Podcast

S6, Ep. 13: Active citizenship: A conversation with Melissa Rogers about promoting religious freedom and the common good

The executive director of the White House Faith-based Office in the Obama and Biden administrations shares her inside perspective on government, where we are right now, and how people can truly make an impact

Apr 30, 2025

Melissa Rogers joins the podcast for a conversation about how each of us can take steps to promote religious freedom and the common good in the United States today. After leading the White House Office of Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships in the Obama and Biden administrations, she shares her inside perspective on government, where we are right now, and how people can truly make an impact. Our religious freedom protects everyone’s right to bring their faith to the public square, and you won’t want to miss this conversation about opportunities we have as Americans to engage government at all levels and express ourselves in the face of injustice. 


SHOW NOTES

Segment 1 (starting at 00:38): The genius of our constitutional protections for religious freedom

Melissa Rogers served as the executive director of the White House Office of Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships in the Obama and Biden administrations. You can click here to read her extensive biography. She is the author of Faith in American Public Life, published in 2019.

She has been on two earlier BJC podcasts:

NOTE: On April 21, we released a special podcast episode recorded at the same time as this conversation, focusing on the case of Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia and the rule of law. Click here to hear that portion of the conversation. 

Segment 2 (starting at 10:09): Our current moment as a country

Here are links with more information from this portion of the conversation: 

Melissa discussed the work of the federal government to protect places of worship. Protecting Houses of Worship is a helpful resource on this topic from the CISA (the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency of the Department of Homeland Security). 

She also mentioned the Biden-Harris administration’s work on countering hate. One example is the United We Stand Summit in 2022: Taking Action to Prevent and Address Hate-Fueled Violence and Foster Unity. Click here to read more about the summit, or click here to watch the full summit proceedings.

In addition, the Biden-Harris administration released the U.S. National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism in 2023, and the U.S. National Strategy to Counter Islamophobia and Anti-Arab Hate in 2024.

Learn more about BJC’s Christians Against Christian Nationalism campaign at ChristiansAgainstChristianNationalism.org.

Segment 3 (starting 16:52): Practical ways to take action 

Here are a few resources and organizations to connect with if you are interested in responding to governmental actions, including by sharing information about their impact on you or your community: 

DOGE cuts:

Information on various lawsuits challenging governmental actions:

Melissa mentioned the lawsuit challenging the recission of the “sensitive locations” guidance as a violation of religious freedom protections under the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA). Read more about the lawsuit on our website, which is being led by Democracy Forward. Another lawsuit on sensitive locations is also being pursued by a group led by the Institute for Congressional Advocacy and Protection. 

You can find more information about this and other pending lawsuits here:

Resource on how to protect democracy:

Interested in calling your congressional representatives about issues you care about? Here’s how you can find their contact information: 

Respecting Religion is made possible by BJC’s generous donors. Your gift to BJC is tax-deductible, and you can support these conversations with a gift to BJC.

Transcript: Season 6, Episode 13: Active citizenship: A conversation with Melissa Rogers about promoting religious freedom and the common good (some parts of this transcript have been edited for clarity)

MS. ROGERS: I know when I was in government service, hearing from people who didn’t do this kind of thing for a living but just felt strongly about the issues, it meant so much, and it changed things. I saw it change things.

 

Segment 1: The genius of our constitutional protections for religious freedom (starting at 00:38)

AMANDA: Welcome to Respecting Religion, a BJC podcast series where we look at religion, the law, and what’s at stake for faith freedom today. I’m Amanda Tyler, executive director of BJC.

HOLLY: And I’m general counsel Holly Hollman. Today we’re going to zoom out a bit and talk about religious freedom, the First Amendment, and the intersection of religion and public life — but in today’s context.

This, of course, is at the heart of our work at BJC as we promote faith freedom for all. Our commitment means we care deeply about our constitutional structure, democratic values, and traditions that allow for healthy institutions of religion and government.

