Oh, good grief. Where do I begin?
I periodically read articles from a number of Christian and Jewish sources and today I perused an article from the Christian Post called Christian influencer kicked off Alaska Airlines for evangelizing passengers.
Apparently, online Christian influencer Whitney Lynn was on an Alaska Airlines flight leaving Ontario, Florida bound for San Diego. During a departure delay:
Lynn stood up during the delay and addressed the cabin for less than a minute, telling passengers that any frustration over the wait was part of God’s plan and that they might be avoiding a dangerous situation, The Washington Post reported.
According to the Christian Post article:
A crew member then approached Lynn and told her to collect her belongings and get off the aircraft, saying, “The crews don’t feel safe with you.”
Okay, I’m willing to buy that people might have been annoyed with her and her unwanted evangelizing, but unsafe? I’m not sure how unsafe she could be.
However, Lynn:
…called the moment “spiritual warfare” and said “demons don’t like the name of Jesus.”
Really? I don’t have visibility into the spiritual world (that I know of) so I can’t see if demons are hopping around trying to keep her from proselytizing the other passengers, but the most obvious reason for her being kicked off the flight was that she was being a pest, or at least that’s how the crew saw it.
Lynn didn’t let it go and reportedly argued with staff members about their decision and said:
“We are being persecuted, persecuted to be a Christian.”
I take exception to most Christians in the U.S. playing the “persecution” card. Free speech is a hallmark of our nation and in most cases, Christians are free to preach the Word almost anywhere (try doing that in Canada and see what happens).
Furthermore, persecution is more than just people disagreeing with you or arguing with you. It’s even more than being kicked off a flight, which the crew has the right to do if they feel you are unsafe or just non-compliant to their directions.
If you want to read about Christians actually being persecuted for their faith, go to Open Doors and The Voice of Martyrs. The former displays a world map indicating the nations where Christians suffer from high levels of persecution. The U.S. isn’t one of them.
Lynn continued arguing with various people with clips of these incidents posted on her Instagram account. I’m not going to watch all of her videos, but here’s one:
Frankly, I’d find her pretty annoying if I was waiting to get on a flight. Whether or not this was her intent, she seems more invested in explaining to folks about her plight under the guise of “I was just kicked off this plane for telling people about Jesus Christ.” Oh, she said something about this being the “end times,” which maybe she thinks being kicked off a flight means.
Many of her video clips regarding the incident are posted on People Magazine if you want to see more.
Now here’s the kicker.
Not only did Alaska kick her off the flight, they banned her not only from flying Alaska Airlines but also Horizon Air and Hawaiian Airlines as well. The ban is for the “foreseeable future,” however a letter from Alaska Airlines’ Corporate Security said the ban is in effect while they investigate this incident. They’ll make a final decision once the investigation is complete.
That seems a little excessive. I mean if she had a track record of being a real annoyance and repeatedly not complying with airline staff, I could see Alaska taking this step, but as far as I know, this is the first time she’s been censured for her preaching behavior on flights.
According to the People article:
Previously speaking with The Washington Post for a profile on Evangelists who use flight time to preach the word of Jesus, Lynn said she preaches on most flights.
She added that she likes preaching to fellow travelers because they have nowhere else to go. “They have no choice but to hear the truth,” she told the outlet.
“When I have a gift, and I have a life raft, if you’re drowning, I want to give you that life raft so you can be saved,” Lynn added.
I don’t know if I’m cool with her “no choice but to hear the truth” statement since it smacks of arrogance on her part. She wouldn’t be the first “famous” Christian to get wrapped up in their own sense of celebrity and importance. She may not realize that even with 280K followers, she’s still NOT God’s little gift to the universe.
I wanted to get a better sense about what Lynn posts so I watched this:
She’s saying that all secular music is demonic (sorry about that Mozart and Miles Davis). Now I have no idea if that last video is staged. It would have been incredibly easy to set up her conversation to that guy at the gym. If it’s for real, I’d be rather put out by having her interrupt my workout.
I know drama fuels these sorts of social media accounts and attracts scores of followers who map to her specific message so a lot (most? all?) of this is marketing.
