Christian conservatives had been gaining sway in the Republican Party, but the Robertson campaign “was the thing that blew the top off the lid,” Mr. Scheffler said.

Now a national committeeman and president of the influential Iowa Faith and Freedom Coalition, which drew five presidential candidates and 1,700 people to a forum in March, Mr. Scheffler helps steer the movement Mr. Robertson fueled. Sitting in the group’s three-room offices just outside the state capital last week, Mr. Scheffler maintained that the state’s social conservatives are neither monolithic nor single-minded — but they are unquestionably a force in deciding how the first contest in the presidential campaign is waged.

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