The Risk of Prayer

Thoughts and prayers are powerful - and not just empty mantras

In November 2018 following a massacre in Thousand Oaks, California, Bishops United Against Gun Violence — an activist group of bishops in the Episcopal Church — offered a “Litany in the Wake of a Mass Shooting” to commemorate the dead, to comfort their loved ones, and to honor survivors and first responders.

Since then, they’ve regularly — and sadly — u…