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Rachel Jones

Rachel
Jones

PhD Student, Intercultural Studies

About Rachel

Originally from Minnesota, Rachel lived in Djibouti and Somaliland from 2003-2023 working in education, sports development, and literature. Her Christian faith was strengthened in powerful and positive ways by deep interaction with her Muslim community. This experience inspired her research interest in Islamic Studies, interfaith dialogue, spiritual formation, and trauma. She is exploring the intersection of Islam and Somali traditional practice through women’s sittaat in the Horn of Africa, and considering ways Christians and Muslims can partner for mutual growth, health, and transformation. When not studying, Rachel is spending time with family, training for marathons or triathlons, and working on her ghostwriting, book coaching, and editing business.

Education

Fuller Theological Seminary

2023

MA Intercultural Studies, MA Theology

University of Minnesota

2000

BA Linguistics

Research Interests

Islamic Studies, Interfaith Dialogue, Spiritual Formation, and Trauma

Publications

Embodied interreligious engagement: Female gendered bodies, reconciliation, and sport in Djibouti

Missiology Journal, 2024.

Foreign Christian women in Muslim-majority countries may experience gendered culture shock and various forms of insidious trauma. This is rarely addressed by organizations or individuals yet has a significant impact on women, their communities, and their work by causing a rupture in their concept of self, community, and God. This article argues that participation in sports as intentional embodied interreligious engagement offers potential for Christian and Muslim women to mutually discover valuable resources for reconciling what trauma ruptures, namely their relationship with their own bodies and their communities. The article first establishes the experience of gendered culture shock, sexual harassment, and insidious trauma, and reasons Christians may downplay their impact. It then develops the concept of an incarnational ministry of reconciliation. This is followed by looking at how intentional interreligious engagement must begin on neutral ground and identifies sports as one possibility for embodiment in interreligious engagement. The article concludes with suggestions for further research and ideas for further embodied interaction, moving toward deeper and more intentional interreligious engagement.

Pillars, How Muslim Friends Led Me Closer to Jesus

Plough, 2021.

Gold Medal, 2022 Independent Publisher Book Awards, IPPY
Jones recounts, often entertainingly, the personal encounters and growing friendships that gradually dismantle her unspoken fears and prejudices and deepen her appreciation for Islam. Unexpectedly, along the way she also gains a far richer understanding of her own Christian faith. Grouping her stories around the five pillars of Islam – creed, prayer, fasting, giving, and pilgrimage – Jones shows how her Muslim friends’ devotion to these pillars leads her to rediscover ancient Christian practices her own religious tradition has lost or neglected.
Jones brings the reader along as she reexamines her assumptions about faith and God through the lens of Islam and Somali culture. Are God and Allah the same? What happens when one’s ideas about God and the Bible crumble and the only people around are Muslims? What happens is that she discovers that Jesus is more generous, daring, and loving than she ever imagined.

Stronger than Death: How Annalena Tonelli Defied Terror and Tuberculosis in the Horn of Africa

Plough, 2019.

Bronze Medal, 2020 Independent Publisher Book Awards
Amid a volatile mix of disease, war, and religious fundamentalism in the Horn of Africa, what difference could one woman make? Annalena Tonelli left behind career, family, and homeland anyway, moving to a remote Muslim village in northern Kenya to live among its outcasts – desert nomads dying of tuberculosis, history’s deadliest disease.
“I am nobody,” she always insisted. Yet by the time she was killed for her work three decades later she had not only developed an effective cure for tuberculosis among nomadic peoples but also exposed a massacre, established homes and schools for the deaf, advocated against female genital mutilation, and secured treatment for ostracized AIDS patients.
Months after winning the Nansen Refugee Award from the UN in 2003, Annalena Tonelli was assassinated at one of the tuberculosis hospitals she founded. Rachel Pieh Jones, an American writer, was living a few doors down, having moved to Somaliland with her husband and two children just months before. Annalena’s death would alter the course of her life.
No one who encounters Annalena in these pages will leave unchanged. Her confounding, larger-than-life example challenges our assumptions about aid and development, Christian–Muslim relations, and what it means to put one’s faith into practice. Brought vividly back to life through Jones’s meticulous reporting and her own letters, Annalena presents us with a new measure of success and commitment. But she also leaves us a gift: the secret to overcoming the fear that pervades our society and our hearts – fear of disease and death, fear of terrorism and war, fear of others, and fear of failure.

Dudley Woodberry’s Legacy in Witness Through Word, Culture and Spirit

(Chapter Forthcoming)

Fuller Seminary hosts these profiles as a courtesy to our doctoral students. Their views are their own and do not necessary reflect the views of the seminary.