Who would steal a 400-pound church bell?
That’s the question baffling the parishioners of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church near Norris, S.D., where the hundred-year-old bell has chimed for news, services and emergencies from atop its small wooden tower.
The bell was swiped between Dec. 30 and Jan. 6, the church’s pastor guesses, and would be welcomed back with thanksgiving and forgiveness.
“(B)ecause that’s what we do in the Church,” the Rev. Lauren Stanley said in a Facebook post appealing for the bell’s return.
“Losing this bell — having it stolen from us — means that we have lost a part of our community,” Stanley said in an email. ” … (I)t is still part of who the people are. We have members who remember it being used all the time, and for them, this is an appalling attack on us as a community, and the loss of a community member, as it were.”
St. Paul’s is one of 11 churches in the Rosebud Episcopal Mission spread across the Rosebud Indian Reservation, home to members of the Lakota Sioux. All 11 churches have bells, some in towers atop the main church building and others — like St. Paul’s — in small towerlike stands adjacent to the sanctuary.
The Episcopal Church founded its mission to the Lakota peoples in 1875 and St. Paul’s Episcopal Church was founded there on tribal lands in 1890. Many of the mission’s bells were donated…
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