Melissa Rogers, "Faith In American Public Life"

Melissa Rogers discusses her book, "Faith In American Public Life", at Politics and Prose.

In her timely analysis of the role of religion in the public sphere, Rogers shows how important religious pluralism is to democracy and how vulnerable both are amid today’s surge of hostility to religious minorities. As executive director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships under Obama Rogers was charged with protecting the constitutional rights of all religious individuals and organizations, and here she describes the legal framework that has fostered the nation’s religious freedom and proposes ways policymakers and religious leaders can restore common ground and reinforce weakened constitutional bars on governmental establishment of religion. Roger is in conversation with Mike McCurry, former White House press secretary and co-director of the Wesley Theological Seminary National Capital Semester for Seminarians.

Melissa Rogers, who previously served as Special Assistant to President Barack Obama and Executive Director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, is Visiting Professor and Practitioner-in-Residence at Wake Forest University's School of Divinity and a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. Rogers holds a J.D. from the University of Pennsylvania Law School and a B.A. from Baylor University. She has received an honorary doctorate of divinity from both Wake Forest University and the John Leland Center for Theological Studies.

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Produced by Tom Warren