And joining us today is a special guest who knows a lot about these topics. Melissa Rogers, who led the White House Office of Faith-based and Neighborhood [Partnerships] during the second Obama administration and during the Biden administration, joins us today.

Melissa, welcome back to Respecting Religion.

MS. MELISSA ROGERS: Thank you so much. It’s great to be with you, Amanda and Holly. I just admire your work so much and treasure your friendship, and it’s always great to be back, working alongside the BJC.

AMANDA: Thanks, Melissa. And for our listeners who might be meeting Melissa for the first time, Melissa is a nationally known expert on religion and American public life, as well as several different issues and topics at the intersection of church and state.

In addition to her two tours leading the White House Office of Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships, she is a highly regarded church-state law expert. She is an author — her most recent book is called Faith in American Public Life. And she has experience working at Brookings, the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, and the Wake Forest University School of Divinity. And, of course, those of us around BJC also know Melissa as someone who spent some time on the BJC team, serving on staff here in the 1990s as staff counsel, associate general counsel, and general counsel. So welcome back, Melissa.

MS. ROGERS: Thank you. Great to be with you.

HOLLY: Melissa, we appreciate that you’ve been on this podcast a couple of times before.

MS. ROGERS: Yeah. It’s been a little while, and a lot has happened since then, so we’ve got a lot to catch up on.

HOLLY: For our listeners who’d like to go back to those episodes, she joined us in season 2 of Respecting Religion at the end of 2020 to preview the Biden administration and religious liberty, and she was on the BJC podcast in 2019, along with Rabbi David Saperstein and the two of us during BJC’s series on the dangers of Christian nationalism.

So, Melissa, let’s start broadly and just talk for some framing for our listeners about the separation of church and state, and how religious freedom is protected in our country. You know, all three of us have really dedicated our careers to the constitutional protections of the First Amendment and its two religion clauses and how we think that informs a just and good society, and we’re so fortunate to have that background. I think our listeners would be very interested to know, how did you particularly get into this area of study, and what do you think are the biggest benefits of how our constitutional system is structured.

MS. ROGERS: Yeah, sure. Well, like you all, I first learned about religious liberty from the Bible, in church, and verses such as the ones from Galatians talking about, “For freedom Christ has set us free,” and heard from people like our dear departed friend James Dunn, talking about, in a more vernacular way, that we either come to God fully and freely or not really — sort of harkening back to what John Leland always said, that God wants free worshippers and no other kind.

And, of course, those ideas embody the principle that we should all have freedom of conscience to come to God or to develop other religious beliefs or other beliefs that are non-religious as a matter of our own prompting or the prompting of our conscience and our heart and our mind. And that’s what makes us bona fide people in our faith — and we wouldn’t want to be otherwise — and it makes us understand that we need to respect the conscience of each person to work their way through those questions without the heavy hand of government being introduced in the equation.

You know, I learned about that principle in church and then went through law school and learned more about it as a legal principle, embodied, as you said, in our First Amendment’s No Establishment and Free Exercise Clauses, and went through law school, thinking, Wow, I have this love for my faith and also for the law; I think it’s probably unlikely that I’ll be able to combine those two things in a professional career.

But then I was reminded when I got to Washington, D.C., and was working for a law firm that the Baptist Joint Committee was there running and led by James Dunn and Brent Walker and Buzz Thomas and others, and they were doing this work every day as part of their calling and their careers.

And so I started working as a pro bono attorney at BJC then, while I was still working at a large law firm in D.C. The time came that a spot opened up, and I was blessedly invited by James Dunn and Brent Walker to join the staff at the BJC, and that really got me started on this whole journey. And so I’m forever grateful to James, to Brent, and to the BJC generally for helping me to get started on this wonderful area that I feel called to, both as a matter of faith and as an attorney.

And then you asked about how does this impact our life as Americans. And, of course, we have these wonderful protections that are so robust. Under our Constitution, there are no second-class faiths. All faiths are to be treated equally under the law. We have equal rights to religious freedom.

