With one week remaining before UCC leaders deliver anti-war petition signatures to Congress and the White House, the "100,000 for Peace" campaign has attracted more than 32,000 participants.

On Oct. 10, during scheduled meetings with the leadership of the U.S. Senate and House, the Rev. John H. Thomas and the Rev. Linda Jaramillo plan to deliver the text of the UCC's Pastoral Letter on the Iraq War, along with the signatures of 32,112 people to date who have endorsed the letter. On the same day, at 12:30 p.m. (ET), Thomas and Jaramillo also will take petitions to the White House.

While the number of signatures is still a far cry from the campaign's announced "100K" goal, Thomas, the UCC's general minister and president, says he's encouraged by the record-setting response.

"These signatures represent the largest number of people to ever participate in an online UCC advocacy campaign. Of this fact, we can be proud," wrote Thomas, the UCC's general minister and president, in an Oct. 3 e-mail to supporters of the web-based campaign.

Until the "100K" campaign, the largest-ever UCC-sponsored online advocacy effort took place earlier this year when 5,500 "no more troops" letters were generated by the UCC's Justice and Peace Action Network to counter President Bush's plan to surge U.S. troop levels in Iraq.

The idea to gather 100,000 endorsing signatures was first announced in July, after the five-person Collegium of Officers first presented the Pastoral Letter on the Iraq War on June 22 at the UCC's General Synod 26 in Hartford, Conn. The Pastoral Letter was also co-signed by all UCC Conference Ministers and Seminary Presidents.

The grassroots signature-signing effort started somewhat slowly and attracted fewer than 16,000 endorsers by Sept. 16, when churches were asked to read the Pastoral Letter during Sunday worship services as part of the denomination's observance of the United Nations' International Day of Peace on Sept. 21.

During the past two weeks, however, the tally has more than doubled. Between 1,000 to 3,000 names are now being added daily. The total arriving in today's mail was 1,933.

While two-thirds of the signatures have come through online appeals, nearly 10,000 signatures have been added the old-fashioned way – church-circulated printable petitions.

Jaramillo, executive minister for the UCC's Justice and Witness Ministries, says her office staff has been deluged in the past week with mailed-in and faxed-in petitions.

"It's exciting for us to receive the mail every day and see how this effort has really caught the attention and imagination of our congregations," Jaramillo said.

Some representatives of UCC churches in Northeast Ohio have delivered their petitions in person to the UCC's national offices in Cleveland just to make sure they're included in the count.

"We're still hoping the number of signatures will grow substantially in the next six days," Thomas said. "While it may not be possible to reach the 100,000 that we'd initially hoped for, I do believe that the momentum is behind us to reach more than 50,000 before the week is up."