Beyond Thoughts and Prayers: Taylor S. Schumann

Our guest, Taylor Schumann, never thought she'd be a victim of gun violence. But one spring day in 2013 a man with a shotgun walked into her workplace and opened fire on her. While she survived, she was left with permanent wounds, both visible and invisible.

In When Thoughts and Prayers Aren't Enough, Schumann invites us to see what it means to be a survivor after the news vehicles drive away and the media moves on. Healing is slow and complicated. As she began grappling with the realities, she experienced another painful truth: Christians have largely been absent from this issue.

Schumann weaves her own incredible story of survival and recovery into a larger conversation about gun violence in our country. With compassion and honesty, she encourages readers to reconsider their own engagement with the issue and to join her in envisioning a more hopeful, safer future for our nation. Move beyond thoughts and prayers and enter into grace-filled dialogue and action.

Taylor S. Schumann is a survivor of the April 2013 shooting at a college in Christiansburg, Virginia. She is a writer and activist whose writing has appeared in Christianity Today, Sojourners, and Fathom. She is a contributor to If I Don't Make It, I Love You: Survivors in the Aftermath of School Shootings. Taylor and her family live in Charleston, South Carolina.