What Will Become Of Our Sacred Spaces?  

An existential threat is beginning to come into focus, one that mainline Protestantism has barely begun to engage with sincerely and that could cascade into generations of failure and decline. I am speaking of the future of historic church properties—which are facing a crisis of purpose and financial security that could result in many of our religion’s most important sacred spaces falling into the wrong hands. 

This issue was certainly highlighted recently in the Church of England when it caught tremendous flack in February for using Canterbury Cathedral to host a kitschy silent disco event—using one of the most historically significant cathedrals in Christendom, the place where the martyr Thomas Becket died, as a place for teenagers to rave and decorate with neon lights. 

But this problem goes much deeper and cuts into the heart of issues that are being created by the decline of mainline Protestantism. The Episcopal Church is already slated to functionally disintegrate by 2050 due to declining attendance, with the Church of England, the Anglican Church in North America, and other Protestant denominations facing similarly precarious demographic drop-offs. 

The Church of Scotland recently showed signs of this when it shuttered a 900-year-old church in November, and announced plans to sell the property by 2027. The Church of Scotland has stated that its current status is untenable, that selling off hundreds of church properties is becoming necessary, and that one of its best current revenue sources is real estate sales. 

As Christianity continues down a path towards dissolution in the West, our leaders seem unprepared for the reality that many of our most historic cathedrals and buildings face a dark future if we do not prepare for this eventuality—and find ways to protect them on our terms from being deconsecrated or disabused. 

The Difficulty Of Preservation Amid Decline 

Hardly a day goes by online without an online Roman Catholic apologist saying something to the effect of, “If Protestantism is so good, why did it steal all of our Cathedrals? Why can’t it produce its own beautiful buildings and give back all the buildings it stole?” 

Let us set aside the millennia of legal claims and the ethics of churches being built and financed by locals being owned by the Bishop of Rome. Technicalities aside, the Church of England and the United Evangelical Lutheran Church of Germany have done a remarkable job protecting and preserving historic cathedrals. Many have full-time architects on staff to ensure their safety and constant renovations are made to keep them functional and safe. Shy of one recent example in Connecticut, it is quite rare for these historic buildings to simply collapse. And this speaks to a fundamental reality of historic Protestantism—our churches have done a good job, up until recently, of holding back the tides of entropy and preserving this valuable heritage that has been passed down to us by the Reformers. 

It certainly isn’t easy. With church attendance declining across the Western world, it is getting harder and harder for many congregations to protect their historic buildings. This issue first came into focus in my life when my family’s historic Methodist congregation of Prairie Church in Oswego, IL closed in 2010—with the property subsequently being used to plant two new Methodist churches. 

Talk to any pastor operating out of a century-old building and he can tell you just how much of a burden it is to keep historic buildings running. Ancient buildings require constant renovations to address aging infrastructure issues. These are expensive pieces of real estate, and often congregations simply don’t have enough congregants to justify keeping prime real estate that is better sold to some enterprising small business or growing evangelical congregation. It is easier and less expensive to simply buy cheaper land and build a smaller less expensive building using the money. 

It is certainly preferable for declining churches to pass their historic buildings along to a new congregation, as was the case for Prairie Church. However, this isn’t always an option. There aren’t always church plants with the money to buy million-dollar properties, many of which are located in large cities. This forces property owners to deconsecrate the properties and hand them over to whichever small business owner is willing to take on the cost of renovating them. 

The result of this has been that the American landscape is now filled with thousands of small businesses operating out of former church sanctuaries—gutting the insides and renovating them to fit their needs. While many of these renovators recognize the historic significance and sacred space of the properties, the end result is often highly kitschy and frustrating.  

