Reform UK said it would grant listed status to churches across Britain to prevent their conversion into mosques if the party enters government, setting out a proposal it says would protect the country’s Christian heritage.

Zia Yusuf, the party’s home affairs spokesman plans to present the policy as part of an effort to preserve Christianity as central to Britain’s national identity, The Telegraph reported.

The plan would give immediate listed status to about 40,000 churches, restricting changes that affect their historic character and limiting their ability to be repurposed.

Yusuf, a practicing Muslim, said the move aimed to ensure Christianity remains “core” to Britain’s history and the “DNA of the country.” He linked the proposal to larger concerns about social cohesion and immigration, arguing that rapid demographic change had affected a “high-trust society.”

He was quoted as telling The Times that large numbers of arrivals from “low-trust societies” had contributed to that erosion, adding that the trend was “obviously true.”

Under the proposal, Reform would also create a new planning category for churches that would block their conversion into places of worship for other religions. At present, many places of worship in England fall under the F1 use class, where changes can occur without full planning permission.

The party has said the policy is a response to fears that churches are increasingly being turned into mosques. Yusuf said he had received emails from “anxious residents” raising concerns about the issue, The Times noted. 

Yusuf said the party would “end the incendiary practice of converting churches into mosques or any other places of worship by granting listed status automatically to all churches and prohibiting that.”

There is no official national list of such cases, though around 40 confirmed conversions have been identified in recent years, according to the Telegraph.

Since the late 1960s, only two Church of England churches have been sold directly to another religion for worship, both becoming Sikh gurdwaras, according to The Times, which said most disused churches are instead converted into housing, offices, cafes or taken over by other Christian denominations.

Ben Sims of the National Churches Trust told the newspaper that the idea of granting blanket listed status to churches would “make a mockery of the heritage system," where church authorities already retain significant control over former sites. The CofE has used restrictive covenants in some sales to prevent conversion to non-Christian worship.

In one recent case, the Georgian church of St. John’s in Hanley, Staffordshire, became the focus of a dispute after local planners approved its conversion into a mosque. Church authorities later intervened using a covenant attached when the property was sold in 2009.

Reform UK’s proposal comes against a backdrop of long-term decline in church attendance and building closures.

More than 3,500 churches have shut across the United Kingdom over the past decade, driven by falling congregations and rising repair costs. The National Churches Trust estimates that between 3,000 and 5,000 churches are either closed or used intermittently without a permanent vicar.

Latest figures show Sunday attendance fell from 788,000 in 2013 to 557,000 after the COVID pandemic, with many parishes struggling to rebuild congregations, reports The Telegraph.

Census data shows that religious affiliation in Britain has been shifting. About 46% of the population, or roughly 27.5 million people, identified as Christian in the 2021 census. The number of people identifying as Muslim rose by 44% to 3.9 million, while the Hindu population grew by 22% to about one million.

News Source : https://www.christianpost.com/news/reform-uk-party-vows-to-save-churches-turning-into-mosques.html