As I understand this, the CMS portion of the publishing suite uses the default forum style. The dilemma I am having is that we would like to customize the header just on the CMS page, and keep the other header for the default style for the forums.
Does this make sense, and if so what would you suggest?
The CMS does not have to use the default style. You can set that when you edit the Section. I think default is Inherit (it will use whatever style the user selects), but you may specify a style also.