Why do churches have bells and steeples?
To call the parishioners to worship, to sound alarms, to ring in celebration. And obviously, the higher up the source of a sound is, the farther the sound is going to carry.
Bells: to call the faithful to worship (since before common people had clocks).
Steeples: a bit more complex; I’ll let somebody else answer, but ‘steeplechases’ used to be a horse race from one town to another (the church steeple being the only visible landmark above the treetops and rolling hills).
Not all do of couse, and a fair proportion have towers in place of steeples.
Why. Well a steeple is a handy landmark etc in a world poor roads and maps, they must have been a rather reasuring sight - you will not get lost and spend an uncomftable night in the woods.
But I think that the main reason is simply that they are impressive. Churches, at least of certain Christian sects were clearly built to impress. All that stone, stained glass, silver and gold were clear comitment to a faith and, of course, of earthly power and influence. The steeple was icing on the cake and ment that for most people that the church was not only the largest, but the tallest building they would ever see. And of couse, it was clearly pointing to heaven!
Well, you’re looking at the Gothic architecture of the early Middle Ages, of course. Before that, the Romanesque style produced smaller, shorter churches. Not designed for impressiveness, but certainly for the more practical functions already discussed.
>> Why do churches have bells and steeples?
For the same reason mosques have minarets?