Among the ones I’ve found or personally seen, the 114-year-old First Baptist Church of Lake Geneva, WI, is now Topsy Turvey Brewery. The 125-year-old German Evangelical People’s Church of Naperville, IL is now the Naperville Women’s Club. Four-year-old First Lutheran Church of Troy, OH, is now Moeller Brew Barn. The 156-year-old Delafield Presbyterian Church of Delafield, WI is now Belfrē Kitchen. The half-century-old St. Patrick’s Anglican Catholic Church in Kalamazoo, MI is reportedly being converted into a martial arts space. The 98-year-old First Baptist Church of Tarpon Springs, FL is now a luxury mansion. The 170-year-old Trinity Episcopal Church of Elmira, NY, is being converted into a sports complex. The 150-year-old St. Thomas Anglican Church in Hamilton, NY has been converted into apartments. The 151-year-old St. Peters Lutheran Church of Hampshire, IL is now a Shirdi Shai Temple. The oldest church in Illinois, the 184-year-old Congregational Church of Lockport is now the Gladys Fox Museum, while the nearby 170-year-old Old Baptist Church is an ice cream parlor. The 180-year-old Episcopal Church of the Holy Communion in New York City was sold in the 1980s and converted into a nightclub, a drug rehab, and then a gym. 

Why Are These Buildings Significant?

There is certainly a utilitarian argument to be made that these are non-issues. If religion is shrinking, why do we need so many large buildings? What is stopping our dioceses from simply selling burdensome expensive real estate and building more modest houses of worship that suit our needs better? 

However, most high-church Protestants and Roman Catholics alike chafe with disgust at the notion that these buildings are being used so commercially. These buildings were designed to be set apart, and now they’re being used indignantly for casual purposes. These are sacred spaces, many of which have centuries or millennia of history, and they ought not to be treated so lightly. Churches certainly have the right and ability to deconsecrate their property as needed, but it is uncomfortable and sad to see these buildings being used in this manner. 

The concept of “holiness” holds deep significance in Christianity. It is the idea that “holy” things are those things which we “set apart,” which is the literal meaning of the word. We do not use holy spaces for non-holy activities. We reserve church sanctuaries for worship. We ought not to worship Christ, eat lunch, do business, and play sports in the same room. Religious spaces thus take on great meaning due to their histories as places that have been set apart. It is significant to enter a 100-year-old country chapel because thousands of people have paid reverent service to God in that hallowed space. 

This was the significance of the tragic 2019 Notre Dame Cathedral fire in Paris, France. It wasn’t just that a beautiful building had been partially damaged, but that a 12th-century Cathedral that had survived plagues, famines, battles, and tyrants could be felled by a simple electrical fire. The largest house of worship in the French nation came crashing to the ground in a single night, and with it the hopes of millions of French Catholics. 

It seemed to speak to a deeper spiritual deprivation too, given that it has been highly unclear how the Cathedral will be rebuilt. Rolling Stone infamously argued that its destruction represented a cleansing of meaning for the French national consciousness; that the burden of its depth and meaning was being cleared for France to conceive a new vision to rebuild it in the absence of historic French Catholicism. 

These issues are made worse by church leaders attempting to be trendy and attract young people back to the church. Canterbury Cathedral may be well aware of the generational decline happening within its church, but instead of keeping the faith and inviting people to join in the sacred, they are endeavoring to expand the sacred into the realm of the profane—which appeals to neither people who care about reverent faith nor irreverent secular peoples.

Canterbury Cathedral is still a fully consecrated worship space, and little effort has been made to avoid crossing the line of violating the integrity of the space. It reflects a carelessness on the part of our religious leaders, that we still possess such important worship places and don’t realize the decadence involved in allowing such events to happen. The Church of England may be in decline, but instead of attempting to help younger generations take the faith more seriously our leaders have decided to feed the problem for the sake of a quick buck. It is a sad and tragic thing for a century-old church to have no choice but to deconsecrate its property—and it is arguably worse for a millennia-old Cathedral to take itself so flippantly. 

The Trouble Of Triumphalism

The other side of the issue is how other religions play into the equation. With the influx of more Islamic migrants entering Europe and America in the past decade, hundreds of abandoned church properties across both continents have been converted into makeshift mosques to minister to immigrant populations. Islam has a complicated history with such actions. While many of these properties are likely being purchased amicably, there is also a tendency among radicals to use these purchases for propaganda. 