And that is so important, because there are many places around the world where that’s not true, and there are many places where that may be said to be true, but it isn’t actually lived out as a truth by government. And our government is different in that we really strive to uphold that principle.

And we also are, of course, afforded the protection generally to practice our faith as we see fit, not as the government sees fit, as we often say. And that’s so important, because, first of all, it’s a matter of conscience. What we’re called to believe and to do is sacred. Barring a really compelling reason that’s narrowly tailored, the government shouldn’t be messing around with that or interfering with that.

And also because religion is practiced in the United States in so many different varieties, the government has to be respectful of that and know that what we are doing as a matter of faith is something that we are called to do and that the government generally has to stand back from that and respect that.

Those are just a few of the ideas embodied in our Constitution, and I know we’ll get to this a little later, but maybe I’ll just foreshadow it in that this separation of church and state, which we hold in such high regard, which keeps the government from interfering — either to promote religion or to interfere with free exercise — the separation of church and state is something that we respect and hold dear.

The separation of church and state does not mean that religion has to be separated from American public life. That’s a different thing. That is talking about bringing our faith into the public square, whether it’s to protest something the government is doing or whether it’s to cooperate with government, consistent with the rules that the First Amendment lays out.

That’s something that if you look back into American history, you just see it dotted throughout our history. It’s a continuous thread. And our country wouldn’t be the country it is without the contributions of people of faith, both as prophetic voices and as partners with government under constitutional rules where we can collaborate.

It’s important to bear those things in mind, because sometimes people will misunderstand them, and indeed, our religious freedom protects our right to bring our faith into the public square. And at the same time, we have to protect that right for everybody, so it’s not just us who comes to the public square, but it’s everybody that can bring their faith into the public square. So that’s just the genius of our system that we strive so hard to protect.

AMANDA: When I’m out on the stump, talking and trying to explain separation of church and state to people and say that doesn’t mean the separation of religion from public life or from the public square, I often point to our own work. You know, we are a faith-based organization. We are —

MS. ROGERS: Yeah.

AMANDA: — a religious coalition, coming into the public square, so, of course, we believe in a place for religion in public advocacy. But it’s important that we attend to the details of how to do that well, to both respect our constitutional system but also respect religious pluralism.

 

 

Segment 2: Our current moment as a country (starting at 10:09)

AMANDA: I do want to go now as to how we see our current moment compared to our history. You know, when you look — and you have. You’ve literally written the book on this — right? – religion in American public life, and you’ve done the work, done the work in the administrations, also done the work in private institutions as well.

But how are you seeing this moment, Melissa? You know, where do you think we are, as a country, as a people, in understanding a proper relationship between religion and government, and how they can work together productively, but how one can’t be subservient to the other? And so I’m just wondering kind of how you’re viewing where we are now. How are we doing, you know, in this relationship between the two realms?

MS. ROGERS: Yeah. It’s a great question, and I think there’s a lot to unpack there, as well as other related, I think, threats to our constitutional democracy right now that we need to pay attention to.

We’re still struggling to live into that ideal of respecting everybody’s religion with equality. That is something that we strive to do, but we’re still living into that principle. And sometimes that principle is threatened, and one of the things that I worked on really hard in both the Obama and Biden administration, for example, was on protecting places of worship that have been increasingly threatened, sometimes through targeted acts of hate and terrorism.

And that is just so disturbing. In fact, I was talking with a rabbi not too long ago, and he was telling me, when I was a young person, a young rabbi, I was in charge of our safety committee in the synagogue, and what that meant is that I locked up the synagogue when we left. That’s what we did.

And now it involves thinking about people who could come and target our synagogue, whether it’s because of the horrific and very sadly increasing threat of antisemitism, or whether it is because of some kind of crazed mass shooter who would be hateful for another reason, or any number of other attacks on houses of worship.

We see these things visited on churches and also on synagogues and mosques and other temples and other places these days. So there’s a real need to protect our houses of worship and to work on where we do have problems in rising hate, whether it’s hate of any form.

