The Values of Tangible Religious Heritage Through the Lens of UNESCO

The decision to include or exclude cultural heritage in a national or global protection system is a political decision. In this sense, the institutional activity of recognising the values of religious heritage determines which cultural heritage is worthy of protection. This process enables the survival of cultural heritage for future generations. In contrast, public decisions that exclude cultural heritage from a protection system determine which identity traits are doomed to extinction and thus leave no heritage behind. This concept has been extensively researched by experts from various disciplines in the field of cultural heritage. However, the aim of this chapter is to innovatively explore how this occurs in the UNESCO scenario and specifically in decisions related to religious heritage. More precisely, the inclusion or exclusion of religious heritage follows an evaluation process based on the 1972 World Heritage Convention and Operational Guidelines. These legal instruments establish general criteria to determine whether a site is of Outstanding Universal Value and whether it meets the criteria of Authenticity and Integrity. However, these parameters for assessing the greatness of religious heritage have changed considerably over the years, so that the boundaries of what is considered worthy of protection have widened and narrowed depending on the public interests to be promoted or prevented. In order to shed light on the flexible use of the global instruments employed by UNESCO, this chapter reconstructs and deconstructs how the concepts of Outstanding Universal Value, Authenticity and Integrity have changed throughout the history of World Heritage nominations. Even if the evaluation methods for religious and secular heritage do not differ, the religious and political value of religious heritage is often used to emphasise the value of inscribed sites. In the historical debate about what can be considered outstanding, authentic, genuine or original, contradictions and frictions from different perspectives clearly emerge.