This article deals exclusively with the financial aspects of the relationship between state and church, i.e. not with questions of secularisation, the safeguarding of religious peace or freedom of worship. The churches are financed to a large extent by the church taxes of their members. They are free to belong to a church - the obligation to pay church tax is not compulsory for them. This part of church financing is therefore not problematic.

In the majority of cantons (except BS, SH, AR, AG and GE), however, legal entities are also liable for church tax.

These are public limited companies, associations, etc. that are liable to tax. The church taxes of legal persons amount to about 265 million Swiss francs per year in Switzerland as a whole. Piquant: According to the Federal Supreme Court, legal entities cannot leave the church - they cannot invoke freedom of religion.

In addition, there are general allocations by the cantons, which can best be described as financial aid or subsidies. These are state expenditures in favour of the churches. In the past, this was justified by the nationalisation of church property. Today, church services "for the benefit of the general public" - especially in the areas of education, social welfare and culture - are increasingly cited as an argument for state funding. It is argued that services are compensated which the state would have to provide anyway. In 2010, the scope of these services was estimated at around 292 million Swiss francs per year for the whole of Switzerland.

It is currently unclear whether and to what extent contributions must be made for the cultural purposes of a religion to which one does not belong (in the case of legal persons and subsidies). Because the previous article of the old Federal Constitution ("No one is obliged to pay taxes imposed on a religious community to which he does not belong specifically for his own cult purposes." Art. 49 para. 6 aBV) was not incorporated into the totally revised Federal Constitution, a legal uncertainty has arisen.

The collection assistance of the cantons for the churches (tax assessment and tax collection) also has a financial value, depending on the structure of the cantonal church law. However, this is difficult to quantify.

Only the churches recognised by the cantons benefit from state support, while other religious communities have to assess and collect their membership fees themselves and generally receive no state contributions. There are exceptions, and in some cantons the discussion is ongoing with regard to certain religious communities. Unfortunately, the Federal Supreme Court allows this access to priviliges by individual religious communities and the resulting unequal treatment of religions.

Unclear data situation
The national churches are losing members at an increasing rate, while the group of non-denominational members is growing faster and faster. Insofar as the churches are financed by church taxes (in their case these are membership fees, as in the case of an association), their income is continually declining, while their expenditure is only decreasing to a limited extent. This means that sources of finance outside their membership base are becoming increasingly important for the churches. This is an aspect on which the churches are spending some energy.

The main reasons given for leaving the church are the lack of faith and the rejection of church statements in public. Only a few people state that they left the church for financial reasons. However, the number of unreported cases is probably high, as "other" reasons are often given: These can certainly be of a financial nature, one does not want to appear petty. It is therefore difficult to assess the influence of financial considerations in the population with regard to church issues.

The graph (page 13) shows the amount of church contributions paid by taxpayers. It is the sum of taxes paid by businesses and non-church members per inhabitant. The tax progression must always be taken into account. In the canton of Zurich, for example, a good 4% of taxpayers pay 25% of the cantonal income tax and 7% of taxpayers are tax-exempt. The figures in the graph therefore only represent a theoretical average.

The data quality varies from canton to canton, as do the justifications for the state payments and the legal regulations. For example, remuneration in the canton of Bern is partly based on the nationalisation of church properties at the beginning of the 19th century. In the cantons of Valais and Ticino, the regulation is partly communal and the data situation is correspondingly poor.

It is up to the cantons to regulate the relationship between state and church and in particular the legal status of religious communities within the framework of the Federal Constitution.

The problem: Religion is irrational
Religion is difficult to define. However, since state bodies are not allowed to make arbitrary decisions in a constitutional state, they must also adhere to factual criteria in their decisions on religious issues. A law is arbitrary if it cannot be based on serious factual grounds or if it is pointless and purposeless. This is the basic idea of the rule of law. The state's attempt to define religion rationally fails. It is like squaring the circle: Water is to be mixed with fire. Accordingly, the attempts at legal definition with auxiliary criteria seem helpless and arbitrary. For example, the age of the religion is used. Christianity would not have been a church during the lifetime of the founder of the religion.

The prerequisite for the recognition of a church is 20 years of existence in the canton of Basel-Landschaft and 30 years in the canton of Zurich. The number of members (more than 3000 in the canton of Zurich) is also used as a criterion. What is surprising is the requirement of the rule of law and the observance of the legal system (cantons of Basel-Landschaft and Zurich) of the organisation - every local shooting club must fulfil this requirement.

The Body-Soul Problem
At its core is the age-old mind-body problem. How can the immaterial spirit affect the material body?

"The scope of protection of freedom of belief and conscience is thus essentially determined by subjective aspects," writes the Federal Supreme Court. Now it is not easy to codify subjective truths objectively. This is made more difficult by the fact that most religious communities lay claim to the correctness and universal validity of their respective teachings. For example, the New Testament says: "You shall smite them (the unbelievers) with a sceptre of iron." In the Quran it says: "Kill them (the unbelievers) wherever you meet them" - and there are countless other quotations of this kind. Theologically untrained readers could "misinterpret" these passages and not reflexively assume the opposite of the wording as truth. Such "misinterpretations" existed at the time of the Crusaders and still exist today.

Flying spaghetti monster
"Under the protection of religious freedom are not only the traditional beliefs of the Christian occidental churches and religious communities, but all religions, regardless of their quantitative prevalence in Switzerland", it says in the literature on constitutional law. Thus, every constitutional state has the greatest problems in dealing with new religions such as the "Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster" (FSM). This movement with satirical aspects and at the same time serious humanistic concerns is in legal dispute with the state in various countries for recognition as a religion. The founder of the Russian offshoot of the FSM was sentenced to almost two years in prison. In Germany, an FSM oath was approved in 2020. The affirmation formula "ich gelobnudele" was used as the pledge.

The problem always comes to a head when subjective views lead to demands on society, for example to wear certain clothes or to observe certain holidays.

Definition of tasks and supervision
"For the state, broader funding (...) opened up the possibility of exerting greater influence on the development of these communities" (Lorenz Engi in "sui-generis" 2018, p. 284). This approach is a priori doomed to failure, as it is not possible to define religion. It would be possible to define FSM churches or freethinkers as recipients of subsidies. But that would be going in the wrong direction. The state has to act rationally, factually and objectively and not arbitrarily. Therefore, this path should be decisively rejected and instead an award procedure for necessary services should be preferred, as it is prescribed by law anyway. This is the best way to guarantee the rule of law and efficiency in awarding contracts.

Rationality is indispensable for state action, but the churches sometimes give higher weight to other factors. For example, in Mother Teresa's hospice for the dying in Calcutta: the administration of painkillers was prohibited there because, according to Mother Teresa herself, a special closeness to Jesus Christ could be experienced through suffering. Pain and suffering are therefore to be valued positively.

The state can delegate public tasks to third parties, but the supervision of these tasks is extremely important. This would be easier with a clearer definition of tasks and a legally impeccable delegation. Instead, the horse has been put from the tail by first providing a service by a non-governmental organisation that is said to be worthy of compensation hundreds or thousands of years after it was created.

Maintain religious neutrality and abolish privileges
State and church must be separated as far as possible; only in this way can the state preserve its religious neutrality and thus religious freedom. The privileges of all churches must be abolished! The subjective separates us humans, the common search for the objective unites us.