Someone I know who spent some time living in Germany told me that Germany officially tracks people by their religion and automatically charges an appropriate tithe/tax/offering as part of that person’s taxes and gives it to the person’s church. I was actually already vaguely aware that such a process/practice existed in several European countries, but I was under the impression that one simply declared their religion to the government and converts simply had to notify the government on a census or tax form and the applicable change would go into effect, but this friend of mine told me that it was not that simple and that one had to appear before a court and prove the genuineness of their conversion (how you would do so they did not say) or else they would not change your registration. For example, if you live in Germany and convert from the Catholic church to Lutheranism, can you just file a form that says “<name>, <id number>, old religion Catholicism, new religion Lutheranism, date of conversion 5/2/2012”, or do you really have to go before a judge and the judge can approve or deny your request depending on whether or not he feels that you are converting because you actually believe that Luther and other Reformers were correct rather than because you are upset at the Roman Catholic Church’s practices regarding the sex abuse scandal or because you want to marry a Protestant and think “converting” on paper will get your future in-laws off your back?
In the middle east, in several strict muslim countries like Saudi Arabia, you simply declare your intent to switch from Islam to Christianity or Buddhism. The authorities ratify this decision by cutting off your head and the head of the person who converted you.
No, from all I can tell, you don’t need to convince a judge of anything if you want to leave or change your religion in Germany. You simply declare your intent to leave, and the state has to accept that. What is true (and what might have lead to confusion) is that in some federal states in Germany, you have to give that declaration at the Amtsgericht (district court). I don’t know if any judge ever looks at your declaration and maybe has to sign something, but he certainly doesn’t get to choose whether he accepts it. In other German states, you can make that declaration at a civil registration office. Often you have to pay a fee for this, which has lead to some criticism as it is seen as an infringement on freedom of religion.
As you correctly say, the information about your religion is used to automatically deduct an extra tax from your income. Several religious groups make use of this mechanism (in particular, the catholic and the Lutheran church), others don’t even though they meet the criteria to do so. You don’t have to declare membership with any religion towards the state, but some religious communities demand that if you’re a member, you also have to make it official and pay the tax (otherwise you don’t receive sacraments or things like that).
Here is how it works: You go to your local court and fill out a form declaring that you want to leave your church. There is no judge involved, you just talk to some court clerk. No questions are asked, there is no fee. It’s like going to the post office.
This thing is just a relict from the olden days and only necessary if you want to leave one of the mainstream religions/denominations. It is, however, true that members of these mainstream churches (Roman Catholic, Evangelic, Jewish) do pay a church tax which is deducted from your pay check together with your regular (i. e. state) tax.
My friend who lives there had to fill out a form to get herself off the Catholic list. She did have to go to a specific place to do this, and I believe there was a fee.
Sorry, I see that was already covered, more or less. They were taking “tithes” directly from her, even though she wasn’t going to any church.
Your religious affiliation (or lack of affiliation) is registered in the municipial resident’s register (it is only relevant if your church/religion is one that has made an agreement with the state for its tithes to be collected with your income taxes - the rate is 8 % or 9 % of the income tax owed).
What’s needed to deregister your previous affiliation is just a statement to that effect, to the appropriate agency (which one it is differs from state to state).
What might have confused your informant:
In some states such as Berlin and Brandenburg the administrative agency with which to file this statement is the local Amtsgericht (the lowest level of courts). That does not mean, however, that the court has to decide on the statement, just that you file that statement with the court’s admin people and they’ll forward it to the residents’ register. The administration of the Amtsgericht courts deal with a lot of registries (depending on state), e.g. with the land registries, company registries, marriage registries etc.
AFAIK a simple letter does not meet the formal requirements of the statement to leave a religion - after all someone could impersonate you. You have to make the statement to the appropriate official in person (showing ID) or send a notarized statement (showing your ID to the notary).
I have read allegations (from atheist advocates) of churches dunning people for church taxes where the person said they’d deregistered from their church long ago but have lost the documentation. In this case obviously a court has to decide on the matter.
