cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/50041395
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.
I’d definitely ask for my money back from the airline. It would be all I could do to restrain myself from using the high-school military school voice to tell them to shut up, and if I did what that Christian school taught me I must do to be heard — yell loud enough to ring ears and shake walls — I’d end up being the bad guy and I’d be arrested when the plane lands. In other words, the preachers are making for a hostile flying experience. Time for refunds. Let the airlines collect from the preachers. If they want to preach to people involuntarily, then they can pay us to listen to them, they can buy the airline ticket.