Prayer at the pump

Republican congresswoman Michele Bachmann maintained earlier this summer that just by talking about more drilling for oil, the price of a barrel would come down. Now that oil has come down in price, the political debate is whether that’s due to factors including Bachmann’s assertion, or whether it’s the natural order of the marketplace.

But maybe something else is involved, according to a story on the BBC Web site this morning.

People in the DC area have been gathering around the pumps … to pray.

This week the group returned to the site of their first prayer meeting to celebrate. Singing “We shall overcome,” they changed the words of the well-known hymn to “We’ll have lower gas prices”.

Mr Twyman is sceptical that market forces might be responsible for the lower prices. But he and his prayer warriors have changed their motoring habits.

“We believe not just in prayer – because we believe that faith without works is dead. So we’ve encouraged people to car-pool more and organise their days more, because it’s a combination of faith with these other factors.”

The prayer meetings started in April and, as you can read in the story, the advocates think the price has come down because of their prayer. Maybe, but when they started praying, the price of a gallon of gas was $3.299, according to the Department of Energy. On August 11, it was $3.764.