‘It’s all red ink’: The interpretation of biblical metaphor among Evangelical Christian YouTube users

Abstract

Among Evangelical Christians on the popular video-sharing site YouTube, the Bible is an important resource for justifying and challenging specific words and actions. Such justifications and challenges provide researchers with an opportunity to study how authoritative text is interpreted in social interaction. To that end, this article presents analysis of a single debate – an episode of what YouTube users call ‘drama’ – around one Evangelical Christian’s controversial use of a passage from the Bible to justify calling others ‘human garbage’. This analysis shows first, that conflicting interpretations and use of the Bible’s moral authority led to the development of ‘drama’ because users evidenced differing beliefs about the development of biblical metaphorical language; and second, that users appropriated the Bible’s words to their own discourse activity through exegesis and metaphor development. This article thus provides both an empirical case study in the interpretation of figurative language and a challenge to the common assumption that Evangelical Christians are committed to a ‘literal’ interpretation of the Bible.