France is generally included in the Western Europe countries facing the issue of redundant churches. Yet it differs from its European neighbours in that tens of thousands of religious buildings have a specific legal status inherited from the separation of church and state process in 1905. In addition to making most of those buildings the property of municipalities, this regime is characterized by an assignment to worship enshrined in law (affectation cultuelle). Despite the dwindling or even absence of church attendance, the regime has not been fundamentally modified. The legal assignment to worship, justified by the ambition to protect the freedom of religion at the time of its adoption, proves to be often out of step with actual practices. For many churches, strict application of the law would lead to decommissioning. In practice, the number of decommissioning is very limited, and the development of uses held "compatible" with the religious assignment, in law, in practice and in discourses on religious heritage/buildings, invites us to consider the advent of this phenomenon that question the distinction between religious and cultural in law.