Naturally, she couldn’t get Alaska Airlines to throw her off one of their planes just to make a few drama-filled Instagram posts, but she could have made herself so obnoxious that she knew she’d be tossed off the flight.
I’m not saying that’s what she did, but she’s certainly getting a lot of mileage out of the event. I’d absolutely hate going to a church where the Pastor was this dramatic and had to continuously call attention to himself “in the name of Jesus.”
However, if this was Lynn’s first problematic encounter with Alaska Airlines, then I think the company overreacted. If she has a track record with Alaska or the airlines in general, I can kind of see their point.
Bottom line, Lynn isn’t being persecuted, she’s being a drama queen. That’s not really a good look for people who take their faith in Jesus Christ seriously.
The Christian Post ended their article with this:
Brett Raio of Maine is another evangelist who preaches on flights. He said he feels compelled to deliver his message because he believes God prompts him to speak, and that failing to act on that prompt means missing an opportunity to reach someone before it’s too late.
Retired pastor and writer Rodney Kennedy was quoted as saying he has reservations about preaching without relationship, trust and permission. He said a message forced on a captive audience usually falls flat, and can leave people with a more negative opinion of Christians than they already held.
If you feel led to share the Word with individuals wherever you meet them, so be it. I’m sure you know not everyone is going to be accepting. If someone says, “Please don’t do this” or “I’m not interested,” then maybe leaning on them too hard or leaning on a whole crowd of people too hard, especially for the sake of making a few videos with your phone, is doing harm to the name of Christ rather than uplifting it.
Morning Meditations 
As I began reading your essay today, in which you described the reason for this woman being removed from the flight being that others on the flight felt unsafe because of her behavior, I though such an excuse to be exaggerated. By the time I reached the end of it, however, I had developed a much greater sympathy for the action. A passenger who is so self-motivated that she ignores the purpose of the flight, its preparations for departure, and the fact that she had not been invited as in-flight entertainment seems to demonstrate a disregard for their safety. Who knows what she might “feel led” to do mid-flight, especially in the event of an emergency? Calling her self-motivated is being kind. She could be called self-centered, attention seeking, narcissistic, and other names, using evangelism as an excuse. While you’re quite right that her behavior reflects negatively on Christians, on evangelists and the reputation of the savior they claim to represent, it is also questionable as meeting the technical criteria for action that pursues “the name of G-d”. I could post an essay of my own about what that means, but it would be a bit longer than suited for a comment here. But the point of this reply to your essay is that I, too, would feel qualms about the safety of flying with this woman.
There is one more notion worth addressing here, without writing an entire essay, about doing something “in the name of Jesus”. Because it is derived from a Hebrew idiom, Christians really have no understanding of it at all. To do something in the name of someone or something (l’shem mishehu o l’shem mahshehu) is to do it in accordance with its purposes or characteristics. Therefore to do something “l’shem yeshuah” is to act for the purpose of salvation — that is, to foster the goals of the Father in heaven. With this understanding, it is more easily understood that a claim to serve the master’s purposes while not adhering to his Torah instructions indicates an ignorance of them or a deliberate repudiation of them — hence the Master’s complaint: “You never knew Me, nor I you.”. Consequently it must be argued that this woman’s attempt at evangelism does not qualify as such. It did not serve the purposes of salvation for anyone, and could be arguably contrary to that purpose.
I know not all Evangelicals are this dramatic, but I think the very good points you’ve made are totally lost on many Christians, particularly this individual. As I reflect on her behavior and a few other videos of hers that I’ve watched, she seems to use the same tactics as secular “social media influencers” to get her point across. It’s not just social media. Celebrities from Howard Stern to Rush Limbaugh used similar attention-grabbing methods in order to entice their audiences. I have no idea if she really believes she’s serving Christ in her efforts, but if she does, she’s pretty delusional. If it’s just an act, then she’s disingenuous. Neither serves to bring people to a knowledge of Messiah or salvation.
Sadly, when I posted my commentary on Threads (basically “chat” for Instagram), half a dozen or so “anti-Christians” jumped into the comments to express their bigotry against Christians in general, which was not my point at all. As far as my experiences go, some of the people who are doing their best as disciples of Yeshua are striving in total anonymity.