By Casey Chalk
Earlier this month, Orlando-based social media evangelist and influencer Whitney Lynn posted a video showing her delivering a brief sermon as passengers prepared to disembark from a plane in San Diego. Beneath the clip—in which most people appeared either oblivious or trying to ignore her—Lynn wrote: “I just love having a captive audience.” On July 30, Lynn was even removed from a flight bound for San Diego because of her preaching (which she described as “spiritual warfare”).
Lynn is not an isolated case. As a recent article in the Washington Post reports, preaching on planes is a real—and seemingly growing—phenomenon in our world of self-promoting influencers and social-media trends. As a former evangelical, I believe there is something uniquely Protestant about the temptation to turn an airplane into an impromptu pulpit, a temptation that reminds us of an important difference from Catholic evangelization.
Certainly, Christians are called to share their faith (1 Pet 3:15), and Jesus has harsh words for those who are ashamed of Him (Lk 9:26). Few Christians possess the preaching talent of the venerable Fulton Sheen or Fr. Mike Schmitz, yet all of us are supposed to muster the courage to speak about Jesus, even if we look foolish or invite ridicule. Sometimes the least effective speaker can still be an effective evangelist (1 Cor 1:17; 2:1-5).
That said, there are plenty of reasons to be prudent about when and where we speak about our faith. If you are a salesman trying to close a deal, it generally would not be wise to urge your prospective client to accept Jesus as Lord and Savior. If you are a youth-sports coach, parents probably do not want you explaining the rosary. Our First Amendment rights give us wide latitude to talk about our faith in almost any imaginable forum. But that does not mean we should always do so.
On a commercial passenger flight, you are not going anywhere. You are in an unusually vulnerable position, unlike, say, walking down the street or even entering a retail store. As Ms. Lynn told the Washington Post: “They have no choice but to hear the truth.”
Given an experience that is already uncomfortable, I prefer my flights “preaching-free.” I paid to get somewhere relatively quickly, not for a religious “TED Talk.” Moreover, consider the precedent this sets. As the WaPo acknowledges, airline policies “generally require passengers to follow flight-crew instructions and avoid offensive, annoying, or disruptive behavior,” yet “do not specifically address in-flight preaching.”
If the evangelist is free to stand up and deliver a sermon, by extension that would mean passengers are potentially subject to any impromptu speech—whether from evangelicals, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Muslims, democratic socialists, or transgender furries.
Will there be a designated master of ceremonies to oversee and direct these reading marathons during boarding and deplaning?
Unsurprisingly, non-religious (not to say anti-religious) people who dislike being preached at have made a fuss about this impromptu airborne evangelism. “That would be my nightmare,” commented one person in response to these airline sermons; “you can’t even walk away.” Another wrote: “I would open that emergency exit.”
That reaction is absurd, but I can understand the annoyance. It is one thing for people to sincerely try to share their faith in a setting where others are free to walk away (as I believe Catholics should often seek to do). It is quite another to “influence” someone in a manipulative way in an environment where they have no choice but to listen to your pontificating.
Which, in Ms. Lynn’s case, includes confronting federal officers at the airport who were simply trying to do their job and investigate reports of disorderly conduct. (To their credit, they treated her with admirable professionalism.)
This highlights a substantial difference between Protestantism and the Catholic faith. Although dramatic individual conversion was not a common feature of the early Reformation, over the centuries Protestantism—especially its evangelical variants—has come to be associated with the idea of a single, dramatic moment in which a person “accepts Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior.”
This was not the intent of Luther or Calvin, but it seems inevitable given the emphasis the Reformers placed on the individual Christian’s conscience when reading the Bible. Hence altar calls, invitations to prayer, and the old nineteenth-century American revivalist “anxious bench.” Through such invitations, many evangelicals believe people can not only be converted but also experience the power of the Holy Spirit.
Now, that is certainly possible. It would be foolish for us to tell an omnipotent God what He can and cannot do. And there are, no doubt, many authentic stories of people who have had such life-changing conversion experiences (and, with a more cynical touch, many stories of people who have those experiences again and again).
As Catholics, we believe that, ordinarily, God’s grace works through the sacraments. Baptism, Confession, and Confirmation are the privileged moments that can elicit an objective conversion experience in the faithful by convicting us of our sins and granting us the grace to change and to enter more deeply into the life of Christ.
And, ordinarily, they are preceded by religious instruction and spiritual preparation. But the idea of preaching the Gospel to a stranger, inviting them to make a decision, praying over them, and then each going on their merry way is not the Catholic faith; it is an individualistic, consumerist approach to evangelization.
Which, however admirable the intention, is exactly what influencers recording their impromptu sermons on planes look like (one of their videos garnered three million views on Instagram within twenty-four hours of being posted).
Is the influencer leveraging these viral incidents on social media to sell the product that is herself, or is she striving to build Christ’s Kingdom by sharing her faith alongside them (and, hopefully, helping them find Christ’s Church and commune with it)? Perhaps they would argue both. And that, precisely, is the problem.
About the Author
Casey Chalk is the author of “The Obscurity of Scripture” and “The Persecuted.” He is a contributor to Crisis Magazine, The American Conservative, and New Oxford Review. He holds degrees in history and teaching from the University of Virginia and a master’s degree in theology from Christendom College.