers predicted that sex scandals -- be they Mark Foley's or Ted Haggard's -- would keep Evangelicals away from the polls, they turned out in even higher numbers than they did to reelect Bush. Twenty-four percent of voters this year were born-again, up 1 point from 2004. And unlike in recent elections, Americans who attend weekly religious services voted in almost equal numbers for Democratic and Republican candidates.

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The mood was subdued while a volunteer wearing an American flag cap that partially covered her mullet circulated through the room, lighting red, scented candles, as a swing band set up on a stage festooned with giant banners blaring candidates' names. Campaign workers hanging placards wore tight smiles. People casually referred to the "enemy" -- which, in this conservative Christian crowd could refer to the Party of Pelosi or Satan himself -- favored in the polls nationwide. A volunteer named Robin Koran hustled around in a cloud of hairspray and a flash of pink sequins, assembling balloon bouquets while discussing the "integrity" of Doug Lamborn, the Republican House candidate here, who Koran assured me was "a good Christian man."

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In the peach-painted atrium of Pike's Peak Community College's Rampart Range campus -- Haggard's precinct, where he has yet to appear -- same-sex marriage seems to be what's bringing people to the polls today. That, and the book fair sharing the giant room, where a woman in a whole lotta denim is selling texts for "Christian inspiration."

Two of Haggard's parishioners, Tim Singer and his wife, Alicia, say they usually have to drag themselves to vote. This year, they couldn't wait. "Amendment 43 is half the reason why," said Tim. "And Referendum I," which would grant rights and responsibilities to same-sex couples, though without allowing marriage, per se, "is the other."

The Singers say their neighbors, also members of the New Life Church, who share their voting practices, were all headed to the polls today for the exact same reason they were. Not to vote Republican candidate Doug Lamborn into a congressional seat, or to stem the tides sweeping Democrat Bill Ritter into the governor's mansion, but "the gay thing," as Alicia said, plain and simple.

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Today's top story was about a fallen soldier of a different kind: the deputy commander of Fort Carson's largest force in Iraq was killed by a roadside bomb in eastern Baghdad. Two other soldiers in his humvee died as well. Fort Carson is one of five military bases in the heavily Republican congressional district centered on Colorado Springs. The Air Force Academy is here, too, where the Democratic contender for the local U.S. House seat, Jay Fawcett, began his own military career. Fawcett is running in a dead-heat race against Republican Doug Lamborn, and trying to draw service members away from the GOP via his promise to withdraw troops from Iraq, a region he knows firsthand from having served in the Gulf War. Perhaps today's local headline will help Fawcett. Or perhaps he will get a boost from Lamborn's connections to Haggard.

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Driscoll blames Haggard's affair with a male escort not on the former pastor's homosexuality -- which he abhors as much as that other spawn of Satan, feminism, -- but on his wife, Gayle Haggard. Why? 'Cause, he says, Gayle let herself go.

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"Father, we pray that lies would be exposed. That deception would be exposed," he said during his final appearance in this massive sanctuary in the round. Haggard's prayers were answered quickly. Just days after his sermon, he was accused by a male escort, Mike Jones, of a three-year sexual relationship.

Even Haggard's choice of Bible passages on Oct. 29 foreshadowed his fall. From the Old Testament, he preached about God's rejection of Saul from Israel's throne. As Haggard told his flock, Saul was cast out for disobedience. "There are positions that God has for us in our life, but by our obedience or our disobedience we will fulfill the calling of that position ... And he may, depending on the level of disobedience, reject us personally."

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"We interviewed Haggard on Thursday and discovered the roots of his problem," Stockstill told thousands of congregants gathered here today for the 9 a.m. service, filling the 7,000-seat sanctuary and spilling out into every worship area on New Life's giant campus. The board then called Focus on the Family's James Dobson and powerful pastors across the nation, Stockstill said, who unanimously called for Haggard's dismissal.

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"If I wanted money, I would have blackmailed him," Jones said. Evangelicals across America probably wish he had. Focus on the Family's James Dobson may have been defending his friend Ted against the allegations yesterday, but today he seemed to confront the veracity of Jones' word. "The possibility that an illicit relationship has occurred is alarming to us and to millions of others," he said in a statement. Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, which Dobson founded, said that he was "saddened" to learn of the "reprehensible allegations" and urges "truth and forgiveness" and respect for "the process of discipline that Haggard has submitted to."

