WASHINGTON – On the heels of conservative victories in last week’s elections, the Reverend Jerry Falwell is planning to resurrect his once-powerful Christian lobby group, the Moral Majority, according to an associate.

The well-known Baptist televangelist’s political moves come as social conservatives yesterday rallied to block Senator Specter of Pennsylvania, a pro-choice Republican, from taking over as chairman of the Judiciary Committee.

Seeking to consolidate what they believe to be their ascendant political power and energized by a looming battle over judicial nominations, conservative activists aspire to create a new grassroots powerhouse, possibly under the name Faith and Values Coalition.

The “21st-century version” of the Moral Majority – a group that helped elect President Reagan in 1980 – would have a three-part mission: working for the appointment of conservative judges to the Supreme Court; securing a constitutional ban gay on marriage, and backing social conservatives for elected office, with an eye to grooming a candidate for the White House in 2008, the president and general counsel of the conservative legal group Liberty Counsel, Mathew Staver, said. Mr. Staver told The New York Sun he plans to serve as vice chairman of the new entity, which will be announced today.

The original Moral Majority had several million members at the height of its success in the mid-1980s. It lobbied for such causes as prayer in schools and teaching of creationism, and opposed abortion, gay rights, and nuclear disarmament treaties. The group disbanded in 1989, at a time when Mr. Falwell said much of its mission had been accomplished. At that time, the conservative Christian movement was also weakened by scandals surrounding televangelists Jim Bakker and Jimmy Swaggart. Mr. Falwell, 71, has been under pressure to revive his coalition in light of the battle over gay marriage, said Mr. Staver.

“There was a rising group of people who wanted to have their views represented, primarily on the marriage amendment,” he said.

Since disbanding the Moral Majority, Mr. Falwell continued to make headlines. In the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, he caused a furor by stating the attacks could be attributed in part to divine retribution against abortionists, pagans, homosexuals, and the American Civil Liberties Union, among others – remarks he later retracted.

This year, Mr. Falwell, who continues a ministry at Thomas Road Baptist Church in Virginia, campaigned vigorously for President Bush’s re-election.

“I think that’s great,” the president of another powerful group, Roberta Combs of the Christian Coalition, said. “There is room for lots of groups, because we need everybody fighting for the cause.”

The launching of the new group comes as social conservatives are galvanized to defeat the elevation of Mr. Specter to the chairmanship of the Senate Judiciary Committee, where he would oversee confirmation of the president’s judicial nominees.

Mr. Specter, a Republican supporter of abortion rights who is in line to take over the committee according to Senate rules and custom, is under fire for suggesting that he might oppose a nominee who would vote to overturn Roe v. Wade. He later said he would support all of the president’s nominees, but his critics said they had no confidence that he would fight for an abortion opponent’s confirmation in the Senate.

“We certainly don’t need an adversary and we certainly don’t need someone who is neutral and mute,” Mr. Staver said. “We need an advocate, and he is not.”

Social conservatives’ groups were directing thousands of phone calls to Senate offices yesterday.

“This is still a very hot issue with people who turned out for President Bush on Tuesday,” a senior policy analyst at Focus on the Family, Carrie Gordon Earll, said.

The president’s senior political adviser, Karl Rove, said at the weekend that the president takes Mr. Specter at his word. Activists declined, however, to criticize the White House stance

“It’s up to the Senate who they will choose for that position,” the Christian Coalition’s Ms. Combs said.

A prime target of their pleas is Senator Santorum of Pennsylvania, a social conservative and vocal opponent of abortion who backed Mr. Specter in his closely fought primary battle this year against Rep. Pat Toomey.

“If Senator Santorum makes the judgment that his own political future depends on keeping Senator Specter out of the Judiciary chair, then I think he would have the necessary incentive to have the conversation to pressure Mr. Specter to withdraw his candidacy,” the vice president for government relations for Concerned Women for America, Michael Schwartz, said. If Mr. Santorum did not intervene, he said: “Any chance that Santorum would have of trying to emerge as a national conservative leader would be down the drain.”

Mr. Santorum was trying to stay out of the fray yesterday. Through his spokeswoman, Christine Shott, the junior senator said: “The Republican members of the Senate Judiciary Committee have the responsibility of voting for chairman. As I am not a member of this committee, I will not be participating in the voting process.”

Senator Schumer, a Democratic member of the Judiciary Committee, expressed the hope that regardless of who heads the committee, the president will nominate people “in the mainstream,” whether they are right of center or somewhat left of center, his spokesman, Blake Zeff, said.

Senator Hutchison, Republican of Texas, said yesterday that Mr. Specter’s chairmanship was not in jeopardy, but in an interview with CNN she said: “I think he will be questioned closely, that he will cooperate with the president and that he will support the nominees of the president.”