"Praying anywhere but in church is not something Europeans do. It's uniquely American to involve God," said Johannes Wiebus, the German producer who captured Twyman with five fellow prayers at the gas station in Washington last week "It's an interesting way to look at it."
Germans, he noted, pay twice as much for gas and would be "jumping for joy" if they were asked to pay the equivalent of $4 a gallon.
The show is not certainly not trying to poke fun at Twyman, he said, but some Germans may wonder: "Why doesn't the government invest more in public transit? Why don't people walk? Why don't people live and work in cities?"
Maxine Grossman, a religious studies professor at the University of Maryland said the idea of praying at gas pumps "totally fascinated" her.
In a country where freedom of religion is so fundamental, "personal and sometimes idiosyncratic ways of being religious are more acceptable because diversity is the norm and there's no state church," she said.
"One of the things that might make this fascinating to people outside the U.S. is that the U.S. is a very religious place, and I think people in other countries find that unusual," she added. "Western Europe tends to be more secular as a gross generalization. ... Especially to Europeans, this kind of personal intense religiousness does not feel familiar."
The Rev. Emmett C. Burns Jr., a state delegate and the pastor of Rising Sun First Baptist Church in Randallstown, where Twyman is the organist and music director, said it wasn't clear to him why Twyman's campaign caught on.
"It's a novel idea. And it's different. When that's all you can do you do that," said Burns, who plans on combating high prices his own way - by giving away $1,000 of his own money to pay for gas for struggling motorists in his district.
Twyman's plan is a bit gentler on his pocket. The idea hit him while working at a Washington soup kitchen he frequents and listening to the other volunteers - mostly seniors - complain about how the high cost of gas was affecting them. Twyman, a freelance public relations consultant who has never been shy about publicity, called in Fox News and the Washington Post and marched with a handful of volunteers to the gas station on the corner where they did their divine business.
