To quote the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” According to Greg Mitchell, “It is vital for religious communities not currently threatened to stand with those being restricted or persecuted.” In his article “Advocacy Coalition and Legislative Lobbying for International Religious Freedom”, Mitchell claims American policies have an impact on religious communities around the world. In order to advance religious freedom across the world Mitchell claims that a multi-faith coalition should follow a legislative strategy and uses ethos to persuade the reader.
Throughout the article, Michell uses ethos to strengthen his claim for a multi-faith coalition by using two previous examples of successful legislative battles. The first example Mitchell gave was the reauthorization of USCIRF(United States Commission on International Freedom. The goal of this battle was to pass the IRFA, International Religious Freedom Act, that would strengthen the promotion of religious freedom in United States foreign policy(Mitchell). In order for this action to be possible, many religious organizations came together to draft a sign-on letter to lobby for the passage of legislation. Some of the signers were American Islamic Congress, the Church of Scientology, United Sikhs, and many more.
The second legislative battle was the Lautenberg Amendment. Mitchell stated, “Today, the Lautenberg Amendment also serves to facilitate the escape of Jews, Christians, Baha’is, Mandeans, and other religious minorities fleeing Iran, and continues to cover religious minorities from the FSU.” The Lautenberg Amendment was originally enacted as part of the 1990 Foreign Operations Appropriations Bill. Before the Lautenberg Amendment was expanded to include different minorities, such as Iranian religious minorities, the Austrian government closed down the US processing program (Mitchell). To combat this, many organizations joined in an alliance once again to urge the US government to renew the Lautenberg Amendment to continue protecting persecuted religious minorities. To push for the renewal of the Lautenberg Amendment, a sign-on letter was drafted and was signed by many representatives of religious organizations such as the Church of Scientology, the Jewish Federation of North America, the US Conference of Catholic Bishops. The sign-on got a lot of attention that 21 Senators and 108 Representatives signed as well.
Greg Mitchell successfully uses ethos to strengthen his claim that a multi-faith coalition could advance religious freedom across the world. With the use of previous two examples of multiple faiths coming together in the name of religious freedom shows the reader that it is possible to follow a legislative strategy to advance religious freedom. The reader does not have to go off based on Mitchell opinion but could look into two previous, successful battles.
Mitchell, Greg. “Advocacy Coalitions and Legislative Lobbying for International Religious Freedom.” Review of Faith and International Affairs, Vol. 10, Sept. 2012, pp 51-57. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=139481025&scope=site
Frank's Blog 
Hello Francisco! This is such an interesting topic and I was glad to read your writing. It is a great analyses to see how Mitchell used two prior times in which multiple faiths were successful in coming together. Also using Martin Luther King’s quote overall added an amount of power to the rest of your post. I’d love to see how this translates over in more recent years, specifically because I had no idea such things like the Lautenberg Amendment existed. Religious freedom is why we came to America and continue to be one of the things that we have to fight for. I’m glad that this article was able to open us up to previous times and how we should be learning from the past. Despite this being such a huge topic, I know very little about it and this post did a lot to make me aware of its importance. The only gripe I would have is that in one of the sentences, Mitchell’s name was spelled wrong. I don’t think it’s that big of a deal, but just to let you know! I wonder if the IRFA does enough to protect the rights of people and if it still isn’t, I wonder what we can do to improve upon it. It’s these religions work that is making it possible for others to practice a life important belief, and to do it confidently.
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