Is it good manners for Christians to break into public songs of worship in the confined space of a commercial airplane in flight? Is it fair for a Muslim politician to question whether people of her faith would have been afforded the same privilege? Is it wise for a guitar-wielding worship leader to roam the aisle of the plane like he’s leading a summer youth camp?
This is what happened on an EasyJet flight April 9, as documented in a video captioned “Worshipping Jesus 30,000 feet in the air” and posted on Instagram by Jack Jensz Jr., who founded a group called Kingdom Realm Ministries. He added: “#Jesus is taking over this Flight.”
Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., expressed outrage over the video because of what she perceived as the abuse of Christian privilege in America. Her outrage was quickly met with additional outrage by some Christians who believe Christians should be able to sing aloud on airplanes.
Before giving in to the political fight, let me explain that I don’t like people singing on a plane. There are times when I take a 5:30 a.m. flight and I don’t want the person sitting next to me to even speak. Having gotten out of bed at 3:30 a.m., I want to sleep.
A good way not to be disturbed is to put a large, black calf-skin Bible on my lap. People will try to move to a new seat. No one disturbs me. Admittedly, I’m a curmudgeon and I wouldn’t want the Mormon Tabernacle Choir or the Harlem Boys Choir singing on my flight. That doesn’t make me a candidate for leaving the country or going back to where I came from.
Yet the airplane singing episode illustrates how easily we gravitate toward making something out of nothing, something riddled with emotional and political fireworks. How quickly we insist that every argument is a “we” vs. “them” moment.
Political outrage
“‘We vs. them’ creates a threatening dynamic, where ‘they’ are evil or crazy or ignorant and ‘we’ need a candidate who sees the threat and can alleviate it,” said Matt Motyl, a political psychologist at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
Maybe Rep. Omar, one of only three Muslims in Congress, saw this as a political “gotcha” moment. She may not have anticipated that her words were “weaponized” like a boomerang that would swing back around and hit her in the head. In the world of “getting even, getting revenge, and taking advantage of others” this protest seems obvious — unnecessary but obvious.
Should I be shamed by fellow progressives when I suggest that Rep. Omar made a political miscalculation? Was this one of those moments like the time Hillary Clinton referred to Trump supporters as “a basket of deplorables?” Nothing would have come of this singing on the plane incident if Omar had shrugged, said, “This is awful,” and then moved on to the actual business of being a representative from Minnesota. No one would have heard about it outside the social media, which specializes in the creation of artificial outrage, if Rep. Omar hadn’t created the “outrage” moment.
Our political environment seems transformed into a political basketball game where all the shooters are putting up three-point shots from all over the court to no particular end. Everyone “hogs” the ball. Everyone shoots and shoots as if they have no teammates. In a political environment where making points, obtaining ratings and getting clicks matters most, we should not be surprised at the “shots” people take.
Rights and responsibilities
Do people have the right to sing on a plane? Let’s grant the answer as “yes.”
But is this even a Christian question? Perhaps other questions should have been posed: “Is it good manners for a group to sing on a plane?” or “How should Christians respond to perceived insults and criticisms?”
“The people protesting Omar’s protest want freedom for their kind of people to sing on planes, but not freedom for Omar to dissent from people singing on planes.”
“Freedom,” after all, is not in the list of Christian virtues. Why do so many Christians now trumpet freedom as their top doctrine? And why does the demand for freedom seem to only include one group of people — the good Christians?
The people protesting Omar’s protest want freedom for their kind of people to sing on planes, but not freedom for Omar to dissent from people singing on planes. They want fairness for their people, but not for Rep. Omar and presumably her brother.
Lauren Berlant has proposed that such Christians mainly seek freedom from shame. This shows up in every protest involving civil rights, sexuality and feminism. They quickly become about manners and emotions.
In this situation, Rep. Omar jumped right in there and rejected what others would perceive as people’s spontaneous, ingrained responses. Using the pedagogy of shaming the singers, Omar received a furious kickback.
The singing on the plane protest feels like shaming to conservatives. And no one knows shaming like conservative Christians. They think it is one more example of political correctness.
In this environment, the conservatives think the singing group was just having a little fun and Rep. Omar is the political correctness police taking away American freedoms. They are outraged because Omar makes them feel unfree. She seems like one who has blasphemed the American freedom to impose Christian beliefs, prayers and songs on everyone whether they are Christian or not.
Un-Christian responses
Christian responses to Omar sound suspiciously un-Christian. When is it “hatred” not to want singing on a plane? Not a single person has answered Omar’s legitimate question of what response there would be to a group of Muslims praying out loud on a plane. Instead, Republican politicians have expressed outrage. They pretend to be offended. They are out for revenge.
“This debate quickly became about a desire for freedom to do something obnoxious.”
Why does this Christian desire for revenge ring out so loudly today?
After all, singing on a plane seems an odd place for Christian worship. This is the most confined space imaginable. Yet this debate quickly became about a desire for freedom to do something obnoxious.
“Why do you hate Christians, Ilhan?” asked Vernon Jones, a former Democrat who is running as a Republican to represent Georgia in the U.S. House of Representatives. “If the freedom of religion we enjoy here in America disturbs you, feel free to pack your bags and head back to Somalia, Sudan, or wherever you’re from. Take your brother with you.”
Why are people so quick to equate criticism with hatred? Is there a persecution complex percolating among conservatives? Why do Christians move so quickly to accuse others of hatred when they are criticized?
