In a recent New York Times article, “The Nazi Plunder of Church Bells Changed the Sound of Europe,” Nina Siegel chronicled a Nazi wartime strategy of confiscating church bells — more than 150,000 of them — to turn the metal into weapons of war.
Church bells announced the hours of the day, holy events like church services, baptisms, funerals and weddings. What happened when the church bells stopped ringing? The sounds of church bells oriented the day for citizens of Europe. The rhythm of the day was lost. Anne Frank noted the day she could not hear the church bells from her hiding place: “For a week already we’ve all been a little confused about the time … and we don’t know precisely what time it is, neither day or night.”
Stephen Shoemaker
One observer commented, “It left a sonic gap in the European landscape.”
It left a spiritual gap too.
In this new year of our Lord, 2026, let us not neglect the bells. They are a sonic light in time of darkness, an announcement of the good news of God’s new creation still breaking into our lives, transforming the ways of the old creation with its divisions, hatreds and violence.
Jesus announced it as the coming of the kingdom and the year of God’s favor, a favor meant for all:
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me
and has anointed me to bring good news to the poor — yes the poor —
to proclaim release to captives
and recovering of sight to the blind,
to set at liberty — yes, liberty — to those who are oppressed,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor!”
And he had the spiritual audacity to say this kingdom of justice and joy, healing and peace has drawn near, both among us and within us. Today! Now! Ring those bells!
“The Apostle Paul rang in the new creation with most every breath.”
The Apostle Paul rang in the new creation with most every breath.
“There is neither Jew nor Greek, neither master nor slave, neither male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”
And this: “If anyone is in Christ there is — there is! — a new creation! The old is gone, the new has come.”
And then he ends with the chiming of bells across the world: “Now is the acceptable time, now is the day of salvation!” The word “now,” which is “nun” in the Greek, pronounced “noon,” sounds like the joyous tolling of bells: “Nun! Nun! Nun!”
At the end of Galatians in large letters Paul exclaimed: “Circumcision means nothing, uncircumcision means nothing! The only thing that matters is the new creation!”
Not race or religion or gender, not gay or straight, Democrat or Republican, the only thing that matters, the new creation.
The divisions of the old creation are still around wreaking their pain and trying to dehumanize everyone different from us, but we are messengers of God’s new creation, harbingers of the new of God.
We are experiencing a sonic loss in our nation, but we still have our bells. They stand against the injustice and violence of the world; we sound them and sound them! We do not let our no to the world and the current cruelty of our nation’s leaders and policies silence the yes of God. Let the bells ring !
The first calling of the church is to be a community of God’s new creation, embodying the gospel of reconciliation.
“We are experiencing a sonic loss in our nation, but we still have our bells.”
It is easy to fall into despair and cry out, “O God, where is your new creation?!” But it is all around us. In the Gospel of Thomas, Jesus says, “The Father’s kingdom is within you and outside you.” When the disciples asked, “When will the kingdom come?” Jesus answered, “The Father’s kingdom is spread out upon the earth, and people do not see it.”
Our calling is to make it known, to make it visible, to ring the bells of the new creation.
The poet Jack Gilbert writes: “To make injustice the only measure of our attention is to praise the Devil.”
Paul Tillich, the theologian who fled the evil darkness in Germany to teach and write in our nation, wrote of our first calling: “We only want to show you something we have seen and to tell you something we have heard: That in the midst of the old creation there is a New Creation, and that this New Creation is manifest in Jesus who is called the Christ. … We want only to communicate to you an experience which we have had that here and there in the world and now and then in ourselves there is a New Creation.”
In a nation where the Cross has been replaced by a flag and churches made into political precincts, where church bells are converted into weapons that divide and destroy, bring out the bells and let them ring.
Leonard Cohen wrote:
Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in.
It’s how the light gets out too. Ring the bells! Nun! Nun! Nun! Now, now, now! Today, today, today!
Stephen Shoemaker most recently served as pastor of Grace Baptist Church in Statesville, N.C. He previously served as pastor of Myers Park Baptist in Charlotte, N.C.; Broadway Baptist in Fort Worth, Texas; and Crescent Hill Baptist in Louisville, Ky.