I don't agree.
The church I used to attend has a new pastor. One Sunday, he commented that His Slickness was "sad because some Christians hated him." The pastor said he was angry with those Christians. In fact, I think he said that he was ashamed of them.
I had a few choice words for the Pastor on the way out the door, "Look up the name of Billy Dale" being among them.
My wife and I have not been back. I was always taught that Christians were to resist evil. This pastor certainly wasn't.
We started attending a local Baptist church in our area. The first Sunday we attended, we heard the pastor come right out and say how important it was to get the right kind of jurist on the Supreme Court. His sermon was almost like spending an hour and a half on FR.
My point is that there is no problem if politics are in the pulpit. In fact, the other side does it regularly (just look at Jesse Jackass and His Slickness paying homage at black churches).
By insisting that politics be kept out of the pulpit, you disarm yourself and give the other side an added weapon. You also stop resisting evil (and yes, I do believe full-throated liberalism, leftism, etc. to be evil). 'Pod.
Hmmm - Your point is well-taken although I'm not quite sure I'd go for that either. We had another priest who past away recently who was very strongly anti-abortion and, in fact, warned of the Muslims overwhelming Christians with their birth rate and also said that the power of prayer and the vote would help produce change without getting into party politics.
Actually, I don't believe that politics do belong in the pulpit, even in the case of politics on the "right" side. The function of the Church is to teach us how to behave as individuals, and this of course affects our political life.
But there should be preaching about things like abortion and homosexual marriage, however, because these are not political. They are moral issues that the Church has every right to speak out on, since various civil powers are attempting to suppress and ignore the moral issues of the Church (and hence, of a great many citizens) in order to impose the (im)moral agenda of others. This battle has to be fought in the political sphere, but from the Christian point of view it's a moral battle and not a political one.
That said, I don't think that every mention of a politician from the pulpit is political. Certainly, no pastor in his right mind could think that Clinton was a good example of anything, and I certainly think a sermon discussing the scandal caused by his actions would have been in line. Sadly, with our liberal churches, most pastors are like the one you walked out on, and didn't seem to see much of anything wrong with ol'BJ.