> you can "leave" a church any time you want.

For a small fee and an in-person visit to an office "near" you! Or so I've heard (I live in Germany but have never been a church member here so I wouldn't know myself).

Yes.

This sucks especially for people living in the countryside.

But the fee isn't that much compared to what you have to pay in taxes.

No but what would you say if cancelling your Comcast subscription cost you "not that much" compared to 10% of your income? It's the craziest thing, to me at least, how the heck is this legal? Why can I sign someone else up at birth for paying stuff and yet not be the person liable? And then when they want to cancel my subscription, they have to pay a fine for cancelling?

It's beyond me, even if it's not about a lot of money. Which, I guess, is why it still exists and everyone just swallows it and the church can do things like approve fighting HIV and then launch an investigation when they employed condoms, recommending "natural" contraception methods (in detail) in the same investigation document as well as recommending husbands/wives to just not have sex to not give their partner HIV (and outside of marriage obviously doesn't exist). (I found this via the wikileaks talk at 36c3 and was rather weirded out https://wikileaks.com/popeorders/document/Attachment_9-Commi... )

Yes, I hate it too.

It gives the church too much power here in Germany.

The reasoning is often, that the churches are the biggest providers of social and health related charity. They own schools and hospitals etc. pp.

I never understood why they didn't simply nationalize these things if they think it should be paid by taxes.

I have no issue in paying taxes for hospitals and schools, but I don't want that part of that money also pays for some crazy faith.

it's like 30€ to 50€

I paid 20€