When Churches Become Mosques: Islam's Rise In A Retreating Christian America

Another church is preparing to disappear from the American landscape.

Not because it was burned by an angry mob. Not because Christians were driven out by soldiers. Not because the government outlawed the Gospel.

The former Richfield Christian Reformed Church in Clifton, New Jersey, was purchased by the Islamic Center of Passaic County. Now plans call for the existing building to be demolished and replaced with a mosque measuring approximately 40,000 square feet--more than six times the size of the current structure. 

The cross has already given way to the crescent. Soon the former church itself may be gone.

It is tempting to describe this as a conquest. 

But this was conquest by vacancy.

Muslims did not storm the church. Christians emptied it.

That distinction does not make the symbolism less powerful. It makes the warning more painful.

New Jersey's Muslim population more than doubled between 2010 and 2020, reaching approximately 321,000 adherents. During those same years, many Christian denominations continued losing members, consolidating congregations and selling buildings they could no longer fill or afford.

The pattern is national.

Pew Research Center found that Muslims represented approximately 0.6 percent of American adults in 2007. By its 2023-2024 Religious Landscape Study, that figure had reached 1.2 percent. Islam remains a relatively small minority faith, but its share of the adult population has doubled while Christianity's share fell from roughly 78 percent in 2007 to 62 percent today.

The number of mosques is climbing as well. The U.S. Mosque Survey counted 2,769 mosques in 2020, a 31 percent increase from 2,106 in 2010. Average attendance at Friday congregational prayer rose 16 percent, while nearly three-fourths of surveyed mosques reported attendance growth of at least 10 percent. 

These are not the numbers of a community fading quietly into American life. They reveal a young, increasingly established and institutionally organized religious population.

Meanwhile, many American Christians have treated their faith as a private preference--something to be squeezed between youth sports, vacations and weekend errands.

Muslims build mosques, establish schools, organize charities, mobilize voters and teach their children that religion touches every part of life. Too many Christians have reduced Christianity to an occasional Sunday activity.

One community is acting as though its beliefs will shape the future.

The other often behaves as though the future will take care of itself.

Clifton is not an isolated case.

In Binghamton, New York, the historic Episcopal Church of the Good Shepherd became the Islamic Awareness Center, also known as Masjid Al-Tawheed. The Gothic Revival church had stood since the 19th century. After an internal denominational conflict and property lawsuit, the Episcopal diocese sold it to the Islamic organization. The cross was removed, the pews were taken out and carpets were installed for Muslim prayer. 

In Buffalo, the Diocese of Buffalo sold the former St. Ann's Church and Shrine in 2022 to a group associated with the Downtown Islamic Center. The enormous Gothic structure had once served generations of Catholic immigrants. Its proposed future as a mosque became another visible illustration of the religious transition taking place in parts of America's older cities.

In Clifton, the Islamic Center did not merely occupy the former church. Its congregation grew so large that Friday services created parking pressures throughout the surrounding neighborhood. Now the organization is seeking a vastly larger facility capable of accommodating hundreds of prayer mats.

Again, none of this is illegal. These organizations purchased property and exercised the same religious liberty Christians rightly demand for themselves.

But buildings tell stories.

A church becoming an apartment complex says something about economics. A church becoming a restaurant says something about changing neighborhoods. A church becoming a mosque says something about the transfer of religious confidence from one community to another.

Where Christians no longer gather, someone else eventually will.

Islam's expansion is no longer visible only in religious buildings. It is increasingly reflected in American politics.

Dearborn, Michigan, elected Abdullah Hammoud as its first Muslim and Arab American mayor. Under his administration, Dearborn became the first American city to make Eid al-Fitr a paid holiday for municipal employees.

During Michigan's 2024 Democratic presidential primary, 56 percent of Dearborn voters selected "uncommitted" rather than support President Joe Biden, largely in protest over his Israel policy. In nearby Hamtramck, the figure reached 61 percent. More than 100,000 voters statewide joined the campaign, demonstrating that concentrated Arab and Muslim communities could create national consequences in a crucial swing state.

Hamtramck also became known for having an entirely Muslim city council. That council later prohibited private political and identity flags--including the Pride flag--from city-owned flagpoles, with some council members openly arguing that the flag conflicted with their religious beliefs.

The political influence now reaches America's largest city. Zohran Mamdani was sworn in as mayor of New York City on January 1, 2026, becoming its first Muslim mayor. New York had already announced in 2023 that mosques could amplify the Islamic call to prayer on Fridays and during Ramadan without obtaining a special permit.

Muslim Americans have every constitutional right to vote, organize and seek office. Political participation is not evidence of a conspiracy. Muslim voters are also far from monolithic: some are progressive socialists, some are culturally conservative, and others shift between parties depending on foreign policy, education and family concerns.

But it would be foolish to deny what is happening.

As the Muslim population becomes larger and better organized, elected officials will increasingly accommodate its priorities. Political parties will court its votes. Public institutions will adapt to its religious practices. And in cities where Muslims become a decisive voting bloc, Islamic beliefs will inevitably influence debates over education, sexuality, Israel, public expression and the meaning of religious freedom.

That is how democracy works.

The question is whether Christians will continue participating in it.

The easiest response is to blame Muslims.

That would also be the most dishonest response.

Muslims did not force American churches to abandon biblical authority. They did not convince Christian parents to stop discipling their children. They did not make pastors replace the Gospel with entertainment, politics or therapeutic self-help.

They did not empty the pews.

Christians did that themselves.

The rise of Islam in America is partly a story of immigration and birth rates. But it is also a story of religious seriousness confronting Christian complacency.

The answer is not hatred, harassment or an attack on anyone's constitutional rights. Christians should defend the freedom of peaceful Muslims to worship because religious liberty cannot survive when it applies only to the majority.

But tolerance does not require theological surrender. Christians can love Muslim neighbors while clearly explaining that the Islamic understanding of Jesus is not the biblical one. Jesus is not merely a prophet beneath Muhammad. He is the crucified and risen Son of God, the only Savior and the only way to the Father.

Islam is building.

Islam is organizing.

Islam is voting.

And wherever Christianity retreats, the vacuum will not remain empty.

Christ promised that the gates of hell would not prevail against His Church. He never promised that every American congregation, denomination or steeple would survive its own unbelief and neglect.

The answer is not panic.

It is repentance, revival and a renewed determination to preach the Gospel while there are still churches from which to preach it.