What Will America Do With Its Abandoned Churches?

 In some cases, a religious governing body will sell a vacant church to developers, who convert it to an apartment building, an office complex, or even an art gallery. For vacant churches in neighborhoods that aren't doing too well, however, they are sometimes converted into places of worship for entirely different religious faiths--an Islamic mosque, or a Buddhist temple.

With immigrant and refugee populations growing across the U.S., the conversion of vacant Christian churches into new places of worship can preserve historic architecture and strengthen burgeoning communities.