Some unnamed Associated Press reporter in Oregon did a phenomenal job of working the phone to pull together a rather comprehensive survey of churches in the Beaver State that have or peal bells.
The reporter managed to find a bunch of examples across Christian denominations from the larger Klamath Falls area, and spoke with laity and clergy about the existence and status of their belltowers. And this is notable considering that Oregon is one of the two least religious states in the union:
For generations, church bells here have called worshippers to service, joyfully announced weddings, noted the noonhour or pealed in sadness at a death. But they’re largely silent these days.
… Sacred Heart Catholic Church has two in its 100-foot tower to let the faithful know it’s time for Mass … sometimes.
… Klamath Lutheran, according to member Barbara Mann, stopped ringing its chimes after a complaint from a neighbor who worked nights.
The carillon at First Presbyterian Church hasn’t worked for a year.
In its early days the bell at the United Methodist Church was in the church tower of the building taken down in 1926.
St. Patrick’s Catholic Church in Lakeview has a bell but uses it rarely.
The Tulelake Community Presbyterian Church has one but uses it just to mark the noonhour.
I love the idea for the story, and reading it brought back all sorts of memories from my childhood church in central California. Bells were rung to notify farmers of the impending services and to notify the community when there was a death. I remember my friends pausing from our playtime to count the age of the deceased — one peal per year. And because of this story, I thought about the changing role and nature of church bells. We still chime bells at my church to mark the beginning and end of services.
It was a good thing I was able to reminisce about my experiences and reflect on the larger spiritual issues at play, because the reporter rather glossed over those issues.
At the end, particularly after some confusing analysis from church-bell manufacturers and salespeople in Ohio, I was left asking, “So what?” The story managed to be one of the least religious stories about a religious issue I’ve read. The article showed a lot of promise, but I was left wondering what the demise of the bells meant. The reporter made some light claims about traditional vs. Baby Boomer-style worhsip. That’s a start.
But what about the tendency among Americans to worship in a consumer-oriented fashion? What about what this means for neighborhood churches?
In the farming community where I grew up, the bells served a vital purpose — at least into the 1980s when I left. They notified folks within walking distance that church was about to start. They distributed news about death in a very effective fashion. Now, I worship in a different town than where I live. Many of my fellow congregants drive much further than I do to get there. Relatively few of our parishioners can now afford to live within walking distance of the church. Does the bells’ demise mirror these sociological and theological shifts? Perhaps reporters could investigate those issues in more detail.
Photo via Madhu on Flickr.
 | Posted at 1:37 am |  Print
| Permalink | Trackback |
Comments (16) |
August 30, 2006, at 7:56 am
I used to live in a suburb of a semi-major metropolitan area in the Pacific Northwest (a “blue” state to be sure), and the church I attended was in a somewhat affluent part of this suburb. They rang bells at the beginning of every service. (Presumably, they still do.) Where I now live, a Midwestern small-to-midsized town that’s home to a large university (and a “red” state if ever there was one), church bells have been legislated out of existence by noise ordinances.
Seems to me that’s exactly the opposite of what one would expect.
Richard
August 30, 2006, at 7:57 am
And there are doctrinal overtones.
When do Catholics and the Orthodox ring the bells? What are they celebrating? What are they mourning?
What happened to the daily cycle of bells that marked the prayers and the hours?
Hmmmmm … Could be a column in there.
August 30, 2006, at 9:19 am
This brings to mind a personal problem I am currently facing.
I was raised Catholic, but became an Episcopalian in the late 90s. Sadly I’m about 40 years late to the party. I know some simply wonderful people from my local Episcopal Church, and it is a beautiful romanesque place set amongst ancient trees. They do a great many wonderful things for our community and city. I think I would have been very happy as an Episcopalain back when the ECUSA still belived in God and didn’t feel the need to explain away most of the Bible. I think my wife and I could be happy there. Sadly I don’t trust the ECUSA with the Christian Formation of my children. (I can look forward to when my son turns 17 and hear him saying “Why can’t I sleep with my girlfriend? The Bishop sleeps with HER girlfriend!!”.)
I found an evangelical mega-church I really like, and more importantly that the kids really like. They do a great job of Christian Formation with the kids. They see forming the next generation of Christians as their primary task.
Thing is, it just does not seem like “church” to me without the “smells and bells”. I love their preacher, but I miss the stained glass and vestments. The Evangelical service cites the Bible more in one Sunday than some Episcopal preachers do in a month, but sitting in a huge sanctuary/auditorium watching a video screen of a guy in buisness suit… it seems more like a sales conference than a church service. I seem to need the vestments, the bells, the traditional style church building on some level.
August 30, 2006, at 9:50 am
Actually, I’d say the better question is—what happened to the prayers and hours the daily bells used to mark? And (everybody smell a leading question? good) does anybody still include them, at least to some extent, in parish life? It would be interesting to see what a reporter would make of *that* story.
Richard
August 30, 2006, at 9:58 am
I grew up across the street from an Episcopal church in Fort Collins, CO that rang the bells hourly 24/7. It was a wonderful comfort in the middle of the night when I couldn’t sleep. It also was a great way to remember to get home by 5. Five rings, time to get home. They had a full set and would play hymns on Sunday and on festival days. Just thinking about it makes me smile.
