American Political Life: The Intersection of Nationalistic and Christian Social Imaginaries of Faith as Sources of Resistance and Resilience

In this article, I depict the resiliency and resistance of two powerful American figures, J. Edgar Hoover and Martin Luther King. I understand the sources of their resistance and resiliency in terms of core social imaginaries of faith that they initially internalized and later adopted, altered, and used. These social imaginaries, I argue, provided the purposes, meanings, and values that motivated and sustained their resistance and resiliency vis-A -vis enemies. It is also proposed that although these men were opponents, their lives reveal the intersection of Christian and national social imaginaries of faith, even though expressed and understood in decidedly different ways. Lastly, I contend that Hoover and King represent two distinctive expressions of Christian-national social imaginaries of faith present in American political life.