WHAT’S HAPPENING

Across the Western world, thousands of churches are permanently closing their doors, and a growing number are being purchased and converted into mosques.

In the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, and Europe, declining Christian congregations and rising Muslim populations have created a real estate transfer with profound cultural implications.

THE FACTS

  • US mosques have more than doubled since 2000, from 1,209 to 2,769 in 2020.

  • Buffalo's Diocese sold the 1886 Gothic St. Ann's Church to Buffalo Crescent Holdings for $250,000 to become an Islamic center.

  • The Islamic Community Center of Illinois is raising funds to buy a former Catholic church in Chicago for the city's first Islamic prep school.

  • Imam Siraj Wahhaj has said 100,000 churches will close this decade, with 40 million Americans already gone from Christian congregations.

  • Over 3,500 churches have shut across Britain in the past decade, with 3,000 to 5,000 parish churches now closed or barely used.

  • UK Sunday attendance fell from 788,000 to 557,000 since 2013, while the Muslim population rose from 4.9 percent to 6.5 percent between 2011 and 2021.

  • The Church of England blocked a listed Stoke-on-Trent church from becoming a mosque in 2024, citing a ban on non-Christian worship.

  • At least 25 former churches in the Netherlands have become mosques.

  • Canada's National Trust estimates 9,000 faith buildings, mostly churches, may close by 2030 as more get bought by Muslim groups.

OUR TAKE

For centuries, churches stood as the literal and symbolic centers of Western towns and cities, anchoring community life around a shared Christian identity. As many now rapidly abandon the faith, the mistake was thinking that vacuum would not be filled by something else.

Working in tandem with increased immigration, this spiritual vacuum is being filled by those who take their faith seriously: Muslims. If the West wants to preserve its cultural inheritance, Christian faith must be actively upheld and reinforced through culture, law, and civic life, not treated as an optional relic of the past.

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Paul Fitch2 months ago

My thoughts are more "emotional" than pragmatic, but in my mind it is the clergy's unwillingness to stand tall for what they say they believe. People have joined the clergy to - supposedly - preach the word of God but are swayed by keeping the pews filled and the treasury in the red than they are about leading their flocks to the promised land. I have watched church after church head more to Sodom and Gomorrah than Paradise as behaviors that once were forbidden are now embraced, all in the name of inclusion. We must "hate the sin while loving the sinner", but allowing the churches to become centers of immoral activism drives off the people who used to make up the backbone of our communities. I didn't leave my church, IT LEFT ME! Fortunately I found respite in a more Christ centered church and while we are small, we stand with Jesus and His word.

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Mike Fankhauser2 months ago

REVIVAL! Pray that the west finds it's spirituality and comes back to GOD through Christ. His church is the only way to redemption and forgiveness. Islam is a death cult that seeks power and submission without repentance.

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Nancy Donahue2 months ago

YES revival that leads to changed hearts and true Christianity! This is what Charlie Kirk and other martyrs over the centuries died for!

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Laney B2 months ago

There is no "practical" solution to shuttered churches. Jesus IS the solution, and "correctly handling the word of truth" keeps churches alive.

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Ben Williams2 months ago

Know Jesus, know peace. No Jesus, no peace. We’ve turned away from preaching the truth and tried to appease greed, lust and deviant behavior. People are searching for truth. We need repentance and revival.

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Return to Faith2 months ago

Pray and fast for people to return to church. Hopefully, we do not require a nationwide or worldwide disaster to motivate people to return.

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S B2 months ago

Pass a federal law MEEBA (Mosques Equal Enemy Base Act) and prevent Enemy Bases from growing on American Soil.

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Penny Boatright2 months ago(edited)

Not just revival, but evangelism. And it has to be geared to people whose god is “science.”

Young people have always wanted to change the world for the better, and there are too many churches who, instead of preaching the gospels which are truly revolutionary, have pandered to the woke crowd and accepted every kind of non repentant sinner as leaders. The church is for sinners, but it’s always been a place for self reflection and becoming a better person according to God’s laws. Young people are looking for a worthy cause, and we want repair of the world according to God’s template to be that cause.

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Kylee Compton2 months ago

The world and our culture here in the United States has been teaching moral relativism and humanism for decades. I think we find ourselves at the natural conclusion of that. If you teach generations of people that there is no absolute right and wrong and there is no divine authority that determines that, why would people feel obligated to worship a God that they don't see as necessary or relevant? I have no solution besides prayer and teaching my own children and community the truth.

