Power of Unearned Suffering

This book explores the roots and relevance of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s approach to black suffering. King’s conviction that “unearned suffering is redemptive” reflects a nearly 250-year-old tradition in the black church going back to the earliest Negro spirituals. From the bellies of slave ships, the foot of the lynching tree, and the back of segregated buses, black Christians have always maintained the hope that God could “make a way out of no way” and somehow bring good from the evils inflicted on them. As a product of the black church tradition, King inherited this widespread belief, developed it using Protestant liberal concepts, and deployed it throughout the Civil Rights Movement of the 50’s and 60’s as a central pillar of the whole non-violent movement. Recently, critics have maintained that King’s doctrine of redemptive suffering creates a martyr mentality which makes victims passive in the face of their suffering; this book argues against that critique. King’s concept offers real answers to important challenges, and it offers practical hope and guidance for how beleaguered black citizens can faithfully engage their suffering today.

This refreshingly balanced approach to Martin Luther King, Jr.’s redemptive suffering theodicy is an excellent starting point for readers seeking a more thoughtful judgment about King’s place among the seminal theological minds of the Christian tradition. Compelling, engaging, and highly readable, The Power of Unearned Suffering is a remarkable feat in the face of the ever-growing body of scholarship on King. A richly-documented and enormously stimulating book!, Mika Edmondson chronicles for us a carefully crafted text that examines Dr. King’s thesis of the power of redemptive suffering. With an eye for the historical development of this idea in the Black church and academy he analyzes redemptive suffering in the context of evil. A lovely companion text to James Cone’s The Cross and the Lynching Tree., The Power of Unearned Suffering is much more than a scholarly and lucid analysis of the roots and implications of King's theodicy. Better yet, it is also a critical, spirited, and gracious defense against those who depict King's embrace of "redemptive suffering" as quietistic or absent of liberating power. We are greatly indebted to Mika Edmondson for identifying the socially powerful legacy of King's approach to suffering and evil.

Mika Edmondson is the pastor of New City Fellowship in Grand Rapids, Michigan. He earned a PhD in systematic theology from Calvin Seminary.