And we worked particularly on hate based on faith and ethnicity in my work in the White House, which would include people of all faiths. And so in doing that, I think there’s just a lot that remains to be done to protect our houses of worship, to work on the underlying hate that we’re seeing that is directed at people because of their faith or ethnicity or any reason. That’s a big issue for us right now.

I think we’re also dealing with reinterpretation by the Supreme Court of what the First Amendment means, and, you know, there’s some things about that that cause great concern for me, in doing away with some precedents that I think have served us well in terms of separating church and state, which as we’ve discussed is so important.

I know BJC has also led on countering Christian nationalism, which is also very important. Another thing that I know you all do so well, when you start talking about this, is to explain that that certainly doesn’t mean Christians bringing their faith into the public square, which is obviously and rightly protected.

I said earlier that under our Constitution, there are no second-class faiths and that we have equal rights to religious liberty and not rights of one faith to dominate and to capture government and to treat other faith groups and communities as lesser than Christian groups. So all those things, I think, are really important for us to pay attention to and many more in our sphere.

You know, sort of circling back to where I started, this isn’t religious liberty specific, but it is related to targeted violence, and one of the things that we’re also seeing in our country is a deeper polarization. And some of the worst impacts of this is political violence. We have seen that Governor Shapiro, the governor of Pennsylvania, his home being the subject of an arson attack, just horrific.

And we don’t know all the facts yet about what motivated that person, but I noted that Governor Shapiro in his remarks said that he had put online that he and his family were going to be practicing Passover right before this attack happened. Now, again, we don’t know all the facts yet, but this is something that is terribly disturbing. It certainly seems to be political violence, and it may be motivated by some kind of animus based on faith or ethnicity.

But then more broadly about political violence, we only have to look back on the last couple of years to the horrific attempted assassination of then former and now current President Trump, the threats against the lives of Supreme Court justices, including Brett Kavanaugh. We have to think about the attempted kidnap and to attack Governor Gretchen Whitmer.

It’s a real deep concern for all of us, and we, on those cases, need to, as I heard the other day, I think it was former Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar — I was listening to a talk of hers at Harvard just a few days ago, and she was saying that this is a time to stand up and stand together, and that’s just so well put. For all these things, including on political violence, we need to stand up and stand together.

HOLLY: Melissa, that’s really helpful to think about it from all these different angles, and what you reminded me of is just the eternal vigilance that we have to have to protect religious freedom and talk about what religious freedom means, what the promise is and how we can live into it and how we always struggle to do that and have to do that now.

MS. ROGERS: Yes.

HOLLY: And it’s — we have these really high stakes.

 

 

Segment 3: Practical ways to take action (starting at 16:52)

AMANDA: You know, we’re recording today on April 15, which is 85 days into the second Trump administration. And Holly and I have spent some time in these past 85 days talking both off air — but also for our listeners here on the podcast — about many of the deeply disturbing and alarming developments that have happened in these last several weeks, including for the rule of law and attacks on lawyers.

You know, we talk a lot about the law and religion and the law here on this podcast, and so didn’t want to miss the opportunity to have this conversation with you, Melissa, given that you have served in two different presidential administrations.

And so as you think back on these past 85 days and on where we are right now and looking to what might be coming in the days to come, what’s most concerning to you? What are you watching?

MS. ROGERS: Well, thank you for your attention to those issues. I know we’re all working hard on them, and I know you all are pouring your lifeblood into that each and every day. Yeah. There are several issues that I’m deeply concerned about. I’ll touch on a few of them.

Let me start in a place that we’ve been talking a lot about in the news, and that is dismantling agencies and cuts to key programs. And I’ll say this because one of the reasons I’m focused on it — not the only reason — is because I worked in government for eight years, working alongside people who were dedicated public servants, trying to do the best they could for the American people and also trying to implement congressional programs that serve people in need. Those are of particular interest.

