Statement of “Greetings” by Mark Lewis Taylor from the Host Committee for the dialogue on “Revolution and Religion: The Fight for Emancipation and the Role of Religion,” between Bob Avakian, Chair of the Revolutionary Communist Party USA, and Cornel West, Professor of Philosophy and Christian Practice, Union Theological Seminary. Taylor was introduced as professor at Princeton Theological Seminary, and founder and co-coordinator of Educators for Mumia Abu-Jamal. Riverside Church, New York City, November 15, 2014.

SPECIAL NOTE: See the critique of this event as it later unfolded, which I felt compelled to write with my colleague Coordinator of Educators for Mumia Abu-Jamal, Professor Johanna Fernandez, “Statement on the Riverside Church Cornel West/Bob Avakian ‘Dialogue’: What Revolution Looks Like in the USA.”

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As a political theologian I cannot speak a greeting as would each member of the Host Committee for tonight’s dialogue. But I do express to you the warmth of revolutionary greetings that I am sure does come from them all.

This Host Committee is made up of scholars, theologians, scientists, musicians, actors, filmmakers, parents of children murdered by the police – all of us somehow fighting for justice, sharing commitments to revolution through collective struggle.

I am joined on the Host Committee by other religion scholars and Christian activists, so let me begin with a brief word from Christians.

 Welcome from those of us who know Christianity has sanctioned or instigated many of the most inhuman, planet-devastating, capitalist and colonialist dominations – and also white supremacy and slavery, repressions of women and the sexually different . . . indeed . . .but. . .

 . . . welcome, too, in the name of followers of Jesus who have contested the ways of colonialism, empire and capitalism, who have fought back –in spite of executions, lynchings, torture, mass incarceration, police violence, immigrant repression, and the slow violence of poverty and invisibility. We greet you in the name of these Christian fighters, too.

But the Host Committee is more than such Christians, certainly more than the one white male Christian you hear now. So, more significantly, I dare greet you as one part of a greater group on our committee – revolutionaries from many other religious and spiritual traditions, and from multiple secular movements.

We are part of a world revolutionary people, from Gaza to Ferguson and all points more and elsewhere! We are led in this land by emergent/insurgent leaders of color – Black, Latino, American Indian, Asian- and Arab-American, as well as revolutionary whites.

We as Host Committee believe today is not just an acceptable event, but in fact a great one, with communist revolutionary Bob Avakian engaging publicly the Christian revolutionary Cornel West.

So, we greet you and the revolutionary world being born, a world that is on the way and on the move, a world that is not just possible, but makeable. Welcome!