"What this poll shows us is a glimpse of the future. The dividing lines of the culture war are shifting and sometimes fading," said Katie Paris of the nonprofit Faith in Public Life, which sponsored the national study.

The findings are especially significant for states like Ohio where the religious vote was credited with a key role in the 2004 presidential election.

One of the most striking results from the vote four years ago was the huge majority of the active religious faithful who backed the re-election of President Bush, an evangelical Christian. Exit polls show he won more than 60 percent of those voters.

That margin was soon dubbed the God Gap.

But the new study shows that less-frequent worship attenders are sidling up to Obama. Sixty percent of those who take in worship just once or twice a month are supporting the Illinois senator, compared with 49 percent who backed Democratic Sen. John Kerry four years ago. That change helped to fuel an 8-point lead for Obama overall.

Those on the ends of the worship-attendance spectrum have changed little: People attending at least weekly remain in the Republican camp; those less frequently or not at all are heavily Democratic.

But it is the young faithful who are driving this political and societal shift, the study concluded.

"Younger Americans, including younger Americans of faith, are not the culture-war generation," said Robert Jones, president of Public Religion Research, which conducted the poll.

"On issues from gay and lesbian rights to the role of government at home and around the world, young Catholics, mainline Protestants and evangelicals are bridging the divides that entrenched their elders and ushering in an era of consensus in which the common good trumps the clash of ideologies."

D. Michael Lindsay, assistant professor of sociology at Rice University in Houston, noted that younger believers are significantly more supportive of bigger government and expanding diplomatic efforts abroad.

"It's not surprising, therefore, that they are supporting some of the ideas put forward by the Democrats in 2008," he said. "It may very well be that in this election, the conventional wisdom about the 'values voters' -- who they are and what they want -- gets turned on its head."

The study also indicates that, contrary to what many analysts have contended, McCain running mate Sarah Palin is not turning white evangelicals toward the GOP; the numbers now are about the same as they were in the summer before she was selected, Paris said.

The telephone poll of 2,000 American adults was conducted from Aug. 28 through Sept. 19, with a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 2.5 percentage points. An additional 1,250 voters ages 18-34, including cell-phone-only respondents, also were polled. The survey was conducted for Faith in Public Life by Public Religion Research.

The study can be seen at http://www.faithinpubliclife.org/

drowland@dispatch.com