Lexington Books The Power of Unearned Suffering: The Roots and Implications of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Theodicy (Religion and Race)

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. Review 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.--Noel Leo Erskine, Emory University, author of "King Among the Theologians" The title of this book, alone, is compelling for both the scholars in the academy as well as the avid reader of theology in the marketplace. This title is suggestive of a rather ambitious undertaking. Edmondson wants to accept the intellectual challenge to investigate a subject which has proven to be a rather thorny theo-philosophical conundrum over the decades since King's life, work, and death. Compared to other more recognizable themes in King's work such as love, justice, peace, and community, research on the meaning and contemporary relevancy of theodicy, suffering, and redemption in King's work, has been noticeably lacking. Indeed, theodicy, suffering, and redemption as viable moral-ethical mandates for justice struggles have been elevated in King's numerous works. They remain solidly in the pantheon of his most nonnegotiable moral-spiritual principles. These principles are also among the most misunderstood and misinterpreted assertions in King's total perspective. Perhaps due to the very fact that they remain so ambiguous for many and flat out rejected by significant slices of the academy and the culture, we have not enjoyed any work to date that has provided a sustained presentation of these moral principles and theological-ethical themes in King's work. Edmondson's work offers a timely examination of King's understanding and use of these themes and principles. First, Edmondson situates King's perspective within the Black Church Tradition. This allows him to construct the dialogue between King and the tradition out of which King emerged and within which the issues of theodicy, suffering, and redemption have remained paramount since its inception prior to the Civil War in America. This section provides a historical backdrop for the discussion to follow, and does justice to the fact that the discussion is grounded in historicity rather than abstract philosophical ruminations. This move also opens the door to the ways in which theodicy suffering and redemption in King are emergent from black ontology as it has struggled to achieve its own as well as the larger culture's redemption. I think this move by Edmondson proves to be a masterful stroke in that it contextualizes the study, and opens the later dialogue with humanists and womanists as an organic rather than episodic event. To be sure, there have been works on moral evil, suffering, r