Project explores conflict in religion.

Byline: The Register-Guard

Questions of religion and militancy will be examined in the multiyear "Struggling for God" project that kicks off Sunday at the University of Oregon.

"War and Martial Metaphor in Scripture" is the first of nine planned events and will include keynote addresses both Sunday and Monday. The free public talks will be held at 8 p.m. each day in Room 182 of Lillis Hall.

Susan Niditch, the Samuel Green Professor of Religion at Amherst College, will speak Sunday on "War in the Hebrew Bible: Historical, Literary and Ideological Considerations." On Monday, Mahmoud Ayoub, a professor of Islamic studies at Temple University, will give a talk on "Jihad and Fighting: Peace and War in the Quran."

Also on Monday, a Muslim-Jewish-Christian panel discussion will be held from 9 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. in the Knight Library Browsing Room. Daniel Falk, a UO religious studies professor who has studied the Dead Sea Scrolls, will join Niditch and Ayoub on the panel.

The two-day symposium is sponsored by the Oregon Humanities Center and the UO College of Arts and Sciences.

Timothy Gianotti, a professor of religious studies at the university, created the "Struggling for God" project to explore questions of war and peace in the three religious traditions that descend from Abraham.

Rather than singling out one for its militancy, he said the idea is to take a broader look at the concept of conflict in Islam, Judaism and Christianity.

"This program will enable us to better understand how intimately interconnected these traditions really are," said Gianotti, who joined the UO faculty in 2002. "Also, as we work through the violence and the imagery of war, we will journey toward the shared priority of establishing justice and building peace."

- Greg Bolt