The Art of the 'Back-Seat Sermon'
A Seattle preacher shares his cunning, slightly cynical strategy to force young couples in the back pews to stop courting and actually listen to the gospel.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
The preacher settled back in his chair, gazing in an abstracted note at the Star reporter. Presently, the reverend remarked, as if thinking aloud: 'I shall have to begin another series of back-seat sermons.'
'Ah, indeed,' observed the listener, entirely in the dark.
'Doctrinal sermons? I suppose?'
'What are you talking about?' the preacher shouted. 'Do you pretend you don’t know what I mean?' When the reporter professed ignorance, the preacher leaned back and looked at him with one eye shut, suggestively. 'How did you and your sweetheart generally spend Sunday evenings?'
'We went to church,' the reporter replied.
'And you invariably sat as far back as you could! Now, why did you do that?' The reporter laughed. 'She wanted to see the bonnets of the other girls, and I wanted to see her.'
'Your reasons are just as good as could be given,' the preacher said. 'All young couples make for the back seats. They can't stand the humiliation of walking up the aisle to be ushered into a front pew, only to face a smiling congregation. I got tired of this last winter. I began a series of back-seat sermons. They don't differ materially from the others, except that at certain intervals, I shout with great force, "Young man!" The effect is rhetorical on the front-seat congregation, but electrical on the back. The young men who have been devoting their entire attention to exploring the liquid depths of their sweethearts' eyes give a start, and their companions do the same. They think they are being personally rebuked. When I have their attention, I pour out some gospel hot. However, as soon as the first shock is over, they fall to courting again with renewed vigor. Then I come at them again: "Young woman!"'
When asked if he worried they would leave, he smiled. 'Not at all. They seem to find a certain charm and adventure to their courting, as if someone was trying to terminate them. Since I began these sermons, the attendance has actually increased. They get an idea that I am a very powerful and eloquent preacher, and my fame has very considerably grown.'
“The young men who have been devoting their entire attention to exploring the liquid depths of their sweethearts' eyes give a start... they think they are being personally rebuked.”
Long before the digital age, clergy were battling the 'distraction economy' in their own pews. This 1886 account of a Seattle preacher using 'back-seat sermons' to disrupt courting couples mirrors modern-day debates over how to keep public spaces and shared experiences from being colonized by individual social lives.
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