With three prisoners scheduled for execution, southern churches toll their bells

(RNS) — On the first day in 16 years that three death row inmates were scheduled to be executed on the same day, faith groups in Tennessee, Georgia, Texas, Kentucky, Wisconsin and Iowa tolled their bells as part of a campaign led by the Death Penalty Action advocacy group. In Tennessee, they rang for two minutes at 10 a.m. CT that coincided with a scheduled execution in the state.

“ We have to be together in our opposition to executions and in our statement that this is not in alignment with the teachings of our faiths,” Abraham Bonowitz, the executive director of Death Penalty Action and co-founder of L’chaim! Jews Against the Death Penalty, told RNS. “ There should never be an execution without protest.”

On Thursday morning (Aug. 13), Tennessee executed Anthony Darrell Hines and Oklahoma executed Carlos Cuesta-Rodriguez. Alabama is scheduled to execute Jeremy Williams Thursday evening. All three were convicted of murder.

Last year saw a surge in executions, with 47 people put to death, more than any year since 2009.

The faith-based effort to toll church bells is a revival of a campaign originally inspired by Filipino Cardinal Jaime Sin’s 1983 order that Catholic churches…