August 30, 2006, at 10:15 am
Larry,
I faced a very similar problem in 2002. We ended up at a confessional Lutheran church (ELS synod). The move was mostly prompted out of our concern for the Christian education of our soon to be teenagers. Our church has a high church liturgy which deeply satisfies my need to worship along with the saints of all ages and the scripturally based sermons teach us all. Also, their three-year formal confirmation program, taught by the pastors, has given my two teens a firm foundation in Christ. What was fun (and important) was that my husband and I were catechized along with our kids, so we were able to know and understand what they were being taught and discuss it in our home. I highly recommend a confessional Lutheran church for anyone desiring orthodox faith practices and Bible-based teachings.
August 30, 2006, at 10:20 am
Mollie,
Your post brings to mind an disagreement of sorts I had with an evangelical pastor on the value of a local Lutheran congregation accepting a one million dollar bequest to install a traditional bell and tower. The church is located in an area where there are struggling families and the pastor argued on his blog that it was blatantly wasteful to spend that kind of money on a bell in a struggling neighborhood. I argued that the bell would give a Christian witness to the neighborhood and call people to services, potentially improving their family faith situation and structure. I also argued that the church was accepting a bequest and had to take or leave it. He maintained that the church should have turned down the bequest as a witness to Christ. What do you all think?
August 30, 2006, at 11:28 am
I grew up down the street from a Presbyterian Church with bells. I loved them. Particularly as my Catholic Church didn’t have any.
The story about bells is interesting… but I would agree it is really incomplete. What do bells mean in different denominations?
When new bells were installed at a church I attend (Catholic) I was fascinated to learn that they are consecrated by a Bishop, and that bells are considered a sacramental.
It isn’t just a matter of taste which this article seems to set it out as.
August 30, 2006, at 12:07 pm
As far as the “bells as good use of money” question goes—
Rod Dreher has a discussion going over on his blog about what Judith Shulevitz calls a “natural” vs. “sacral” view of sex; the former holds sex to be a “natural and unmysterious, a healthy, pleasurable, quasi-recreational activity”, and the latter sees it as “sacred but dangerous, transformative when contained by marriage but destructive outside it.”
We might generalize “natural” to “utilitarian”; something is only as valuable as the material benefit it provides. “Sacral” sees the spiritual and transformative aspect as at least as important as the material benefit.
Where the evangelical pastor (and many others, this is not a new conflict) is concerned, the “utilitarian” view prevails, and the bell is merely an expenditure of money for a material “nice-to-have”, not a “need-to-have”, and it’s bumping up against many other “need-to-haves”. For the Lutheran pastor who took the money, clearly there’s a “sacral” point of view at work, where the monetary value and material benefit are transcended by the spiritual value.
One perhaps might recall the Gospel narrative of Jesus being anointed with perfume, Judas’ objections, and Jesus’ response.
Richard
August 30, 2006, at 12:16 pm
Larry Rasczak, you might also consult a list of orthodox Anglican/Episcopal parishes. Some of them are at:
http://www.shelterinthestorm.org
http://www.anglicanmissioninamerica.org/
http://acn-us.org/
http://www.americananglican.org/
Good luck! With all respect to the Lutherans, they’re not Anglicans and I, another convert from Roman Catholicism, personally prefer to remain an Anglican.
August 31, 2006, at 1:19 am
Bells in Africa are still used to call people to church: They rang one hour prior to mass to tell people to get ready, then five minutes before, so people socializing outside would come in.
And the Catholic custom is to ring it at sunrise and noon and sunset…and you say the prayer The Angelus. There is a famous painting of this..
August 31, 2006, at 1:29 am
If you are interested in hearing some bells that were Donated to my parish by Czar Alexander you can click here. click here.
They are so popular that tour groups stand outside and listen to them during the services. (Yes, we invite them in but I’d quess fewer than 5% actually com in side to learn why we are ringing the bells.)
August 31, 2006, at 9:54 am
The “anonymous” reporting, except for the calls to Ohio that got tacked on when the AP picked up and reworked it, was done by Klamath Falls’ Herald and News reporter Lee Beach as a local interest piece. (NB the link will probably be dead soon, as the H&N only keeps stories on its website for about a week.)
I’d be curious to know what outlets, and where, picked up the AP version of the story (does anyone know if there’s a way to look up this kind of thing?), since the status of the church bells in Klamath Falls seems to me to be of very limited interest to anyone outside Klamath Falls. Witness how responses to this story on this blog have generally involved readers recalling the bells, or lack thereof, in their own towns/churches.
Rather than just recycling the local piece from one smallish market, it would have been interesting for the syndicate to do a broader exploration of the general issues flagged by the story (noise concerns, technology issues, structural limitations, worship values, theology…). Then other papers that picked it up could pair it with their own original reporting on the local situation for a package that would have religious depth and local appeal.
September 1, 2006, at 10:32 am
My parish still rings the Angelus. Pretty neat.
September 2, 2006, at 1:43 am
I grew up in a small Connecticut town where—in the early 1800s—a bell had been donated to the local church by a man who was a gambler! SHAME! The church refused it so the man hung it in his barn and rang it at all hours. It reminded the church folks of how they had excluded him—in good Christian love, of course!
September 15, 2006, at 10:29 am
Array