And so now that I see this so-called Department of Government Efficiency indiscriminately and bluntly and, you know — in a very uncoordinated fashion in many respects — sort of bulldozing their way through government, it causes great concern. Let me just give a couple of examples.

That Department of Government Efficiency, otherwise known as DOGE — so I’ll use that acronym — has proposed these massive cuts to the Centers for Disease Control and the Food and Drug Administrations. And, remember, these are the folks who help us ensure that we can prevent infectious diseases from running wild. They help us address those diseases when they do happen, and they help prevent public health crises. They also make sure that the food that we eat and the things that we drink and the medical devices and other medicines that we take are safe for consumption.

And so I just think we really have to think about what we are doing now to our country, and this could affect every one of us in pulling things off the shelf, in dealing with our health and the health of our loved ones, to see those things being changed so radically and without real considered thought. You know, reform may be necessary, but let’s have some considered thought – it’s disturbing.

Also, we are seeing massive DOGE cuts to something — these are little known things in government, but they have a big impact on our lives, like the Health Resources and Services Administration, otherwise known as HRSA.

And that’s the federal agency that does all kinds of stuff to help underserved communities stay healthy, to support new moms and babies, to expand care in rural communities, to provide treatment for people who have HIV. And these programs have always had bipartisan backing, and they’ve helped people in urban and rural places across the country who are underserved to get the care that they need.

For example, mothers rely on HRSA-funded material health programs as a lifeline for when their newborns come along and for emergencies when they have postpartum depression, for example. And that’s just one example of some supports that if we make these cuts that DOGE has proposed, then we’re going to have real problems with staying together life and limb in our communities and caring for the people who have the most trouble getting health care and caring for the most precious people in our country, these newborns who are so vulnerable.

Departments like HRSA play a great role in training doctors and nurses who then go back out to underserved areas or rural and urban areas, so this is just work that, especially when you see it close up, you feel proud of it and you say, I’m so grateful that I live in a country that does this and a Congress that funds these programs and an executive branch that is filled with people who are taking these responsibilities seriously and will go to the ends of the earth to make things happen so that people don’t fall through the cracks in our system.

So this, I think, is something that we really need to pay attention to, all Americans. I have had over the course of the past few months daily calls and notes from former colleagues who have been just let go from their jobs, that are like these jobs, that are life-saving jobs. We have seen the cuts to programs and to agencies. It’s very shortsighted, and it’s going to come back to haunt us if they are successful.

So I would say in this respect, I would really encourage people to make notes when they encounter a system failure right now that may be due to these events, whether they’re cuts in programs or cuts in personnel. So I would say the best thing that people could do would be to videotape something that says, I tried to go to my local health center that had been closed because of the DOGE cuts, and here’s the kind of care that we were getting from that center and what we won’t get anymore apparently.

You can always just write it down, of course, and share it with your elected leaders and share it with other nonprofit organizations that are working on this. I’ll pass on some contact information to BJC, and I’m sure you guys have contacts as well, where this information can be compiled.

So that is one place that I think really needs attention. Amanda, you were quite right to mention earlier about threats that have been issued from the Oval to law firms because of who they have represented or what they have said. These executive orders are unlike any executive orders I’ve ever seen in that they are naming particular law firms and naming particular individuals who the president does not like or who have been his opponents on policy matters or in political contests.

Seeing the power of the presidency be used in that way is completely against our traditions, for reasons that, you know, are perhaps too lengthy to explain here. But this is something that is completely out of regular order and something that’s very disturbing. We need to have law firms be able to defend everybody, in that we’re used to that in the United States, and that is something that should not be punished.

We all know that encouraging this kind of thing could well mean that we have members of one party punishing certain law firms and another party punishing other law firms, tit for tat arrangements that would be just really dysfunctional in our system.

Having said that, we all know — and I know you guys were just asking — and not asking but teeing up the issue of what can we all do about it.

