What remains of religion on the left? As we monitor the public expressions of American religion, we notice those dubbed "the right" regularly charging that "the left" runs American culture, politics, and religion. Exactly who makes up this left? David Horowitz and Chris Weinkopf, who are editing FRONT PAGE, a magazine of the web (www.frontpage.com), start naming names and are trolling for more. Who are the left?

Their list: "socialists, 'progressives,' gender feminists, critical race theorists, 'critical' theorists of all stripes, opponents of welfare reform, proponents of an expanding welfare state, members of the coalition to lynch Clarence Thomas and also to save Bill Clinton, tax-the-right ideologues, Christian-haters and PLO-supporters, reflexive bashers of white Americans and America-haters in general." (You can see by their terms that we are not dealing with cool and aloof trollers!)

We scanned the "teaser" list that they published in an advertisement, looking to see whether the religious right's charge that there is a potent religious left was suggested on the FrontPage list. The pickings are thin. Not a single religious magazine showed up in the list of journals, which include THE NATION, VILLAGE VOICE, HARPERS, TRANSITION, NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS, SCIENCE AND SOCIETY, KIRKUS REVIEWS, and the like. Most of them are religion-neutral, perhaps indifferent; only THE NATION is rather consistently hostile toward religion.

Six "causes" were listed as being of the left, none of them remotely religious. Ideologues? On their list of seven only Cornell West has muchof anything to say about religion, and he is a "Christian-lover." Institutions? FrontPage lists seven, including MacArthur and Ford Foundations, plus five unrelated to religion. The Ford Foundation is religion-friendly, has a new religion department and head, and gives "Christian-loving" groups grants. Organizations? They list nine, none of them religious. We suppose FrontPage thinks the ACLU, NAACP, NEA, NOW, and people for the American Way belong on their "Christian-haters" group, though some of them go to considerable pains to defend even Christian rightists' rights.

We'll skip FrontPage's long lists of "left" people in Congress, where definitions of left and right and "Christian-haters" and "Christian-lovers" depend upon who is talking. National figures? "FrontPage" lists six, including the Reverend Jesse Jackson, Marion Wright Edelman, and Hillary Rodham Clinton, three Christians who would be surprised to see themselves listed as "Christian-haters." FrontPage is either so secular that it missed the religious accusees of the Christian right--e.g., Councils of Churches--or the religious left flies stealthily low and gets unnoticed. Or there is not much of a religious left about which to speak. We'll keep monitoring, looking both ways.