From religious to secular place-making: How does the secular matter for religious place construction in the local?

Abstract

The literature on religious place-making has largely prioritized an emic perspective of religious actors often reducing the secular aspect of such place-making to a mere ‘emptying out’ of religion from public space. Based on ethnographic observations and in-depth interviews with political and religious representatives in Montreuil, one of the flagship towns of the ‘red belt’ of municipalities around Paris, this article looks at secular aspects of religious place construction. The discussion focusses on two practices of secular place-making: defining of religion ‘worthy’ of place and shifting the boundary between public and private space. Comparing the municipality’s interactions with Muslim groups on the one hand, and evangelical churches on the other, I show that politics and sensibilities of the secular towards the religious vary for different religious groups over time. Locality can thus be understood as dynamic mode of secularism, enabling a constant placing and re-placing of religion.