During the February 2026 International Religious Freedom (IRF) Summit in Washington, DC, a plenary panel titled “Prioritizing IRF Commitment of Global Democracies” offered a particularly illuminating lens on the practical challenges democracies face in advancing freedom of religion or belief in a fractured global context.

The panel featured Melissa Rogers, who led the U.S. White House faith office during both the Obama (2013–2017) and Biden (2021–2025) presidencies — drawing on extensive experience in public service, law, and engagement with religion and public policy. Her remarks, as reflected upon by G20 Interfaith Forum Vice President Katherine Marshall, served as a reminder that commitments to religious freedom are tested not in statements, but in process.

A central theme of Rogers’ remarks was the power and necessity of broad, inclusive coalitions. Advocacy for freedom of religion or belief, she argued, gains strength and legitimacy when it is visibly shared across religious traditions, belief systems, and secular civil society. When IRF is framed as the concern of a single community, its political reach is limited. When it reflects a pluralistic consensus, it becomes more firmly rooted in democratic practice.

The observation echoed lessons from many policy arenas: decision-makers are more likely to engage when they see that an issue resonates across constituencies, not merely within a narrow advocacy base.

Rogers coined a phrase that Marshall found particularly apt: “pleasant persistence.” Progress on complex and sensitive issues such as religious freedom, Rogers observed, is rarely linear or rapid. Slow-moving legislative processes, coalitional differences, and political turnover all shape outcomes. Her point — 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 allows ideas to take hold. Persistence, in this framing, is not insistence for its own sake, but a commitment to relationship and continuity.

Rogers addressed the tension many advocates feel between moral clarity and political feasibility — and resisted the idea that these must be traded off against one another. Democratic leadership, she suggested, requires holding both: clear articulation of core principles such as human dignity and equality before the law, alongside attention to incremental and achievable steps.

Changes in law and policy 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 expand religious freedom and change lives.

Rogers emphasized that religious literacy remains critically important. Religious beliefs and communities shape migration patterns, conflict dynamics, and peacebuilding in profound ways — policymakers who lack understanding of these dynamics risk designing responses that are incomplete or ineffective.

Equally significant was Rogers’ warning about credibility: democracies cannot expect to advocate persuasively for religious freedom internationally if protections at home are uneven or the rule of law is not respected. Domestic practice, she insisted, can never be fully separated from foreign policy — it is part of the evidence on which international credibility rests.

The panel also surfaced a familiar but unresolved dilemma in the field: how to balance a rights-based focus on religious freedom — typically framed in legal 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; engagement-focused approaches may risk underestimating the gravity of persecution. Rogers’ position was 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 genuine engagement.