Are the protests raised against Rep. Omar really saying, “As moral, religious and law-abiding citizens, we feel that we are unprejudiced and undiscriminating in our wish to keep our nation as a Christian nation?” If this is the case, then we have a bigger problem than previously accepted.
Omar expresses the same kind of outrage Christians routinely express about their efforts to have prayer in school, Bible study in school, prayer at public gatherings and a host of other “Christian” practices.
Jose Castillo, a Republican candidate running for Congress in Florida’s 9th Congressional District, chimed in on the issue: “In America, Muslims can & do pray in public. If she wants a country where Christians aren’t allowed to do the same (Omar) should go back to her own country.”
Presumably that would mean Somalia, where she was born. Omar is a naturalized U.S. citizen. This is scorn in all its inglorious, in-your-face brutality.
Does Castillo consider the possibility that Omar was making a valid point about diversity, good manners, mutuality, respect and dignity? These are not headline-making actions. They don’t sizzle or make any discernible impact.
The problem with shame
There’s an ongoing contest in the U.S. between those who wish to shame and those who refuse to be shamed. The current Christian response seems to be, “You shame me, and I shame you back. I reject your shame and shame you twice as much – 5, 10, or 15 times as much.”
Shame seems a strange choice of strategies for progressives.
George Lakoff, communication scholar and cognitive scientist, claims that conservatives and progressives have competing metaphors of a “stern father” and a “nurturing parent.” Conservatives live by the “stern father” metaphor, and progressives promote the “nurturing parent” ideal. But now progressives are employing aspects of the “stern father” ideal and using the pedagogy of shaming against conservatives.
“Progressives now seem like my mother.”
Progressives now seem like my mother. She worked in “shaming” the way Colbert works in comedy. She could shame you into dropped eyes, lowered shoulders and a “come to Jesus” for repentance mode in a New York second.
Conservatives seem oblivious to the reality that they were the previous masters of shame. Progressives seem not to notice that they are the new masters of shame.
Communication scholar Donovan Schaefer notes, “Progressive politics, in particular — the politics of antiracism, gender emancipation, queer emancipation, and of new horizons of political enfranchisement — is organized around a retraining and a reteaching of bodies. Therefore, progressive politics is a project intimately associated with shame.”
In a shaming culture, are there better ways to teach, to inspire, to uplift?
The pedagogical space is condensing. More interactions with more and different people means more chances to be shamed.
Schaefer notes: “We live in an increasingly saturated shame panopticon. This has led some of the former masters to a state of shame-exhaustion, in which it becomes easier to repudiate shame altogether than respond to the moral demands placed on them.”
Then he adds, “This is not to claim that shame should be expunged from politics. But it does indicate that progressives have taken the position of the new ‘shame masters’ without reflecting on the responses that shaming others produces. Somewhere in our battling over ideologies, we have forgotten that people don’t respond well to being shamed. We have also neglected the danger that the act of shaming others can create the thrill of contempt. Whenever shame is your go-to emotion, you are inviting your own heart to fill with rage, contempt, cruelty — suggesting self-righteousness.”
How dare they?
Contempt is the mark of shaming Omar for her protest, but the same danger sticks to Omar as well. This is a sneering “How dare they?” — How dare Omar criticize Christians singing on a plane!
Conservatives define those who protest any action deemed “Christian” as an enemy who is determined to undo national unity and dignity. How many Christians still live in the naïve bubble that the default setting in America is belief in the American God and the American version of Christianity? America is not a “Christian nation.” It is a nation that still has millions of allegedly Christian persons.
Do we suppose there now will be an upsurge of groups singing on planes? Rap groups? Gospel groups? Muslim groups? Rock and roll groups? Will Christian groups singing on planes become the new model for Christian witnessing? Since many Christians have lost the courage to ask people to have faith in Jesus, perhaps promoting outrage, attending protests and singing on planes has become the new Christian witness. Do you suppose there will be a crowd rushing to church next Sunday to accept Jesus as Savior because a Muslim member of Congress protested the singing?
As more and more Christians engage in rage, outrage, shaming, contempt, scorn and a persecution complex, the more I agree with Ta-Nehisi Coates expressing frustration at “good people” being racist: “And right then I knew that I was tired of good people, that I had had all the good people I could take.”
“Since when does an act of dissent indicate a need to expel a citizen from our country?”
What if there were a different Christian response? For example, “Come unto me” Jesus says. Jesus doesn’t say, “Head back to Somalia, Sudan, or wherever you’re from. Take your brother with you.” Since when does an act of dissent indicate a need to expel a citizen from our country? What’s Christian about this?
When we are embarrassed to witness in vulnerable ways, we turn to the sensational, and ironically, the embarrassing, to make it look like we are witnessing. I’m reminded of a street evangelist shouting out his “witness” when Ludwig Wittgenstein walked past. Wittgenstein remarked: “If he really meant what he was shouting, he would not use that tone of voice!”
Sharing the gospel doesn’t mean force-feeding it to a captive audience on a crowded airplane or a street corner or a mall.
Rodney Kennedy
Rodney W. Kennedy currently serves as interim pastor of Emmanuel Freiden Federated Church in Schenectady, N.Y., and as preaching instructor Palmer Theological Seminary. He is the author of nine books, including the newly released The Immaculate Mistake, about how evangelical Christians gave birth to Donald Trump.
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