by Jamie LaBorde, Cogburn Gaillard, and Nicholas Beasley

The ringing of bells in the church is a long and beautiful tradition. Bells are rung as a signal to the people that it is time to make their way to the church for worship, for a meeting, or to greet an important person. Bells are used as a signal that something of significance has happened in the life of the church or one of its members: a birth, death, marriage. Bells are rung on the great liturgical feast days of the year, such as Easter, Pentecost, Christmas (“I heard the bells on Christmas Day”). Within the worship service in the Roman Catholic service, bells have been rung at the consecration, elevation, and adoration of the host, practices not generally typical of the Episcopal church. Bells are also rung for non-liturgical, civic occasions: presidential inaugurations, the outbreak of war or peace, a time of general public mourning or celebration, marking the changing year, a time of imminent danger (such as tornado warnings, floods, fire). Sometimes churches are asked to ring their bells by the civic authorities on such occasions, and participation is always up to the church.

St. John’s has one bell in our bell tower that can be rung manually by a rope in the bell tower (it is struck by a hammer to do so) or by a motor-operated device that will continuously ring the bell, usually triggered by the organist. In this case, the bell swings on a large wheel and its clapper produces the sound. The call to worship at St John’s is by ringing the bell three times for regular services and seven times for major feast days, most recently for Easter, Pentecost, and Trinity Sunday. Choir member Jamie LaBorde is our usual manual Sunday ringer at the beginning 10:30 service. At the end of the 10:30 service, the bell is rung mechanically by our organist, Monica Briseno. The bell is tolled with slow solemnity at the beginning of a burial service, almost always by Cogburn Gaillard. The first rings of the bell are quick and signify the sex of the decedent, three rings for a man, two for a woman. The bell is then rung more slowly, once for each decade of life. Finally, one quicker ring is made for each remaining year of  the person’s life, since their last decennial birthday. Then the service begins.

St. John’s 1000-pound bell was cast by the Taylor Bell Foundry in Loughborough, England. It was given in memory of Pudge Heffelfinger, the first professional football player in the history of the game. Heffelfinger played at Yale and was a selection to the first All-American team in 1889. His daughter Jane Winston was a member of St. John’s at the time of the bell’s dedication in 1963. Sometime between then and the early 2000s, the bell became inoperable. Jamie and Cogburn both attribute St. John’s bell traditions to the efforts of former rector Fletcher Montgomery, who suggested that the mechanics of the long-silent bell be restored during his service at St. John’s. He later decided that the bell would be rung as a call to worship and tolled for funerals, meaningful practices in the life of the church to this day.

Learn more about other important updates in the latest church newsletter: The Epistle – Sept. 25 2025