In one recent TikTok shared by a controversial British politician, a Muslim apologist brags about the conversion of his local abandoned Methodist church into a mosque, saying, “You’ll be excused to think this is a church, but as is the case across the UK we took it over. It’s not actually a Mosque, a Masjid. Christianity is depleting. Atheism is unfulfilling. Islam is here and is here to stay. The British people may not like it but as is the case with many things there may be something which you don’t like which is good for you. So carry on making those churches for us, keep them empty. We’ll buy them in a few years time and make them into a mosque.”

The comments section below the video is filled with praise from English Muslims cheering on the conversion, saying “Alhamdulilah, Islam keeps growing”, “Allahu Akbar!, and “The rising Islam, now the Church, later the people will be Muslim.”

While I wouldn’t attribute this attitude to all Muslims, triumphalism of this sort highlights one of the real dangers that Christians face when it comes to how we protect our history. Whether it is the Taliban’s destruction of Afghanistan’s 1,400-year-old Buddhas of Bamiyan statues or Turkey’s repeated conversions of the Hagia Sophia Byzantine Cathedral into Mosques in both 1453 and 2020, some strains of radical Islam have a strong streak of transforming historical religious sites into political victories that demoralize and denigrate other religions. 

While Christianity is losing its cultural vitality, Islam is gaining vitality—at least insofar as its forward public face can project (as the Islamic world contains much brittleness and schism that could collapse it before it advances further). But as with most things, the question is not whether Christ will protect his church, but in how much decay and destruction Christianity will have to endure in the interim. And it is worth asking what it will mean if the hostile expansionist factions in Islam start buying historic Cathedrals. 

The Church of England is already allowing its most historic spaces like Manchester Cathedral to be rented for Ramadan services, in direct violation of the sanctity of the space, and there is no reason why it wouldn’t conceivably consider selling its medieval churches if it found itself in a financial pinch. 

The Future Of Anglicanism’s Heritage 

All these examples of churches being converted into commercial real estate or rival religious centers create frustrating moral quandaries, and the lines can’t simply be drawn in black and white. It is easy to say that I’d rather a historic Cathedral be demolished rather than converted into a mosque, but every case is contextual. 

I didn’t lose much sleep when a local Unitarian Universalist Church in Woodstock, IL was converted into a Buddhist temple, both because Unitarian Universalism is already theologically fringe and because a rural abandoned church building being converted isn’t as dangerous as a historic Cathedral being converted. Similarly, Buddhism is nowhere near as triumphalist and conquest-driven as radical Islam.

It would seem highly unlikely that the high holy places of our faith will be misused in this manner. However, the fate of such facilities is still in question. 

What purpose will the Washington National Cathedral serve 20 years from now? What do you do when your church owns the fifth-largest house of worship on Earth, the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City, and doesn’t have the patronage to sustain it? What is the future of the Episcopal Church’s Old Trinity Church of Church Creek, MD (1671) or Falls Church Episcopal of Falls Church, VA (1769), or the ACNA’s Parish Church of St. Helena of Beaufort, SC (1712), or St. Michael’s Church of Charleston, SC (1752), if something happens to either denomination? 

These are questions all Christians need to ask themselves, as even Roman Catholics and Reformed churches stare down demographic collapses. If our faith is diminishing, we need to start having conversations now about what we want to happen to these buildings. If we cannot make it certain that Canterbury Cathedral will remain a place of Anglican worship, what do we want of it? Do we want it to become a secular museum that doesn’t allow public worship, like the beautiful but empty Spanish Catholic missions owned by the state of California? Should we gift it to the Roman Catholics to preserve on our behalf? Or are we going to let Thomas Becket’s grave become a tennis court? 

These are questions we need to ask now before we are forced to start selling ancient cathedrals. We are already watching as centuries of local church history are gentrified into commercial real estate, and we may need to decide what the least painful option is—assuming some sort of revival is out of the question. 

We may not like any of these options, but the most irresponsible thing to do would be to not leave a will behind for our descendants, or conditions for how their next owners must protect them. We don’t want these beautiful historic places of worship to be defiled, and avoiding that possibility requires the honesty to admit we may be facing a serious crisis of stability that threatens our futures.