Daniel Jose Camacho is a Contributing Opinion Writer at The Guardian U.S., focusing on politics and religion.

Newton's third law states that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.

In the realm of U.S. politics, the "religious left" is often imagined as the direct counterbalance to the religious right. Some claim that Trump's allegiance with conservative evangelicals has inevitably awakened this powerful opposition.

Yet, despite all the noise, what flies under the moniker of the religious left lacks the political coherence and viability of the religious right.

The religious left has not been able to organize itself around a focused policy agenda. Whereas conservative Christians have successfully pressured the Republican Party for decades on issues like abortion and gay marriage, religious liberals have accomplished nothing comparable.

With so much conservative mobilization around abortion, one would expect a vociferous defence of reproductive rights from the religious left. But many prominent leaders from this left are ambivalent about reproductive rights at best, and, at worst, seek to shift Democrats to a pro-life stance. Others attempt to re-define or stretch the pro-life framework. These moves already cede the imaginative ground to the right rather than counter the ongoing political attack on women's reproductive rights.

Martin Luther King, Jr.'s efforts to demand economic justice in a Poor People's Campaign once represented a huge opportunity for the religious left. Open to proposals such as a federal job guarantee and a universal basic income, this campaign could have built the planks of a concerted battle against poverty. But by and large, King's apparent heirs abandoned his radical politics.

Religious liberals capitulated to the same Niebuhrian realism and economic neoliberalism that came to dominate the Democratic Party. Any bold alternatives to the status quo could be dismissed as idealist and purist. This has led to predictable patterns in which religious liberals come out to denounce Republican wars, deportations and privatizations, but overlook Democratic ones as acceptable "lesser evils."

Although pro-Trump evangelicals exhibit great moral hypocrisy, the liberal establishment is not without its own scandals. Hillary Clinton's pastor was caught in plagiarism over a book for which Clinton wrote the foreword. Now, another faith adviser has been accused of sexual harassment after Clinton chose to shield him.

Many religious leaders who see themselves as part of the ResistanceTM function as chaplains for Democrats with failing politics. These neoliberal chaplains are too busy writing odes to Clinton and Obama, and placing all blame on Republicans and the religious right, to mount a serious internal critique.

Democrats might have a problem with religion but it is not the one typically imagined. Michael Wear, a former faith-based staffer for Obama's administration, who also opposes abortion and marriage equality, has argued that Democrats need to regain the trust of religious voters, essentially by moving right. However, he ignores how this framing centres everything around conservative white evangelicals. The issue isn't simply whether Democrats are too secular, but which kind of religious politics it should include.

All of this raises the question: Who exactly falls under the umbrella of the religious left? While the religious right defines a recognizable political project, the religious left remains vague. It really depends on the meaning of left in "the religious left."

Accounts of the religious left typically blur any distinction between theological liberalism and progressive politics. The two are not synonymous. In other words, one can approach the bible critically, revise traditional dogma and strive for an inclusive church while subscribing to a number of policies and political agendas. A good historical case study to understand this distinction is theologian Karl Barth's opposition to liberal Christians in Germany who supported World War I.

In the American context, we usually see religious conservatism or liberalism as packages attached to respective conservative and progressive political expressions. But this is not always necessarily so. Additionally, because the term "religious left" is often used to designate any religious people opposed to Republicans and the religious right, it lacks a deeper coherence and ability to describe what this opposition is positively supports.

To be clear, this is not to say that there are no religious progressives doing incredible work of resistance and justice. One can easily point to examples of sanctuary activism and to inter-faith coalitions led by figures such as Linda Sarsour and Valarie Kaur. But these have not yet translated into dramatic changes in policy or electoral success. Rev. Dr William J. Barber II's new Poor People's Campaign shows great potential. Still, it is too early to gauge the nature and scope of its impact.

Jack Jenkins, who has provided some of the best coverage of the religious left, has addressed the religious left's seeming political impotence by re-defining what constitutes it in the first place. For Jenkins, the religious left is radically different from the religious right in both its structure and its goal. Their political efforts centre on provoking the powerful to rethink their views and not on becoming powerful themselves. In short, prophets rarely make good politicians.

I can agree that any religious left will not - and, indeed, must not - exactly mirror the right. In terms of numbers, it cannot. Moreover, decentralized and defensive activism has its place. However, Jenkins's definition of the religious left is inherently defeatist. It renders politically progressive faith allergic to the exercise of political power and the shaping of public policy.

As a religious leftist, I'm tired of seeing all blame directed at the religious right. What about our own failures? The religious left has primarily defined itself by what it is against. Politically, what are we actually for?

Daniel Jose Camacho is a Contributing Opinion Writer at The Guardian U.S., focusing on politics and religion. His articles have appeared in Christian Century, Religion Dispatches, Sojourners, Duke Magazine, TIME and the Washington Post, and his commentary has appeared in the New York Times. He is a graduate of Duke Divinity School and Calvin College.