Believing and Make-Believing: Christian Metaphors For and Against Prohibition

Abstract

This essay establishes that advocates of prohibition and their opponents supporting repeal used metaphors of Christianity in distinctly different ways. Turbayne's two attitudes of metaphor-sort-crossing and sort-trespassing are applied to distinguish the different weights attached to Christian metaphors by the two groups of rhetors. Four measures are proposed as standards for determining the attitudes of metaphor: (a) pervasiveness, (b) strength of metaphorical claim, (c) type of metaphorical concept developed, and (d) self-reports. Prohibitionists understood their metaphors of Christianity literally; "ALCOHOL IS EVIL-PROHIBITION IS SAL VA TION" was a doctrinal, not an analogical, claim. Antiprohibitionists perceived their metaphors of Christianity analogically, creating a metaphorical concept of "PROHIBITION IS LIKE SIN-REPEAL IS LIKE ABSOLUTION." The essay argues that confusing identities with metaphors may not be as dangerous as previously held and cautions that broadly similar metaphors may be used very differently.