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.
People getting up on big rocks and screaming incoherently at crowds of people was an incredibly popular past time in the Bronze Age. Romans documented this phenomenon exhaustively. Particularly, Roman historian Flavius Josephus and Roman writers like Tacitus and Suetonius.
Jesus wouldn't just know these guys, he'd (arguably) be one of them.
We've canonically got four different versions of Jesus to choose from, so you're going to need to be more precise.
*pastime
Jesus was a Jewish man with a Jewish message for Jews. Apocalypticism is the term you are searching for, and yes, there were several apocalyptic preachers obsessed with the book of Daniel in Jesus’ time, there were probably half a dozen guys crucified for doing the same things Jesus did that week, ultimately culminating with Simon bar Kokhba. “People getting up on big rocks and screaming incoherently” is a bit reductive, but I digress. Fuck the canon. The gospel of Thomas is almost as old as Mark, certainly older that Luke, John, or Matthew, and they’re all eponymous. Modern scholars have a far more accurate view of what went on than whoever transcribed (in many cases incorrectly, probably deliberately), edited (heavily), and compiled (discriminately) the “canon”, a century or more after the man lived.
Christianity is a cult that sprung up to explain why the events Jesus prophesied did not happen in the generation of his lifetime, as he said they would.
“For verily I say unto you, till heaven and earth pass away, not one jot or one tittle shall in any wise pass from the law till all be fulfilled.”
MATTHEW 5:18
The context of “the law” in first century Judea is obvious.
Idk about that. A big part of his sermon was very explicitly aimed at gentiles.
Idk about that. Bit of a stretch. Consider the source and all it’s beneficiaries.