Martin Luther King Jr. and the Power of Unearned Pain

Probably no religious leader in American history is so closely identified with suffering as Martin Luther King Jr. Even before his assassination nearly 49 years ago, he pushed for civil rights through demonstrative suffering on the streets of Montgomery, in the jails of Birmingham, and the bridges of Selma. As a pastor and theologian, then, how did King account for this suffering that he pursued but did not deserve?

To answer this question and more, I’m joined on The Gospel Coalition Podcast by Mika Edmondson, pastor of New City Fellowship OPC, a church plant in southeast Grand Rapids, Michigan. Edmonson recently earned a PhD in systematic theology from Calvin Seminary, where he wrote a dissertation on King’s theology of suffering, recently published as The Power of Unearned Suffering: The Roots and Implications of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Theodicy, the first volume in the Religion and Race series from Lexington Books.

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Related Resources from TGC:

Is Black Lives Matter the New Civil Rights Movement? by Mika Edmondson
Ugly Stain, Beautiful Hope: My Response to Mika Edmondson by Albert Mohler

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Collin Hansen serves as vice president for content and editor in chief of The Gospel Coalition, as well as executive director of The Keller Center for Cultural Apologetics. He hosts the Gospelbound podcast and has written and contributed to many books, most recently Timothy Keller: His Spiritual and Intellectual Formation and Rediscover Church: Why the Body of Christ Is Essential. He has published with the New York Times and the Washington Post and offered commentary for CNN, Fox News, NPR, BBC, ABC News, and PBS NewsHour. He edited Our Secular Age: Ten Years of Reading and Applying Charles Taylor and The New City Catechism Devotional, among other books. He is an adjunct professor at Beeson Divinity School, where he also co-chairs the advisory board.

Mika Edmondson is the pastor of New City Fellowship OPC, a Presbyterian church in Southeast Grand Rapids. He earned a PhD in systematic theology from Calvin Seminary and wrote The Power of Unearned Suffering, a book about Martin Luther King Jr.’s theology of suffering.