During the February 2026 International Religious Freedom (IRF) Summit in Washington, DC, a plenary panel on Prioritizing IRF Commitment of Global Democracies offered an especially helpful lens on the practical challenges democracies face in advancing freedom of religion or belief in a fractured global context. Melissa Rogers, who led the US White House faith office during the Obama (2013-2017) and Biden (2021-2025) presidencies, drew on long experience in public service and sustained engagement with religion, law, and public policy.
Rogers focused on the often unglamorous but essential work that underpins progress in democratic systems, including coalition-building, the accumulation of incremental wins on law and policy, institutional continuity, and steady engagement over time. Her intervention was a reminder of the essential point that commitments to religious freedom are tested not in statements, but in process.
Coalition-building as a democratic discipline
A central theme of Rogers’ remarks was the importance of broad and inclusive coalitions: advocacy for freedom of religion or belief gains strength and legitimacy when it is visibly shared across religious traditions, belief systems, and secular civil society. Experience suggests that when IRF is framed as the concern of a single community, its political reach is limited; but when it reflects pluralistic consensus, it becomes more firmly rooted in democratic practice.
Her point echoed lessons from many policy arenas: decision-makers are more likely to engage when they see that an issue resonates across constituencies. Support is stronger, Rogers observed, when it is clear that “freedom of religion or belief matters across traditions and across society.”
The value of “pleasant persistence”
Rogers’ emphasis on what she termed “pleasant persistence” captured another essential reality of democratic policymaking. Progress on complex and sensitive issues such as religious freedom is rarely linear or rapid. Slow-moving legislative and bureaucratic processes, coalitional differences, and political turnover all shape outcomes.
Her observation that “one meeting is never going to cut it” was less a caution than a practical encouragement. Sustained engagement—returning to conversations, following up, listening as well as pressing—is often what is needed for ideas take hold. Persistence, in this framing, is not insistence for its own sake, but a commitment to relationship and continuity.
Holding principle and pragmatism together
Rogers addressed the tension many advocates experience between moral clarity and political feasibility. She resists the idea that these must be traded off against one another. Instead, she suggested that democratic leadership requires holding both: clear articulation of core principles such as human dignity and equality before the law, alongside attention to incremental, achievable steps toward realizing such goals.
Changes in law and policy, she implied, often come through accumulation: careful adjustments to legislation, seizing opportunities to solidify policy, making progress on funding priorities, and strengthening institutional practices. These may appear modest in isolation, but together they can meaningfully extend and expand religious freedom, changing lives for the better.
Religious literacy and credibility
Religious literacy has continuing importance, as religious beliefs and communities,shape so many social dynamics— including migration patterns, conflict, and peacebuilding – in profound ways. Policymakers who lack understanding of these dynamics risk being blindsided or designing responses that are incomplete or ineffective.
Equally important was Rogers’ emphasis on credibility. Democracies, she warned, cannot expect to advocate persuasively for religious freedom internationally if, for example, protections at home are uneven or the rule of law is not respected. Domestic practice can never be fully separated from foreign policy; it is part of the evidence on which credibility rests.
Religious freedom and religious engagement: an enduring tension
The panel surfaced a familiar but unresolved dilemma: how to balance a focus on religious freedom, typically framed in legal and rights-based terms, with broader approaches to religious engagement that emphasize dialogue, partnership, and the constructive roles religious actors play in public life. A narrow emphasis on violations and protection can unintentionally cast religion primarily as a problem, while engagement-focused approaches may risk underestimating the gravity of persecution and discrimination or have limited impact if not carefully synched with law and policy processes.
This is far from an academic distinction. The balance between protection and engagement shapes how governments organize offices, train diplomats, design programs, and relate to religious communities at home and abroad. Rogers’ remarks underscored that these approaches need not be in tension, if religious freedom for everyone, everywhere is understood as a legal and policy goal that is connected to strategies of religious literacy and engagement.
A contribution grounded in experience
Melissa Rogers could not seek in the IRF panel setting to resolve all the tensions surrounding religious freedom and religious engagement. But she offered a welcome measured and experience-based account of what democratic commitment looks like over time: inclusive coalitions, steady engagement, institutional attention, and humility about pace. In a field often marked by urgency and frustration, her remarks were a useful reminder that advancing international religious freedom depends less on moments of visibility than on patient, principled work within democratic institutions—work that requires stamina, trust, and an enduring commitment to pluralism.
