By: Shyam K. Sriram and Analee DeGlopper, Contributors
In early August, news broke that St. Ann’s Church at 214 Emslie Street in Buffalo had been sold after years of inactivity, and its new owners plan to transform the former Catholic institution into a mosque. As one might anticipate, the decision was met locally and nationally with every emotion ranging from enthusiasm to outrage. At its best, the commentary focused on the positive outlook of turning one religious structure into another. At its worst, critics have drawn on the deepest tropes about nativism, Islamophobia and even replacement theory.
Buffalo, New York is not only the “city of good neighbors,” but also a melting pot of religions, cultures and values. It is New York’s second largest city with strong ties not only to our state’s formation, but New York’s Catholic heritage as a whole, formalized with the establishment of Saint Louis’s Church in 1832, the first Catholic church in Buffalo. Many of the city’s early settlers were Polish, Italian, German and Irish immigrants who helped work the region’s steel and grain mills which placed Buffalo on the map. This European immigration helped to create the beautiful and bustling city we know today.
The Diocese of Buffalo, in operation since 1847, recently recommended fifteen local Catholic churches close or merge with other churches. This resulted in a backlash by the church's attendants, as these parishes have remained pillars of faith, community and prosperity since their founding. The closings of these churches are a result of the declining numbers of churchgoers in more recent years, which has happened concurrently with another astonishing development.
In 2020, for the first time in the last fifty years, Buffalo’s population increased (as documented by the 2020 Census). The positive shift has surprised many because it was accompanied by a decline in non-Latino white people. Concurrently, Erie County has continued to receive more refugees than any other county in the state. These trends shed light on an emerging story in Buffalo: the migration of thousands of Bangladeshis and other Muslims over the last twenty years, remaking and revitalizing housing, businesses, cultural practices and politics.
Regionally, Syracuse’s Isa Ibn Maryam Masjid (Jesus Son of Mary Mosque), Masjid Daar At Tawheed Wa Sunnah in Clarence and Masjid Al-Tawheed in Binghamton were all previously churches. What most people do not realize is that there are already mosques in Buffalo that were once churches, including Holy Mother of the Rosary Polish National Cathedral on Sobieski Street, now Masjid Zakariya, and Queen of Peace Roman Catholic Church on Genesee Street, known now as Jami Masjid.
How has this spatial conversion affected the religious geography of Buffalo? The remaking of a church into a mosque carries with it a certain element of what Daan Beekers and Pooyan Tamimi Arab described as “iconicity” in their 2016 study of the Fatih Mosque in Amsterdam: the desire of Muslims to retain the iconic architecture associated with the church’s aesthetics while creating new Islamic spaces. Our research project seeks to document how immigration changes have affected the religious mapping and ethnography in Buffalo as well as nationally. Using our new theory of “religious upcycling,” we argue that the conversion of religious space, from Catholic to Muslim, is emblematic of not only the idea of iconicity, as previously implied, but also fundamentally changes the way Americans understand the features of neighborhoods and their features. What does it mean for a city when its Polish delis give way to Burmese halal markets? When nuns in their habit are replaced by women in hijab and niqab? We are also building the first ever church to mosque (C2M) database to track these institutions nationally.
As a Muslim and Catholic research team, we support any changes in Buffalo that bring new people, ideas and vitality to this beloved city, and further our history of tolerance and hospitality. Buffalo has always been more than the Bills, wings and Beef on Weck. Let us view the transformation of St. Ann’s as a religious upcycling – a conversion not from a lesser to a better religion, but from a space that was not meeting the needs of a new generation of worshipers who simply needed a new way to engage with the same Merciful God that watches over all of us.
Shyam K. Sriram is an assistant professor and program director in the Department of Political Science.
Analee DeGlopper is a junior majoring in Political Science and Criminal Justice.
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