Despite law, tax money still provides support to German churches

It’s been 100 years since Germany’s first democratic government decided to stop making generous payments to its Protestant and Roman Catholic churches—and did nothing about it.

The bill now runs to over half a billion euros a year—more than $560 million annually—but neither the current chancellor, Angela Merkel, nor the governors of the states that have to pony up that money show any interest in finally stopping the payments.

As the August centenary of that decision approached, some opposition members of Germany’s parliament, the Bun­destag, have threatened to introduce bills to cut off the money flow. An atheist group has begun an online clock, counting “how long German politics has ignored the dictum of ideological neutrality.”