After WWII the reversal of the migratory balance has made Europe, already a Christian continent and engine of the spread of Christianity on the planet, a receptor of the dominant religions in other continents. This process is part of the more general reshaping caused by globalization, which is profoundly changing the face of our planet. The entire “cultural complex” is affected simultaneously.

Throughout the world, the religious composition of populations is changing rapidly and Europe is no exception. Before our eyes appears a general reshuffling that erases the identification, once common, between a people and a given religion. This also applies to the ways in which religions are inscribed in different territories, through environmental transformations that Deffontaines has highlighted in his works. In fact, architectural creations, being destined to last over time, often end up far exceeding the duration of the spiritual impulse at the base of their creation.

From this circumstance a question emerges: in an era of change like the current one, what is

at risk are the cultures that arose under the banner of the various religions or is it rather the core of the different faiths itself? A tentative answer requires first of all taking into consideration the types of phenomena that can be recorded. Each of them opens a different path of investigation to researchers. Below we give a summary list:

-growth of religious indifferentism

-decrease in religious attendance (with the related use of places of worship)

-attacks on religious symbols (places of worship and religious signs)

-change in the legal regime (issue of “state religion”)

-advance of agnosticism and birth of atheist societies

-advance of “foreign” religions and establishment of religious minorities

-conversions from one religion to another.

As regards the effects on the territory:

-transformation of religious architecture

-adjusting of pre-existing sacred buildings, now used for profane purposes, for other religions, or simply destroyed, either violently or legally

-transformation of landscapes, especially the urban ones: creation of areas without places of worship (or with the absence of artefacts and/or religious toponymy)

-development of multi-ethnic areas with variety of places of worship.