I first heard of Emma McCune while cruising the internet for African music. A Sudanese rapper named Emmanuel Jal credits her with his rescue, and his song "Emma" is a moving tribute to her compassion and to the fruits of her work.
When I searched for Emma online, I learned that not everyone shares Jal's adoration for her.
To learn more about this controversial crusader, I ordered a copy of Emma's War, by Atlanta-dwelling writer Deborah Scroggins. This thorough, beautifully-written book chronicles not only Emma's life, but the long history of Western involvement in Sudan.
A low-level aid worker, Emma worked building schools for children in the war-torn south of Sudan, among the warring Dinka and Nuer tribes (among others). She was one of hundreds of Western expats caught up in a movement to bring relief to the suffering in Africa.
In her travels, she met a charismatic rebel leader, fell in love, and married him. She fell into bad repute when her husband, a ranking official in the Sudanese People's Liberation Army (SPLA), rebelled against his commander, starting a bloody war that multiplied already alarming levels of famine and violence in southern Sudan. Soon Emma was acting as a press secretary and political advocate for her husband, clearly taking a side in the conflict and apparently turning a blind eye to some of the most offensive atrocities in the history of a long and atrocious war.
Scroggins uses Emma's story to exemplify what she sees as an often well-intentioned, but misguided, delusional, costly, and ultimately ineffective effort to bring our type of peace to Sudan. At first, I thought that this might be an unfair way to use a woman's life, especially in light of the impact it had on Jal, one of my favorite musicians.
However, the book gives voice to those who felt that Emma had done good work. Scroggins acknowledges the high regard with which the Nuer people viewed Emma, and she recounts how Emmanuel Jal was smuggled out of Sudan to Kenya.
I felt depressed all day yesterday after reading the book. It mounted a significant attack on my ideas about helping the poor, and displayed tragic consequences to some of the most well-intentioned, well-planned aid efforts. Scroggins seems content to lament the tragedy, and she offers little hope for improved models and positive results for Western aid efforts.
In the world of cross-cultural ministry, we can rarely foresee the results of our work. We can plan carefully, step cautiously, and respect boundaries, but sooner or later, to do any good, we must act, and we can't always know what will happen as a result. It may sometimes be better not to act at all- Emma's story, at least Scroggin's telling of it, seems to imply this.
But who knows? The bloodshed probably would have happened with or without Emma there, and even if one disregards all her other relief efforts, the saved life of Emmanuel Jal and his subsequent impact on his home country seem worth the venture.
This is where I have to place my mind if I am to continue this kind of work. The poor will always be with us. I can't even solve one kid's problems, much less those of a whole community. I am responsible to plan as well as I can, but in the end I am acting in good faith- faith that love, tempered with as much wisdom as is available to me at this point- will bear good fruit.
If Emma McCune, with all her missteps and her moments of blindness and romantic delusion, was able to influence one Nuer kid to turn his life around and reach back to his own people, then I have to believe that something good can come of our work here.
