Prayers of the people: Moral metaphors in the right-to-life and faith-based labor movements

Social scientists pay increasing attention to the ways in which conservative and liberal moral frameworks may alternately cohere and conflict. At the same time, cultural sociologists maintain that the broader cultural context that informs moral thought is much less coherent than once supposed, and that positing associations between beliefs on different moral issues is fraught with both theoretical and methodological difficulties. Informed by these recent developments in the social sciences, as well as the growing influence of innovative theories such as Lakoff's (1996, 2006) about the centrality of family metaphors in political worldviews, this paper explores the way in which moral metaphors are used in one set of cultural objects—prayers, liturgies, and other worship resources prepared for religious services around pro-life and workers’ rights issues. Contrary to models emphasizing worldview coherence in political ideologies, this analysis of religious discourse draws attention to the smaller metaphors that make up larger moral frameworks, suggesting that moral worldviews may be less coherent, more varied, and more contextually dependent than typically assumed. The findings also demonstrate how religious language may remain sacred and distinct from its secular counterparts, challenging one interpretation of religious secularization.