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Bob Hrebec2 months ago

Schools and all public institutions have been more than just secular, they've been anti Christian. There's been a constant push to minimize Christianity's influence on the forming of our nation. Until that changes..... 😕.

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Michael Nelson2 months ago

If the Christian Churches adhered to God's standards of marriage, responsibility, and behavior, they might still be open. Also, if the Holy Spirit is denied access, more churches will close. People will get their coffee elsewhere.

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Mark Maybury2 months ago

Get back to basics! Quit trying to get Christianity out of Americans lives. There has been a resurgence of faith among our young. Embrace it and run with it!

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Jim Powers 2 months ago

If you’re going to sell them, make them damned expensive.

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Michael Raab2 months ago

The problem is Islamist extremism- free speech from the pulpit must not include jihad, intifada, calls for Shariah law, anti Israel anti American anti freedom ideas and intolerance of those like Salman Rushdie with a different view

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P H2 months ago

Prayer and fasting for Christian leaders to get serious about declaring the whole truth to their congregations about what it means to “Seek First the Kingdom and His Righteousness; to love God with all of our being; to love others as we love ourselves; and to be salt and light as followers of Jesus Christ in this world. Jesus told us to go into the whole world and share His gift of salvation by God’s grace through faith in the finished work of our resurrected Jesus, and to go about teaching everything He teaches us in His Word about repentance, believing and receiving salvation, making disciples, and baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Love God. Love people. Share Jesus. Make disciples. ‘Til Christ returns or calls us home, let’s be busy about our Father’s business!🙏✝️🙌

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Jorge Rios2 months ago

It appears mankind ramains lost, and continues to travel away from the light rather than towards it. Man kind refuses to learn from its leasons and continues traveling down the road laid out by the evil one that leads not to where man thinks.

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Tracey Powers 2 months ago

Repentance, Revival and Reformation by God's grace. Only a return to our Creator and King will save us. Only God is able to bring our country from the brink of destruction. Please Lord Jesus, come reign over U.S.!

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RICHARD FURMAN2 months ago

I think it’s past time to do something as millions have saturated the planet and the Christian community has become very liberal

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Daniel Giles2 months ago

The churches that have abandoned the Bible and no longer teach actual Christianity are closing. This is God’s judgement on our failure to faithfully follow Him. In the Scriptures we are told how judged Israel by allowing the nation to be overrun by Assyria and Babylon for the same reason. Should we expect any different?

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Bernie Peer2 months ago

It is multi-faceted. 1) families need to raise their children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. That means reject all public schools. Children spend most of their day being indoctrinated in morals, values and beliefs that are not Christian 2) go to church, find a faithful church who preaches the Bible, not liberal indoctrination 3) read your Bible daily and read it to your family. 4) pray without ceasing God is powerful and this is Christs kingdom he bought it with his blood 5) proclaim Christ the King!!

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Don G2 months ago

Christians standing for their faith in Jesus

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Joe Cavanaugh2 months ago

Pastors need to be more interested in preaching the truth than filling the building.

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Ken Solomon2 months ago

What's the big deal? When Jewish synagogues shutter, they are always replaced with Christian churches. Same thing going on here.

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Pattie Delea2 months ago

Hello sir, I could not agree less, with this thinking. True Christians are .those who love the Jewish Messiah, Jesus and Jews also. They recognize their roots are in the writings of many Jewish people ie the Bible. For mosques to take over is like selling the building to an entity on a totally different side.

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Cyndee Pacheco2 months ago

Seems like, in the future, countries will be either Muslim controlled or secular socialism. At 82, I won’t be around to see it, but I pray for my children and their families. Three of my children and their families have abandoned the faith.

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Guy M.2 months ago

What do you think is the solution to shuttering churches?

REVIVAL, and it begins with our rejecting false prophets and centering our worship solely on God's Word -- all of it. It is the blueprint of life everlasting.

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Susan Kurzman2 months ago

Simply pass laws of "equity." Each locale, defined by state, county, city, Parrish or whatever, should be able, in the name of fairness, to state that no one religion may be housed in any more buildings than 33.3% of the totally designated houses of worship within their locale. Once that 33.3% is attained, then no more churches, strip mall vacancies or whatever can be converted into Mosques. Or Churches. If an Imam wants to build a new Mosque after that 33.3% is reached, then his congregation would also have to build an appropriate number of Christian (or Buddhist or whatever) houses of worship to keep the balance of 33.3% each. Remember. Houses of worship are exempt from federal taxes.