LAST SUNDAY, 13 U.S. church officials left for Iran to meet with Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and build a "bridge of peace" between the two countries.

"I think we can be a bridge that doesn't exist otherwise," United Methodist lobby official Jim Winkler told his denomination's news service. ""We are trying to change U.S. foreign policy from one based on confrontation, domination and intimidation to one of peace and cooperation and diplomacy."

The delegation was organized by the Washington, D.C. lobby offices of the Quakers and the Mennonites and is a follow up of sorts to a meeting that several dozen religious officials, including Winkler, had with Ahmadinejad in New York last October. This time, the group will also meet with former Iranian president Mohammad Khatami, who spoke at the Episcopal Church's National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. in September.

Besides Winkler, the Quakers, and the Mennonites, the delegation to Iran includes representatives from the National Council of Churches, Sojourners (Jim Wallis' evangelical-left group), and Pax Christi, a liberal Catholic group.

"We are making this trip hoping it will encourage both governments to step back from a course that will lead to conflict and suffering," explained a Quaker official, Mary Ellen McNish, general secretary of the American Friends Service Committee. But the delegation acknowledges that Ahmadinejad's unsavory positions may have to be confronted.

Mennonite Central Committee official Ron Flaming fretted to his denominational news service that "there is great risk that our goal to encourage improved relations between the people of Iran and the U.S. will be

The Quaker official, McNish, promised that the group would continue to "engage" Ahmadinejad about the Holocaust, as they had in New York. "These statements make it difficult for Americans to believe that a constructive dialogue is possible," she admitted. The United Methodist official, Winkler, pledged that he would urge the Iranian president to "temper his remarks and change his views on a number of things."

But even more importantly, Winkler and the others want to avert any U.S. military action against Iran. "Obviously we were not successful in heading off a war in Iraq, but I didn't want to say therefore there was no possibility of doing the same for Iran," Winkler told United Methodist News Service. "I feel ever more strongly that we ought to do what we can to stop war from taking place." Winkler had joined an ecumenical delegation that visited Iraqi officials in Baghdad right before the U.S. led military action in 2003. "So where do you have avenues for conversations?" he asked. "I think faith leaders and particularly Christian leaders have an opportunity for that kind of dialogue that doesn't otherwise exist."

"We are making this trip hoping it will encourage both governments to step back from a course that will lead to conflict and suffering," the Quaker official likewise explained. "As Christians we are called to talk with those we are in conflict with and move toward forgiveness and reconciliation. We pray this will open doors to diplomacy." Similarly, the head of the Episcopal Church's Washington lobby office, Maureen Shea, said she is praying that their delegation, of which she is a member, will open "new doors" and "will lead us to peaceful resolution of our differences, not conflict."