'Panicked' London train commuters force open doors, flee onto tracks when man reads the Bible aloud

Authored by oregonlive.com and submitted by randyrandp

London commuters wrenched open the doors of a packed rush-hour train Monday morning, forcing the train to stop and the power to the tracks to be cut. Witnesses described the scene as "panicked" and a "commotion."

The reason: a fellow passenger was reading the Bible aloud.

"I specifically heard him say things about homosexuality and sex before marriage being sins and how we had to repent for our sins, the lord gave his son for our sins, et cetera," one passenger told the Richmond & Twickenham Times. "I sort of zoned out a little after that as I had no interest in listening to him."

Others weren't able to zone out. They "started to panic and push."

Some commuters "became scared when the man also began saying 'Death is not the end,'" a rider told the BBC.

We need a new commandment: Thou shalt not covert thy fellow commuters' brain space with religious nonsense. https://t.co/vMUbeQTZRY -- Damon Evans (@damocrat) October 2, 2017

Trains on the route from the southwest London suburb of Shepperton to the city center were delayed for hours. No one was injured in what the police described as a "self-evacuation."

Fleeing wasn't the only option for commuters who didn't want to hear about their sins. A passenger finally asked the Bible-reading man to be quiet because he was scaring people, and "the guy stopped and stood there with his head down."

London has endured terrorist attacks in recent years, including a deadly one on London Bridge in June.

Surveys show that Great Britain is one of the most secular countries in the world. The "avowedly non-religious," The Guardian newspaper reported earlier this year, now make up half of Britain's population.

SemiMoistTowelette on October 3rd, 2017 at 16:20 UTC »

Must've been reading from Exodus.

huntinwabbits on October 3rd, 2017 at 15:42 UTC »

Its a rare thing in the UK for someone to just start spouting from the bible on a train, trains here are fairly quiet, people talk amongst themselves but you will hardly ever get someone addressing the carriage.

Also, that article fails to mention that in the weeks previous, there had been a failed explosion on a train not too far away, so people are pretty wary at the moment.

I think this was a case of panic breeding panic.

Edit - what happened here?, I just commented on an article and got all these replies..lol