Earlier this month, Orlando-based evangelist and social media influencer Whitney Lynn posted a video of herself offering a brief preaching session as passengers prepared to debark an airplane in San Diego. Below the clip – in which most people seemed either oblivious or trying to ignore her – Lynn wrote: “I just love a captive audience.” On 30 July, Lynn was even bounced from a San Diego-bound jet for her sermonizing (something she labeled “spiritual warfare”).
Lynn is not an outlier. As a recent Washington Post article reports, airplane preaching is a real phenomenon, and one that seems increasingly common in our world of self-described “influencers” and trending social media. As a former evangelical, I think there’s something uniquely Protestant about the temptation to turn a plane into an impromptu pulpit, a temptation that reminds us of an important difference when compared to Catholic evangelism.
Certainly, Christians are called to share their faith (1 Peter 3:15), and Jesus has strong words about those who prove themselves ashamed of him. (Luke 9:26) Few Christians possess the preaching talents of Venerable Fulton Sheen or Fr. Mike Schmitz, but we are all supposed to exhibit the courage to talk about Jesus, even if
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