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To plenty of passersby strolling on the mall that day, Baldwin's nouveau Bible-thumping to the kids and parents gathered before him may have seemed like a desperate attempt by a B-list movie star to attract an audience. But, in fact, Baldwin's youth ministry has gathered tens of thousands of decision cards -- and faith-professing e-mails -- in the past couple of years. These days, Baldwin not only has the ear of young boys who cleave to his fundamentalist reading of the Bible, and whatever skein of celebrity still clings to his Jesus T-shirts. He has been named a cultural advisor to President Bush, a formidable follow-up to his invitation to speak at the Republican National Convention, where he announced proudly from the podium, "I'm here because of my faith."

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In a husky voice, the 35-year-old pastor prays for the continuous fertility of his congregation. "We are in a city with less children per capita than any city but San Francisco," he declares, "and we consider it our personal mission to turn that around."

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Her infraction? Simple. She's a woman.

Mary Lambert has taught at the church for 54 years without issue. But during her tenure, the Baptist Church -- along with Evangelical churches of every stripe -- has changed, growing radically more fundamentalist. Churches like First Baptist increasingly teach that every word of the Bible is literal truth, never to be interpreted. And so if the apostle Paul -- who was a murderer in addition to being a misogynist -- decrees in a canonized letter, "I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man," as he wrote to Timothy, then it must be God's unimpeachable word. (I'm surely not the first to note, however, that other declarations of the Bible go unheeded while this submission doctrine goes enforced -- like the ruling that one be executed for disobeying parents, having sex before marriage or lacking fidelity to Christ.)

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Charles Christophe takes a deep breath, stifles his tears and recites the details of his new life. "We wake up. I bring her to day care. Then I go into the city to look for office space in midtown. By 6 I'm back. I buy the groceries. I pick up Gretchen from day care. I feed her. I give her a bath. I put her in bed. We read books until she falls asleep. I do the laundry. I go to sleep. The weekends are the same; we are together.

"I tried with a baby sitter, but she doesn't feel comfortable," he says, words away from a resumption of sobbing. "She cried, 'Mommy, Mommy, Mommy.' She's barely learned to say 'Mommy.'"

Gretchen's first birthday was Sept. 13, two days after her mother was killed in the attacks on the World Trade Center. That night Christophe bathed his young daughter for the very first time, straining to listen for the phone as Gretchen splashed and screamed for her mother. He was certain it would ring at any moment, that Kirsten couldn't get to a phone, that perhaps she was stuck on the train home.

"She always calls. She's always good in a disaster. She always knows what to do," says Christophe, who still refers to his wife in the present tense.

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His buddies -- standard-issue tough guys, ironworkers all -- nodded their heads in agreement. "Straight to the headshrinker's," said one of them, staring south down Sixth Avenue. "I'm gonna be there a long time. No kidding." He shook his head and popped open a new can. "And I know I won't be the only one. You can't believe the things we've seen, we keep seeing. We're gonna be needing all the help we can get."

The subdued mood that cloaked New York in uncharacteristic serenity for the first few weeks after the attacks is gradually cracking apart. These trembling psychic aftershocks continue to resonate as time plods on. And while New York's reputation is hardly one of civility, bursts of rage have begun to pierce the quiet public mourning. The incidents feel extreme, even for this robust population: Two women incited a pushing fight on the F train from Brooklyn last Friday. A passenger on a different train that day began screaming in rage, and the rest of the car joined in. Nerves ran so high at a usually collegial workplace that a fistfight broke out between co-workers.

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My mother had a very different explanation for her daughter today. "To me, this rain is proof that there is no God," she said on the phone from Boston. "People say that God can't help terrorism, that he gives people freedom to act as they choose. Fine. But a God who would hinder the rescue workers with rain? If God can't control nature, then what's the point? How can anyone believe today?"

It's a bewildering day for us atheists, this state-appointed "Day of Prayer and Remembrance." Like the faithful, we mourn. We look for guidance. We look for answers. Our commander in chief tells us to find solace in churches and temples. In those churches and temples, people stand at podiums, survey their mass of grief-stricken congregants and intone the unfathomable words "God will protect us."

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But at this year's convention in Atlanta, which wraps up today, the scent of secularism is in the air. Mainstream publishers like Penguin and HarperCollins traveled to the conference to sniff for the next big thing in the Christian book market. They haven't just been looking for the follow-up to that odd apocalyptic crossbreed, the Jesus thriller, which found runaway success in the "Left Behind" series. This year, they've got their sights on another publisher's fantasy hybrid: Christian romance novels. Throw away those paper-bag covers, ladies. The fastest growing set of the billion-dollar American romance novel industry is a huge stack of books you can proudly shelve next to your Bible.

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