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It’s very simple. Neither Germany nor the UK have complete separation of church and state.
by philistine 3y ago
It’s very simple. Neither Germany nor the UK have complete separation of church and state.
- euroderf 3y agoNor does Finland. Finnish citizens default to having a small church tax deducted from their pay. Canceling this tax is very easy. I thought the statement to sign might be something like "I don't want to pay church tax because I worship Satan and drink the blood of baby goats", but it is not like that at all. It is very neutral.
- MrJohz 3y agoTo me the point is that very few countries - if any - have true separation of religion and state, because religion is usually culturally embedded in a huge variety of ways. But it's easier to see the ways that the state upholds certain religious practices from the outside, because when you're inside the system, you don't notice that embedding fully. The US is another good example of this: there is a constitutionally enshrined separation of church and state, but religion figures heavily in everything from money to the processes of Congress. From the outside, the US is a fundamentally Christian nation, but it seems like there are lot of people on the inside who see that differently.