The Dyer Avenue Express.

For many New Yorkers, riding the subways is something to be avoided whenever possible: a fate worse than paying a humongous cab fare. The stairways are long and steep, the signs can be more puzzling than enlightening, and, most of all, the trains and the station platforms are often jampacked.

Well, the subway skeptics are missing something. First, the fare is (relatively) cheap. Second, the ride is (usually) pretty fast. I'm a "frequent flyer" on the No. 5, the Dyer Avenue Express; the trip from the Baychester Avenue station in the North Bronx to mid-Manhattan (a goodly distance) takes about forty-five minutes if there are no unexpected delays. (Granted, it's a law of nature that the delays will happen when least expected and most inconvenient.)

But my biggest reason for ignoring the down-side of subway riding is, in a way, sociological. Any rider who cares to look around gets a chance to observe a daily sampling of the city's racial, religious, and ethnic groups: what politicians like to describe as a "gorgeous mosaic," but in fact appears rather more like a Jackson Pollock abstract.

You see, for example, the entrepreneurial spirit of some of the newly arrived immigrants who go from car to car, offering discount prices on newspapers, gum, candy, incense sticks, flashing yo-yos, dolls, toys, even cellular phones. It may be that there are also more illegal, even sinister transactions occurring, but if so they're taking place in the darker regions of the subway platforms, not on the trains.

Even more interesting, for me, are the outward signs of inward religious faith one sees on display in the subways - not the kind of thing non-New Yorkers would expect. An elderly couple speaking Yiddish, a young man topped by a yarmulke, a Hasidic couple wearing their distinctive garb: All testify to the still-strong Jewish presence in the city. An increasing Islamic element is reflected in the habit-like dress of some Muslim women and the neat dark conservative suits of men reading the Koran and wearing their skull caps. Here is a Sikh with his beard and turban; there a Hindu woman in a colorful sari; the Indian subcontinent and Eastern religions are well represented.

Understandably, I take even more notice of symbols displaying different Christian beliefs. The Catholic presence is rather low-key. No longer does one see a priest reading his breviary, only rarely a nun in traditional habit. But there are still some women and even men fingering their rosaries or reading what appear to be novena prayers. Members of mainline Protestant denominations are surely there, but they are short on recognizable symbols, though it's likely that some of those who pore over their Bibles are among these close relatives of ours.

The Pentecostal presence is strong. There are men and women who use the subway as a mobile pulpit. They zealously call upon their often weary and wary fellow passengers to give up lives of sin and accept Jesus as their savior. If it is hard to accept their simplistic theology and made-to-order exegesis, it is easy to admire their strong faith and the courage they show in the face of the indifference and even hostility they encounter from some other riders.

On Sunday mornings you can hardly help noticing how many passengers are obviously on their way to worship. Almost all are African-Americans and Latinos: both men and women dressed in their Sunday best, the women sporting elegant hats, the men carrying their Bibles. Most of these, it's clear, are traveling to a service that will last a lot longer than your average Sunday Mass. You don't have to be a Sherlock to know that these are the people who do the jobs that nobody else wants - in restaurants, office buildings, hospitals - that keep the city running, and whom the Lord would forgive if they stayed home to rest on the Sabbath. Here they are, soberly and decently dressed, traveling to a sanctuary where they will praise God for the blessings of a life that most of us would find hard to endure.

All this in the secular city par excellence, where, it is widely supposed, any deity to be invoked will be an abstract, non-involved being whose existence is unproved and whose mandates are up for debate. Well, yes, that's the religious profile of New York that's projected in the media, not without cause. But ride the subway. The people I see on the No. 5 - many of them residents of the "inner city" - aren't insulated from the climate of religious indifference and antireligious hostility that surrounds them. They rise above it; their faith is alive.

Some will contend that this faith is an escapist psychological crutch that helps poor and struggling people cope with their difficult lives. Could be, in some cases. But in my observation the faith of most believers conveys the gift of meaning, assures that we are not alone in the cosmos, that creation is fundamentally gracious. That's rather more than consumerism and self-seeking ambition can do for religious skeptics. But then, on or off the subway, I'm not just a passive observer of the people who live by faith. I'm one of them.

The Reverend Francis J. Principe is head of the religion department at Cardinal Spellman High School in the Bronx.