AMANDA: Exactly, because all of this, Melissa, can feel overwhelming, because it is designed to feel overwhelming. It’s designed to make people feel like there’s nothing we can do, and that’s absolutely wrong. So you’ve already given us a couple of examples, I think, you know, making notes and taking videos of how government services are being impacted, and we can put in the show notes where people can send those.

But what are some other just really actionable things that people can do in this fraught moment?

MS. ROGERS: So I think it’s really important not just generally to be in touch with your elected representatives, whether it’s in Congress or at the state and local level. It’s also important to show up when you can, for example, in town halls. Members of Congress often hold town halls. So do state and local representatives, whatever they call them.

When there is an opportunity to meet with a member of Congress, whether individually or in a group, it means a lot to show up. That matters. A letter is great, and do a letter if you can, or do both, you know — the letter and showing up. Showing up at town halls gives an opportunity for elected people to see who is there, to have conversation, to see the numbers that are there. That can have an impact in understanding the depth and breadth of a concern.

So I would really encourage people to consider doing that, about any of the concerns or other concerns that we haven’t mentioned. There’s so many opportunities to engage government in other ways. You all, I know, have led — and this was one thing we didn’t get to talk about a little bit earlier, but you’ve led in some efforts to bring some matters before courts and coordinating with Baptist entities to make their concerns known to courts.

And one of those has been about preserving or returning to a policy that the Department of Homeland Security had observed for nearly — or perhaps more than 30 years, that deemed churches, schools, and other locations to be sensitive locations, where the government had to have special, individualized authority to go and undertake immigration actions which might mean deportation actions within those settings.

And, of course, in houses of worship, that’s because we have these places that we expect to be places that are sacred. Barring some compelling reason, there’s a real interest in preserving the sanctity of houses of worship, and the prior policy did say that, that there had to be a compelling reason and certain approval at high levels of DHS before some officials from DHS came into a house of worship and carried out an immigration action.

Well, that changed when the Trump administration came in. The policy was changed, as far as I know, without any consultation with any external stakeholders, which itself is a very bad move, and also without any good reason. You all, I know, helped work on the suit that was filed about that matter under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which we all worked in various ways to help get Congress to pass and the president to sign.

So being involved in lawsuits can be something that you should consider, and there are all kinds of lawsuits going on right now, and I’m sure in the show notes Amanda and Holly can provide contact information for those entities that are pursuing some of those lawsuits beyond the specific ones we just mentioned.

Also, just working at the state and local level to combat policies that you think are ill-advised at the federal level. Oftentimes there are things that states can do to protect their own citizenry or localities can do that will at least lessen or even, you know, reverse the impact of certain actions that the federal government might take. Maybe there are cuts to certain programs that the state or locality can come in and help make up the money that would be going to a particular program, at least for a set period of time.

Then, there may also be opportunities when the federal government is proposing rules for you to cooperate, for example, with a nonprofit such as the BJC on filing comments on those rules. Now, you might say, Well, wait a minute, how much can that really help, because ultimately the administration may just do what it wanted to do and ignore our comments?

But under the Administrative Procedures Act — and I know because I thought about this all the time when I was in government — you have to respond to comments that come in, and you can’t just blow them off. That is something that government officials take very seriously or at least used to, to read the comments and to make some response to those comments. If those responses aren’t made, that itself can be, in certain instances, an APA violation that can undo the rule, so that’s something to pay attention to.

Now, a footnote here: You all, I know, are aware, but we should tell everybody else that there has been another executive order that was released recently that told federal agencies that within 60 days, they should come up with a list of rules that they thought that should just be declared null and void, without going through the comment process.

Now, that’s particularly alarming, and I think in many cases would itself violate — if not in all cases violate the APA. But stay tuned, because you may not in every case be invited to comment. There may be an attempt in certain cases to deem particular rules that were issued, for example, during the Biden administration as null and void without going through the comment process, and that probably will occasion other lawsuits, and you may want to think about that.

