Entitled ”All Because of Religion! Religion, Violence, and the Imperative of Transfiguration,” Amos’s lecture focused on an important issue that we face in our world today: the rising tide of violence and its association with religion.
Amos is a biblical scholar by background with a particular interest in the interface between inter-religious concerns and biblical studies, stemming partly from the years she spent living in Jerusalem and then Beirut.
”It would be a mistake to suggest that the current war between Russia and Ukraine, or in Israel and Gaza was only due to religion, but it would equally be a mistake to suggest religion is not a factor in these two conflicts which are currently dominating the international news,” said Amos. ”Religiously based violence is not just something that is out there in faraway parts of the world; it is a phenomenon that can occur in Britain and Ireland not only when we import quarrels which began far away onto the shores of these islands; it has been, certainly until very recently, a feature of homegrown tensions in which religion played a part, however intertwined with nationalism or other factors it might have been.”
