Abortion is certainly the rallying cry, and a lot of church ladies became the GOP ground game.
It's also about a culture of conformity and a belief that churches, not government, should provide social services like aid to the poor, education, and healthcare. Among many whites -- especially evangelicals - church is like a social club. You go to Sunday services, and then on Men's group or Bible Study or Women's group. As long as you are in this club, and create the appearance of conformity, a lot of misbehavior is tolerated. Ran a scam business? No, you fell to the temptations placed upon us by modern society. Cheated on your spouse? No wonder with the prevalence of porn in today's culture. Got a drinking problem? That's how many of us came to the church.
Baby boomer whites yearn for the halcyon days where everyone went to church, then on to a dinner at grandma's, then rode their Schwinns and drank from garden hoses while their dads tinkered with their Chevys and Fords over a few PBRs. White Gen Ys & Xs are more complicated. Many of them claim no religious affiliation because they attend non-denominational mega churches. These are generally more driven by contemporary religious music; services such as child care, book stores, and coffee bars; and younger charismatic pastors that tend to seem to understand their problems. However, many (if not most) of these are extremely fundamentalist in their outlook -- so the attendees may claim a lack of religious affiliation because they aren't Lutheran or Presbyterian, etc., but their beliefs often scan with AG or Southern Baptist beliefs.
At the end of the day, what these folks really want is for abortion and homosexuality to go back into hiding. They want to profess moral outrage in connection with their "club membership" obligations, but they still want to be able to obtain abortions or have same sex relations for themselves. I've also noticed the fact that they are flaming hypocrites doesn't phase them a bit. Evangelicals feel absolutely entitled to say "do as we say, not as we do."
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