Snopes did the research and declared the claim false. And then gives the data to back it up. Converting an old church into a home doesn’t mean the congregation ceased to exist, and most of those old churches had closed long ago.
In actuality, the total number of churches has increased in the U.K., from 49,727 in 2008 to 51,275 presently.
From Snopes:
“For their “new” mosque claim, Gatestone used a map of mosques in London from
MuslimsInBritain.org, a blog dedicated to cataloging British mosques. Yet the map itself didn’t claim to be a catalog of “new” mosques, and a number of mosques included on the map were built well before the year 2000. The
Finsbury Park Mosque, for instance, was constructed in the 1990s, and the
Leytonstone Mosque in 1976.
While Your News Wire and Gatestone both sought to create the impression that large cathedral-like mosques are being “built on the ruins of Christianity,” many British mosques are small communities that meet in converted houses or buildings. According to MuslimsInBritain.org, the majority of mosques in the United Kingdom are small
establishments with fewer than 300 members.
A 2012 report in
ArchitectsJournal.com also noted that the majority of mosques in Britain are not purpose-built structures: “There is no definitive figure for how many mosques there are in Britain today, although the best estimate is in the region of 1,500. Of these, approximately 200 are purpose-built, the rest being either converted houses or other non-residential conversions.”
So we’re looking at 51,000 churches and 1,500 mosques. That’s 34 churches for every mosque. I think they’ll be OK.