Common prayer: when churches become mosques

A Presbyterian minister, a Pentecostalist pastor and a Sunni imam come to worship in the same place. It’s not the start of a joke: this is literally what happens at my local church in east London which, strangely, now encompasses a mosque. It was in danger of being closed, but instead the walled church complex has been partitioned, with a chunk of it sold off to Muslims while the main church building remains the home of two different Christian denominations. The site serves as a sanctuary for followers of rival creeds, a kind of suburban Temple Mount.

The shared use indicates an unlikely chapter in the life of a once-renowned institution, founded in 1642 when Protestant nonconformists met in Stepney amid civil war. The then Wycliffe Chapel ministered to generations of poor east Londoners. But since relocating to Ilford, the congregation has dwindled to about two dozen parishioners. The other churchgoers who meet there are followers of a black pastor, who struggles to fill the pews.