Then as far as other things that are not necessarily directed to government as such but still matter are the old thing that we always say: letters to the editor, getting op-eds written in your local paper, starting podcasts or joining a podcast, starting a newsletter. Everybody can do that now very easily with all these systems, whether it’s Substack or another system, where a newsletter can be sent, or just an email message to your friends or members of your community, raising cases for discussion in your communities.

It’s very important to always have very civil discussions and peaceful discussions. I know that can be hard when we’re all feeling like we’re under great stress, but it’s so important to listen to people who may have different views, to try to persuade people, and to recognize legitimate points they are making, and always, always to be peaceful, to be nonviolent, as we always learned from Martin Luther King and so many others. It’s so important that when tempers are running high, that we always practice peaceful advocacy.

And then other things we can do are supporting nonprofits like the BJC — who’s doing terrific work in our nation’s capital and around the country and across the world — to support those causes, and to organize and join in the activities of nonprofits, whether it’s for protests or, as we’ve discussed, lawsuits or comments or meetings with members of Congress or other elected representatives.

So I think it’s really a time to, in the midst of our busy lives, to find that time to pay close attention to what’s going on in the news and to make our views known very widely, because active citizenship will be the thing that helps us to address grave problems, to make progress in this country. And without active citizenship, we could see a country that would be very different than the one we’ve lived in for many, many years.

So I don’t say that lightly. I think it’s an exceedingly important time in our nation’s history, so I hope that everybody will take advantage of the opportunities that we do have as Americans to express ourselves and get involved.

I know many of you are already doing these things, and I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart. I know when I was in government service, hearing from people, ordinary people who didn’t do this kind of thing for a living but just felt strongly about the issues, it meant so much.

And it changed things. I saw it change things. So never doubt that you can change the course of an action in government by raising your voice, so I hope you’ll do that. And I thank you.

HOLLY: Well, Melissa, that’s one of the main reasons we wanted you here is because we all want to think that. We all, you know, grow up learning about our country and knowing that we should participate, but it’s easy to forget. And so to hear from someone like you who has been in government and has that firsthand experience with government workers, the people who are working so hard and also to have that experience, seeing what difference ordinary, everyday people can make by engaging in all of these different ways is really encouraging and hopeful, and we all are looking for more ways to continue to love and invest in this country that we love and we care about. So thank you so much.

MS. ROGERS: And let me add right there that you all are in the trenches every day, so bless you. Thank you. Especially in difficult times, we appreciate what the BJC does. I know when I was working in the White House, I could always depend on you all raising your voices to us and to others in such a way of integrity and with great insight, and you’re able to build coalitions that help move Congress and move the White House and move the Supreme Court.

So, you know, we’re just very grateful for you, and I think sometimes you’re better able to appreciate what an entity does when you are no longer working for it. And that’s certainly been true of my own experience. So thank you so much.

AMANDA: Oh, we really appreciate that. Thank you so much, Melissa, for joining us and sharing your perspective, having been in the administration, to what’s going on now and for giving us all these really helpful ways that we can take action.

MS. ROGERS: Thank you.

HOLLY: That brings us to the close of this episode of Respecting Religion. Thanks for joining us, and thanks to our guest today, Melissa Rogers.

For additional information on what we discussed and for a transcript of this program, visit our website at RespectingReligion.org.

AMANDA: Respecting Religion is produced by Cherilyn Guy, Israel Igualate, and Karlee Marshall. Learn more about our work at BJC defending faith freedom for all by visiting our website at BJConline.org.

HOLLY: We’d love to hear from you. You can send an email to the show by writing [email protected].

AMANDA: We’re also on social media @BJContheHill, and you can follow me on X, Bluesky, and Threads @AmandaTylerBJC.

HOLLY: If you enjoyed the show, share it with others. Take a moment to leave us a review or a five star rating to help other people find us.

AMANDA: We also want to thank you for supporting this podcast. You can donate to these conversations by visiting the link in our show notes.

HOLLY: Join us next time for new a conversation Respecting Religion.

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