Feelings are also running high in Geste, a village around an hour's drive west of Valanjou which plans to spend 1.35 million euros replacing the bulk of its existing church with a new, more comfortable one built around the bell tower.
"The church is, first of all, a place of worship. I'm fighting for it because I'm convinced that if we do nothing the church will close for safety reasons," mayor Michel Baron said.
"And if that happens it won't reopen, because it's not necessarily a priority for future generations," he said in his notary's office, sited within earshot of the church bells.
The crisis stems in part from a 1905 law separating church and state which foisted maintenance costs for existing churches on the 36,000 "communes" or districts that make up France.
Beatrice de Andia, the president of the Religious Heritage Observatory, said 83 percent of the estimated 100,000 churches in France were "at risk of everything -- rural depopulation, a decline in faith, the number of Christians and priests".
"SACRILEGE"
Most at risk -- and the only churches to date to have been demolished -- are 19th-century ones which she said were quickly and badly built and the most expensive to maintain.
The Church of England and other faiths in Britain long ago grasped the nettle and sold off churches deemed surplus to requirements. Decommissioned places of worship have been converted into homes, arts centres and even nightclubs.
But the movement is in its infancy in France, says Alain Guinberteau, whose www.40000clochers.com Web site aims to draw attention to the plight of France's ancient places of worship.
"I've had four or five inquiries from individuals, notably in Paris, asking about churches that might be up for sale for conversion into a workshop or a loft," he said.
"But the phenomenon is in an embryonic stage."
The Catholic Church has kept a low profile in the debate, perhaps conscious that a chronic lack of priests as well as shrinking attendance means it would be impractical to retain all the country's churches as active places of worship.
In 1948, 37 percent of Catholics regularly attended mass compared with 8 per cent now, according to a poll in the Le Monde des Religions magazine published in January.
The Bishop of Angouleme, Claude Dagens, acknowledged last month that "the cries of alarm are sometimes justified", but called for such decisions to be made by common accord.
At the Religious Heritage Observatory, De Andia argues for studied neglect of the churches that must go.
"Let them abandon them, I can understand that since no-one wants to look after them. But to destroy them is an act of sacrilege," she said.
