There’s now, apparently, an epidemic of Christians who get on planes and begin preaching when they know they finally have a captive audience. Evangelist Whitney Lynn, one of the more notorious culprits of this, even said as much in a recent TikTok post: “I just love a captive audience.”
The fact that the sermons are unwanted doesn’t bother the evangelists at all because, for once, they have an audience that can’t walk away. And the hope that strangers might convert outweighs any concern that they’ll conclude Christians are lunatics.
There’s unfortunately very little airline staff can do to stop this. While there are rules regarding passengers who are disobedient or belligerent, preaching doesn’t necessarily cross a line. Flight attendants can politely ask them to stop, but I have yet to see any examples of plane preachers getting kicked off flights because they wouldn’t shut up.
Which means we’re just stuck with the possibility Christians may hijack a flight with their voices.
How is this not being belligerent? What if this was a MAGAt doing this (probably already is)?
If anything, this seems like a quick way for a fellow passenger to get annoyed and punch out the disruptive preacher. If this happened on a plane I was on, I'd clap for the person who decked the preacher. It really says something about how this "religion" is dying off if thos is a tactic they're resorting to.
*Edit: if I were the flight crew, I'd start by asking the passenger to sit down. If they didn't I'd warn the passenger with something like:
Ma'am, you are continuing to be being a disruption despite being told you knock it off. You can either sit down and be quiet, or you will be sat down and quieted. Please take your seat.
Then if they still insited, I'd either have an air marshall "take care of them" them, or I would.
So here’s how this played out in front of my bathroom mirror this morning:
Someone starts yapping about their god or whatever.
I loudly say “No thank you. Please stop.” while ensuring I have caught the eye of the nearest flight attendant.
I give them about 30 seconds to take their bows and sit the fuck down.
If they don’t, I move to the center aisle, stand up, loudly announce that they are creating a disturbance on the plane. I tell them for deeply personal reasons, the topic they are discussing is upsetting and unsettling to me, and if they continue, I will consider their continuation belligerence. I look directly at the flight attendant and tell them that it is their job to prevent passenger belligerence.
If I’m feeling charitable, I’ll mention that freedom of religion is also freedom from religion and that I’m about to freak the fuck out if they don’t shut up the wannabe preacher. And if they don’t, well, then nobody gets to be heard over the sounds of me screaming the account of my then 12-year-old childhood friend being molested by a youth preacher while I watched in the back of a church van.
So says the hero in the bathroom mirror that is devoid of consequence. We all know on this side of the mirror, I would be banned from flying and the idiot TikToker would get a gofundme.
We all know this story is real to at least one person out there, at least the church molesting part
Shout out to the last two sentences for bringing us all back down to earth 😂.
You forgot to mention that everyone clapped though