Ring This Bell!

Church bells are falling silent across the country, when they’re not being stolen. In this text, the apostle rings a bell — the justification bell.

Across America, church bells are going silent.

It’s not because houses of worship are closing, but rather because many of the old churches have stopped ringing their bells and many new churches aren’t writing bells into their building plans.

Earlier this year, for example, a reporter for the Associated Press took a look around Klamath Falls, Oregon, and could hardly find a church bell in use. At Sacred Heart Catholic, there are two bells in the church’s 100-foot tower, which were put there 75 years ago when the church was built, but today, nobody is in charge of bonging them. And the tower is locked to keep kids from crawling up there.

Klamath Lutheran stopped sounding its chimes after a neighbor who works nights complained about being awakened by the racket.

First Presbyterian has a carillon — a whole set of bells — but it stopped working about a year ago and nobody is in a hurry to fix it.

In the current home of the Klamath United Methodist...