So the received wisdom this election cycle says that Republicans believe in God and regularly go to church, while Democrats don’t do either. And this is just one values clash that is redefining American politics and (so we’re told) dividing the nation into faith haves and have-nots. This “God gap” could be more significant than the gender gap in determining November’s outcome, so we’re told.

My response is borrowed from those lovely warning signs posted on the London underground: Mind the Gap.

Let’s try to avoid tying a complicated electorate into a tidy, predictable package. Despite their differences on specific issues, Americans make a remarkably consistent distinction between individual faith and institutional entanglement in politics.

Let’s also avoid associating religion with only one set of values, to the exclusion of others. Some notions, such as the “sanctity of life,” can be used in more than one direction — to defend a stand against abortion, or against the death penalty, or against preemptive war.

“There is a distinction between Americans’ views on “religion in politics and Americans’ views on “churches in politics,” says Luis Lugo, director of the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, which released results of a new poll on Tuesday. It found widespread comfort with politicians who talk about their religious beliefs and who rely on religion in making decisions. Seventy-two percent of voters say it is important to them that a president have strong religious beliefs.

This is not new, but it is ecumenical. Ronald Reagan was considered a good Christian, even if his Christianity was vaguely generic. Sen. Joseph Lieberman was an acceptable vice presidential candidate, even though his Orthodox Judaism is as far from Bible Belt Christianity as Brooklyn is from Kansas.

It’s almost as if the details don’t matter as long as the religious beliefs fit easily into mainstream Judeo-Christian expectations. Faith, then, becomes a proxy for other characteristics Americans want in a leader: morality, consistency, humility.

Individual belief is one thing; institutional activism quite another. The Pew survey found widespread dislike of religious leaders who dip into electoral politics, regardless of party.

So the public (69 percent) is not happy that the Republican National Committee has sought directories from certain churches to mobilize their parishioners. And the public (64 percent) is not happy with leaders of the Catholic Church who would deny communion to politicians who support abortion rights and stem-cell research.

At work here is the traditional American distrust of institutions, especially institutions of faith. We don’t like self-appointed prophets telling us how to vote, be they white evangelicals or black preachers; 65 percent opposed churches endorsing political candidates.

More important, these trends are an expression of the strength of the American faith tradition, which treasures the free exercise of religion but rejects the establishment of any one church, synagogue or mosque. American religion has thrived in part because of the freedom to start a new church if the old one won’t do any more. Decentralization is our saving grace.

This is why I believe attempts to equate “faith” with only one set of religious values will eventually be self-defeating. It is institutionalization under another name. Besides, some of the issues in which faith and politics collide — such as views on embryonic stem-cell research — are still evolving. That could be why we see shifting views in the Pew poll, with those in favor of such research growing from 43 percent in March 2002 to 52 percent this month.

Between worship on Sundays (or Saturdays, or Fridays) and voting on Tuesdays, there is at least a day for personal reflection. Mind the gap.

Jane R. Eisner is a columnist for the Philadelphia Inquirer. Her e-mail address is jeisnerphillynews.com.