Put your faith in politics.

Democracy, like any human endeavor, is not perfect. But that doesn't give us permission to turn away in disgust. Christians need to get involved in politics and try to promote the common good.

Do you think our Elected representatives are dedicated public servants or lying windbags?" went one question in a recent poll by a TV network, as recounted by Bill Moyers.

How would you answer it?

If you said "lying windbags," you're joining nearly half (44 percent) of your fellow Americans. Only about a third (36 percent) actually thought reasonably well of the people they had elected to hold public office.

The poll is just one sign of the grim view of politics shared by many Americans. Another poll found only 14 percent of Americans giving members of Congress high ratings for honesty and ethical standards (and President Clinton's recent troubles certainly aren't helping things either).

Late-night comedians and ordinary street talk both make politicians the butt of ridicule and contempt. One state legislator, pushing for reforms to clean up politics, was told by a colleague, "What's the use? People all think we're a bunch of crooks anyway."

Those attitudes turn into action (or nonaction): Voter turnout in the last national election was the lowest since 1924 and one of the lowest ever recorded. Predictions are even worse for this fall's election.

Is all this cynicism justified? Is politics just plain dirty business (as political commercials themselves so often proclaim)? And, if so, should Christians treat it the way they would pornography or drug dealing or any other dirty business--and simply stay away?

Ask Tom Allio, peace and justice director for the Diocese of Cleveland/Akron, and you get a heartfelt, even anguished answer.

Yes, says Allio, who has been active in local campaign-reform efforts, the cynicism is largely justified--but no, Christians can't in good conscience stay away.

"There's a tremenaous disconnect between average toiles and public officials," Allio says. "Politicians follow the polls, but they don't hear from ordinary citizens. Instead, they hear from special interests."

And if voters don't connect with politicians, they also too often fail to connect to each other across lines of race, class, and religion. "Politicians exploit such divisions. That increases the sense of cynicism and alienation."

Added to that is what Allio and many others characterize as a loss of civility in our public discourse. Violent movies, road rage, and an intensely competitive economy all stress attack and triumph. Such cultural trends are mirrored by political ads that say nothing about the candidate but instead unload a barrage of half-truths, innuendos, misleading photographs, and charges meant to demonize opponents.

"There's so much mean-spiritedness and nastiness in electoral politics, so people just turn it off," says Allio. "We hear that every time we try to talk to people. As a nation we've lost the sense of public service as a noble endeavor."

And it's critical that we find that again because politics isn't just an amusing (or disgusting) sideshow. What gets decided in politics sets the basic rules of the ways we live together. As Moyers puts it, politics "encompasses practically everything that we can and must do together: how we educate our children, design our communities and neighborhoods, feed ourselves and dispose of our wastes, how we care for the sick and elderly and poor, how we relate to the natural world, how we entertain and enlighten ourselves, how we defend ourselves and what values we seek to defend, what roles are chosen for us by virtue of our identity, and what roles we create for our children. These fundamental issues are for all of us to address, as free and equal citizens, through the political process."

Powerful interests understand that. Tobacco companies and the pharmaceutical industry and defense contractors and doctors and lawyers and road builders and manufacturers and gambling interests and bankers and other interest groups give millions of dollars to campaigns each election cycle. They're not giving just for the fun of it. They know they have a stake in what politicians decide, so they make their presence felt. And if ordinary citizens of faith and goodwill opt out--if they don't vote or pay attention to issues or speak out--that leaves the field entirely to the moneyed interests. The result is that whatever is in the interests of the wealthy and powerful is likely to prevail, regardless of whether it serves the common good.

And that means that many other values that Christians care about--caring for the poor and vulnerable, cherishing peace and human dignity, acting as stewards of creation--will get short shrift.

Moyers, in a recent speech on "The Soul of Democracy," recounts the 1993 fire in a Hamlet, North Carolina chicken factory in which 25 employees lost their lives because the exit doors were locked shut. A tragic accident, the newspapers called it. But if you look beyond the cause of the fire, you find that the plant had never been inspected for safety. And if you ask why, you find successful industry campaigns to reduce the number of federal and state safety inspectors, to the point that enforcement of safety regulations--like those mandating clear fire exits--was virtually nonexistent. Industries naturally want fewer restrictions on the way they do business, and the politicians, setting the rules society lives by, had responded to their interests. The interests of the less powerful--in this case the employees who needed protection against violations by unscrupulous plant owners--were lost.

Wrangling over such issues is a messy business, of course, and most people won't have the time or the patience to do it. That's why it is important that at least some people of integrity and faith and energy and ideas do get involved, and run for office, and work to create policies and pass laws that genuinely serve the common good.

Such work can't be pure and single-minded, of course. In a democracy, it means compromising and building coalitions and seeking common purpose with others who may disagree or even serve different values.

Democracy, in other words, is not perfect. Should that stop us? The Christian doctrine of original sin tells us that no human endeavor is perfect--family life or business or the professions and certainly not the church itself. But that's not an excuse not to try.

Mario Cuomo, the former governor of New York, struggled to reconcile his Catholic faith and his role as the state's top politician. Specific debates, especially over abortion and capital punishment, caused him pain. But he had no doubt of the importance of the work of politics. The Christian ethic, Cuomo wrote, "while recognizing that we are too weak to do it perfectly, calls on us nevertheless to try to do good things for other people. Prudently, without ignoring our obligations to ourselves, realistically, but insistently. Trying always to arrange a package of justice, charity, and mercy, proffering it beyond the walls of our own homes, our own churches, our own lives." Such beliefs impelled Cuomo to enter politics and shaped his decisions while in office. True, some of those decisions may have been wrongheaded or failures or had unintended consequences--as all human endeavors will. But that doesn't negate the importance of the effort to try to live out one's religious values, in part, through decisions and actions in the public realm of politics.

Tom Allio finds signs of hope. He points to such efforts as church-based community organizing and cross-denominational efforts, such as Call to Renewal, to call attention to the plight of poor people in a prosperous society.

"Too much is at stake to give in to despair," says Allio. "Our Catholic faith tells us that we have a responsibility to raise our voice and values in the political arena. Every man and woman is challenged to transform society, to make it more respectful of human life, more attentive to the needs of the poor and vulnerable."

That's work worth doing, Allio insists. Even if trying to do it is harder than just shrugging one's shoulders and cracking jokes about presidential sex scandals and lying windbags.

By Mary O'Connell, a writer living in Chicago.