"We remember in particular the ways you embraced us with compassion in the days following the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, and in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina just months ago", the letter started. "Yet we acknowledge as well that we are citizens of a nation that has done much in these years to endanger the human family and to abuse the creation".

"We lament with special anguish the war in Iraq, launched in deception and violating global norms of justice and human rights. (...) We mourn all who have died or been injured in this war. (...) We confess that we have failed to raise a prophetic voice loud enough and persistent enough to deter our leaders from this path. (...) We confess that we have failed to raise a prophetic voice loud enough and persistent enough to call our nation to global reponsability for the creation (...) We have failed to embody the covenant of life to which our God calls us (...) Lord, have mercy". All these are climactic fragments in a public letter drafted using an uncanny language, commonly reserved for liturgical and theological texts and in Christian prayer.

At the press conference, the delegation of the US Conference for the WCC was represented by moderator rev. Leonid Kishkovsky, rev. Michael E. Livingston, president of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA, rev. John H. Thomas, general minister and president of the United Church of Christ, rev. Sharon Watkins, general minister and president of the Christian Church Disciples of Christ and dr. Stanley J. Noffsinger, general secretary of the Church of the Brethren.

Several questions from the press allowed the delegation to make clear that the letter is endorsed by the US Conference for the WCC and it is a "responsible voice for the WCC commitment in the US". At the same time it has not been endorsed by each member of the Conference, but rather it is a document of representation, agreed by consensus among those elected to act for the churches within the conference.

But the current letter shall not be also sent to the White House, said Leonid Kishkovsky, because the current administration does not welcome the religious leaders endorsing this kind of message. However, "we would like to engage theologically our president, in view of his Christian committment and claim that his policy is informed by a Christian faith", affirmed Michael Livingstone, answering a question from an Australian journalist. "The deceptive ways of starting the war in Iraq would add a particularly interesting dimension to this debate," he said, "but it is known that Bush did not engage theologically his policy in the context of his own church." George W. Bush is a member of the United Methodist Church, who is also part of the US Conference of Churches for WCC.

The choice of powerfully penitential language, instead of a formal distancing from the policy of the US, was motivated by a common sense of complicity among the members of the drafting committee. "By being part of the body politic, we are complicit and we need a corporate acknowledgment of that" said John Thomas, while Michael Livingstone added that "having tried to address this at the beginning of the war and failed, we now speak as part of the larger American society, not only up and against this particular issue". "Benefiting every day of the privileges of our economic system, only adds to this complicity" said Sharon Watkins.

Therefore, the subtext of the letter was that, while the usual Christian voice heard from America are pro-war, "the ecumenical family knows that there are churches in the US that claim otherwise and we wanted to make our repentance known", explained Livingstone. "US increases to be seen as a dangerous nation (especially by adherence to the doctrine of pre-emptive war, the non-allignment to the Kyoto protocol or fighting to eradicate poverty, therefore we needed to show the world that there are Christian voices in the American society that think otherwise", said John Thomas.

He later quoted Dietrich Boenhoeffer's remark that "one cannot fight only to extricate himself of a difficult situation, but the responsible question remains of how is the coming generation going to live." But he said that any parallel between Boenhoeffer's context of Nazi Germany and the current situation in the US is inappropriate, answering to a private Habitus question. It is only the content of Boenhoeffer's line that matters: that of "courageous resistance" and "fighting against idolatry"

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