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Good morning. At the beginning of the year, an application was lodged to build a mosque in the basement of a shopping centre in central London. The application has now been withdrawn. Apparently, it attracted a great deal of anti-Islamic abuse. At the time, opponents of the project approached me, as a Christian journalist, suggesting that I write to the council to let them know what I thought about it. So, I did as I was asked and I wrote to the leader of the council to say I was all for it. I said, “I would welcome transforming what is currently a consumerist sprawl into a place of worship.” I added that if local Christian churches cannot attract the 1,000 worshippers a day that the mosque hoped to get, the problem lies with them, not with the mosque. At the heart of many objections to new mosques is the fear of “replacement”, that Christianity is in decline because it is being elbowed out by Islam. This just isn’t so. The religious character of many cities has changed due to migration, but Islam isn’t the only beneficiary: Pentecostal churches are flourishing as well. It’s true that countrywide we’ve seen a rise in Islam and a decline in Christian belief and Sunday worship, but the reason for that lies squarely with Christians who have stopped going to church or churches that have lost members and failed to attract new ones. This is nothing new: if you visited parts of Britain in the mid-19th century, you’d discover high levels of agnosticism. The history of Christianity in modern Britain is one of peaks and troughs, a cycle of scepticism and revival. It’s interesting to note that during the lockdown there has been huge interest in virtual services. Vision and leadership matter; if believers don’t make the case for Christianity – with courage and passion - of course church attendance will fall. Blaming other religions for that is, in my view, inaccurate and unchristian. For what does it mean to be a Christian country, if that’s what people still want? I’d imagine it means not only being Christian in raw numbers, not even just Christian in terms of popular belief, but also Christian in character. I think that means generosity, acceptance of others and also, very importantly, a rejection of fear. Fear can lead to despair, which many Christians see as the antithesis of their faith and self-defeating. Nobody is going to have confidence in a church’s message if it worries that it can only survive by closing the borders or preventing other religions from opening temples. That is not the Christianity that I signed up to, one of Good News and hope.