Introduction

In this introduction, I use the fire of the Notre Dame in Paris as a vignette to explore the different ways in which the partial destruction of this Cathedral was received in France. More precisely, I examine how the response of President Macron blurred distinctions between the secular and the sacred in his message of reconstruction of the Cathedral (and renewal of the nation), which clearly compromised the French principle of laïcité (secularism). This introduction explores the co-existence of sacred and secular temporalities in the religious heritages of Europe and beyond. Applying post-secular theory, it argues that we need to abandon the idea of a single, secular frame of time (an ‘iron cage’, according to Taylor), and proposes to embrace the idea of a multiplicity of temporalities that are intricately entangled. This will allow us to move away from the secularisation thesis and explore the multi-directional temporalities of religious heritage and their affordances for renewal in a context of increased concern about secularism.