Lastly, in cases where an application for asylum is litigated and the asylum seeker claims to have been persecuted in their country of origin for having converted, obviously whether a conversion has in fact taken place is a material fact in the case.
Correction: There is actually a fee for this in 14 of the 16 German states which I found quite surprising. The fee can, however, be waived if you’re dirt poor (i. e. welfare recipient).
Instead of declaring your intention to leave your church at the local court, you can alternatively go to a notary public (whose services are ridiculously expensive in Germany).
Interesting responses. My ‘informant’ is American and only spent a few years living there, so I can see how they could have misunderstood the process, especially if they didn’t actually go through it.
I was mentally comparing it to the US, where there is no government office that even purports to track the religion of general citizens.
I effectively left my parents’ church years ago but never really “closed” the matter by formally resigning or requesting excommunication and have thought about doing that, but really it seems that it would be more of a chance to gloat as I “stick it to” them about how their indoctrination attempt failed and feel good at how bad whoever processes my paperwork must be feeling about my heresy rather than a real productive experience.
Sorry, no jibe intended. The OP asked about changing religion other countries, and the fact is that some countries do not tolerate some actions. Without being judgemental, a lot of other countries do not have the same separation of church and state found in much of the west.
Within the last year…
That was the opinion of extremist clerics, not the sentence.
As I wrote before, this is basically a relict from the past that nobody bothered to change. It stems from the 19th century when the mainstream churches were closely supervised by the state, especially in Prussia.
Most people who leave the church just don’t want to pay church tax anymore. The church tax isn’t just used for running church operations like paying the pastors and heating the churches. In Germany, many hospitals, kindergartens, nursing homes, schools etc. are run and payed for by the churches. So in some way, church tax is a special kind of tax that is used to pay for social services which benefit the general public.
Being able to decide who gets church tax deducted from his pay check is really the only reason for keeping track of people’s religion/denomination.
There are those who say that Germany should get rid of the church tax system. The churches usually answer this by pointing out that they would be forced to shut down many of the services mentioned above.
Maybe there used to be some sort of social stigma involved by having to go to the local court to leave the church, but these days are long gone.
And how do the churches enforce that? Does everybody have to file taxes, even? In Spain we get the choice of ticking whether we want a certain % of our taxes to go “to the RCC” or “to other non-profits”, but the RCC doesn’t have access to a list of who ticked, and many people don’t have to file at all.
I found it weird enough that one of my US parishes required me to register with them and pay a declared amount in order to be considered a parishioner… (no, I didn’t, and I’m still awaiting response to “so what happened to ‘let one hand not know what the other one does’?”)
To put it shortly and without going into detail, the German tax authorities provide a service to the mainstream churches by collecting the church tax and forwarding the money to them.
The churches themselves keep a register of all their members. When an individual leaves his church (by going to the local court as described), the court notifies the local civil registry and the local civil registry notifies the local church administration which will strike that person’s name from the list of church members.
The tax authorities rely on the information given to them by the local registry (which also includes information on your marital status and how many children you have).
It’s important to note that only the big mainstream denominations (Roman Catholic, Evangelic, Jewish) take part in this system. So if you are a Mormon or a member of one of the many smaller Protestant denominations, you pay your dues directly.
In my town, the pastor’s wife works in the county clerk’s office. Deregistering from the church would be very uncomfortable. I prefer my method of simply not showing up on Sundays.
That’s the main difference in what ‘belonging to a religion’ is generally taken to mean in the US vs. Germany - im Germany the concept as generally understood is membership not beliefs/practices/activities; denominations are membership organizations that you formally join (usually at birth, by your parents’ decision) and formally resign from.
The vast majority of Germans know exactly which church they don’t go to.
Some of that is because a Notar in Germany is really a limited-specialty lawyer, not just someone authorized to witness signatures. Of course, it still doesn’t take much effort to sign, add a stamp and log it.