When I conducted the PARAL Study, a national survey funded by the Lilly Endowment and the Ford Foundation, I found that most Evangelicals tended to answer questions about faith as “very much for” or “very much against” anything. In other words, one’s stance for or against had to be extreme. Catholics and Protestants from the historical denominations, on the other hand, tended to answer more moderately on both scores.

I have seen this pattern repeated in many national polls. Thus, for instance, when asking “How important is religion to you?” Evangelicals will score higher than the others by as much as 10% on “very important.” However, when you cluster the “very important” with “important,” the numbers are just about the same for all groups. In my interpretation of these tendencies, I make theology the guiding influence. Evangelicals have dropped most of the seven sacraments replacing them with feeling and emotion. Just as Catholics often don’t feel they have attended mass unless they go to communion, Evangelicals don’t feel they have worshiped unless they get an emotional kick from the sermon or the music. In fact, I have been to Evangelical worship when the preacher kept preaching until he either saw tears of contrition or heard screams of joy. That’s just the way it is. Unfortunately, what turns on Evangelicals and Pentecostals turns off almost all other Christians and non-Christians.

As illustrated at the same forum in the responses of Senator Barak Obama and former Senator John Edwards, Democrats can be secular and still rely on faith to guide them in responding to altruistic causes (Obama) or personal crisis (Edwards). But they don’t wear their religion on their sleeves.

In contrast, a Republican audience welcomes religious statements. An Evangelical considers your Christianity is suspect if you don’t name the Bible as your “favorite book” or name Jesus Christ as your “greatest hero.” My guess is that Democrats of faith (more of them than Democrats who are atheists) also consider the Bible and Jesus Christ as a cut above all other books or heroes – but they just don’t feel a public forum is the appropriate place for such a declaration.

Perhaps this can become a learning moment in U.S. politics. On the one hand, let Evangelicals learn that a candidate doesn’t have to constantly make professions of faith in order to be a believer. On the other, allow Democrats to explain how faith informs their decisions and motivations without compromising their commitment to the secularity of the results.

This brings me to the issue of faith and works posed this week by the web site’s hosts. This is a non-issue for a Catholic: the inseparability of faith and good works is clearly settled in scripture and in the teachings of the Church through two millennia. Now, I could say that as I just did, matter-of-factly. I could also try an “in your face” put down. I might be classified as a “Catholic Evangelical” wearing his faith on his sleeve if I wrote our hosts, saying: “The separation of faith and good works is a heretical doctrine condemned by Holy Mother the Church and is an issue only for those who have failed to heed the infallible teachings that have been preserved in the purity of Catholic doctrine that has handed down in an unbroken line of apostolic succession to the pope and the bishops.” I’m not a Catholic Evangelical.

For any one who might look to my comments either in admiration or disdain, I’ll be on vacation for the next three weeks.