"People before would stare at them because they’re different."

"I hope now, they’ll look at them with eyes of compassion because their hearts are broken."

A mass killing directed toward a particular religious group has the power to change how the [attacked] congregation views the outside world, says David Weaver-Zercher, a professor of American Religious History at Messiah College in Grantham, Pa., and author of “Amish Grace: How Forgiveness Transcended Tragedy,” a study of the 2006 attacks against an Amish school in Nickel Mines, Pa.

The Amish school shooting, which left five girls dead and five hospitalized, resulted in an international outpouring of financial and emotional support, which the Amish community did not anticipate, says Mr. Weaver-Zercher.

“It really did reshape that community’s perception of the larger world, which sometimes the Amish see as an unfriendly place,” he says. “It reshaped it in a more positive regard.”