It was considered close to Michel Rocard and often cited to be the Christian left of the party.

Others see the group as a far less powerful force, but they acknowledge that the Christian left cannot be a cheery development for Mr. Rove.

The Christian left have interpreted various passages in Acts of the Apostles to mean that an ideal society would be based on Christian socialism or Christian communism.

This pattern largely remained until the mid-twentieth century when a new division emerged between the Christian left (represented by the Social Gospel philosophy and ecumenicism) and the Christian right (represented by fundamentalism and biblical literalism).

The Christian left (along with the secular and anti-religious left) became supporters of the New Democratic Party while the right moved to the Social Credit Party, especially in Western Canada, and to a lesser extent the Progressive Conservatives.

A leader of the Christian left is Jim Wallis, the editor and founder of the Christian political magazine Sojourners and the author of "God's Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn't Get It."