Intolerance & Discrimination Against the Scientology Community in Germany Today

SECTION IV. DENUNCIATIONS, CHICANERY AND DISCRIMINATION BY THE OFFICIAL CHURCHES AND OTHERS

he participation of officials and members of the Lutheran and Catholic Churches in the government campaign against Scientology is critical. The Lutheran Church has established “working circles” that forward official Church policies in the government and the two largest parties, the Social Democratic Union and the Christian Democratic Union.

In addition, a country-wide network of misguided pastors known as “sect-commissioners,” preach hatred against other religions — especially the Church of Scientology — from behind a veneer of dispassionate observation.

The German churches, among the richest in the world, enjoy immense political power which they wield without restraint against any new religion perceived as a threat.

There is nothing wrong with a church having money, if it is used for religious and charitable ends. The finances of the German churches are worth examining, however, because they reveal a depth of hypocrisy among government officials, many of them church-connected, in their criticisms of new religions.

At the heart of the state churches’ wealth is the controversial church tax. Every year, the government collects 17 billion DM on behalf of the two large Christian Churches from their German parishioners. Approximately 70% of this huge sum is disbursed in salaries of ministers and other church personnel.

The church tax is nothing if not resilient. Although Christian theology withered under the onslaught of fascism in the 1930s, not so the tax. It not only survived, but gained a new lease on life in 1933 through an unholy alliance between the Nazis and the Catholic Church known as the Concordat. The Concordat confirmed the right of the Church to levy taxes on its membership, including the Führer himself.

So, while Jews, Gypsies, and Jehovah’s Witnesses were persecuted and murdered wholesale, billions of DM continued to flow into the coffers of the Catholic Church. With one noteworthy provision: All Catholic priests in Germany had to swear an oath of fealty to the Third Reich.

Nor is the tax the end of the government’s efforts on the churches behalf. Although it is paid only by parishioners, all Germans pay in subsidies — in total, more than 16 billion DM towards religious education in schools, training of priests and theologians, religious grants, pastoral care in prisons, asylums and the military, protection of historic churches, funding of religious programs and community subsidies.

The state churches are also the largest landowners in Germany, with 400 billion DM in real estate holdings. They own seven banks each, and have shares in publishing houses, breweries, vineyards, hotels, restaurants, steel companies, life insurance and property insurance companies and home loan associations. Not to forget more than 140 newspapers and magazines.

It is ironic that the main accusation thundered against new religions, including Scientology, from the pulpit and the halls of government is that they are somehow “commercial.” As the Frankfurt Regional Court pointed out in 1989, the Church of Scientology’s system of raising funds only through voluntary donations is in fact a fairer method than an enforced tax. “Each member has to decide on his or her own responsibility whether he or she believes in the doctrine... and wants to secure the assistance and spreading of the religious community by the payments to be effected,” the Court wrote.

Apparently a large number of Germans agree. Because the only way to escape payment of the church tax is by leaving the Catholic or Lutheran Churches, each year several hundred thousand Germans resign, representing a loss of tax income of nearly $1 billion. In 1995, 440,000 left the Catholic and Lutheran Churches for good, according to the Los Angeles Times. If this drainage continues at its present rate, in fifty years time the big Christian Churches of Germany will no longer be a serious force.

Every major propagandist against Scientology in Germany is somehow affiliated with the big state churches. Federal Minister of Labor Norbert Blüm, a Catholic theologian, appears to spend almost as much time pounding out fabrications and propaganda about Scientology as he does trying to find jobs for the country’s record number of unemployed — the highest in Germany since the war.

The United States formed a democracy on a base of religious freedom and the principle that church and state are absolutely separate. In Germany, more than 200 years after the U.S. Declaration of Independence, church and state are still bride and bridegroom, a marriage that continues to have serious and damaging consequences for religious freedom and democracy in that country.

Specific instances follow:

Denunciations, chicanery and discrimination by
the official churches and others continued...