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1. "These high gas prices, Lord, bring them down, oh Father"
Okay, I'll admit it: I've asked God to give me gas. It was late by the time I'd decided to head home, the gas station in the small town I was visiting had closed, I was 35 miles from the next station, and the light had already been on for a bit. I didn't want to break down on the interstate, so I prayed.

Yesterday, nine members of a California group called Pray Live gathered by a Hollywood Chevron station to pray that God would make gas cheaper. "This will be a testament to all of the people who don't believe in the power of prayer," organizer Wenda Royster explained. Los Angeles Daily News reporter Brad Greenberg was there, and he followed up with some theological questions.

2. "The Christian Right is moving Left"
Amy Sullivan argues in The New Republic that (to quote the headline, which she probably didn't write) "the Christian Right is moving Left." Her case study: Pennsylvania's Casey-Santorum race, where "global warming is the deciding issue for some evangelicals" since both candidates oppose abortion. But wait: is the unusual aspect in that race that evangelicals are interested in social issues like the environment? Or is it that the Democrats are actually supporting a pro-life candidate? The reality is that the Pennsylvania race is less a test case for evangelical social concern and more an issue of whether opposing abortion will become widely acceptable in the Democratic Party. The question isn't whether evangelicals believe they can in good conscience vote for a Democrat. It's whether Democrats believe they can, in good conscience, vote for anti-abortion laws. If Democrats want to attract moderate evangelicals, the answer isn't to champion their environmental record. The answer is to treat abortion as an inhuman horror.

3. "If I heard the Lord right about 2006, the coasts of America will be lashed by storms"
Pat Robertson went out on a limb and predicted coastal storms sometime in the next seven months. Considering there are coastal storms every year, that's not a bad bet. Heck, AccuWeather chief forecaster Joe Bastardi got more specific this week when he predicted five hurricanes—three major ones—will hit the U.S. coasts this year: "Early in the season the Texas Gulf Coast faces the highest likelihood of a hurricane strike, possibly putting Gulf energy production in the line of fire," said Bastardi. "As early as July, and through much of the rest of the season, the highest level of risk shifts to the Carolinas."

There really is news in Robertson's prophecy, but it has little to do with meteorology. Robertson has made many dramatic prophecies in the past: That Russia would invade Israel in 1982, that the world economy would collapse in 1985, that he'd win the presidency in 1988, that Jay Rockefeller would win it in 1996, that terrorists would attack Detroit and San Francisco in 2002 …

Here was Robertson's prophecy for 2005:

The Lord has some very encouraging news for George Bush … What I heard is that Bush is now positioned to have victory after victory and that his second term is going to be one of triumph, which is pretty strong stuff. … He'll have Social Security reform passed. He'll have tax reform passed. He'll have conservative judges on the courts. And that basically he is positioned for a series of dramatic victories which I hope will hearten him and his advisers. They don't have to be timid in this matter because the wind is blowing at his back, and he can move forward boldly and get results.

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May (Web-only) 2006, Vol. 50