For those who love to point to Sweden and a socialist heaven on earth, it’s important to remember that all taxpayers in Sweden are required by their tax structure to support religion. Up until 2000 they even had an official state religion.
From Wikipedia:
Religion in Sweden was originally pagan, but with Christianization in the 11th century the country became Catholic. Since the Protestant Reformation in the 1530s the Church and state has been separated. However, the Lutheran Church of Sweden (Swedish: Svenska kyrkan) held the position of state church until 2000.
Today, the government a cozy relationship with religions, which are supported with tax dollars.
Since the separation of church and state in 2000, eight recognized religious denominations, in addition to the Church of Sweden, raise revenues through member-contributions made through the national tax system. All recognized denominations are entitled to direct government financial support, contributions made through the national tax system, or a mix of both. The state does not favor the Church of Sweden at the expense of other religious groups in any noticeable way. Since the population is predominantly Christian, certain Christian religious holy days are national holidays, but this does not appear to affect other religious groups negatively. School students from minority religious backgrounds are entitled to take relevant religious holidays.[2]
No recognition or registration is required to carry out religious activity. Religious groups that want to receive government aid may apply for it. The Government considers the number of members in the group and its length of establishment, but applies no specific criteria.[2]
Religious education covering all major world religions is compulsory in public schools. Parents may send their children to independent religious schools, all of which receive government subsidies, provided they adhere to government guidelines on core academic curriculum.[2]
This is interesting to note because the Nazis, which were also socialists, also had a cozy relationship with religion, a relationship that survives to this day due to Germany’s support of religion with tax money.
In the years leading up to Hitler’s assumption of total state power, the most serious potential opposition to his mad solutions were those within Germany’s Catholic and Lutheran churches who objected to the excesses of National Socialism.
Historically, churches and religions have, more than once, played the role of society’s only check against political oppression. Accordingly, governments have often harbored hostility towards them—particularly since they postulate a higher authority than the state.
But Hitler circumvented that problem in 1933. In return for maintaining state support for the churches, Hitler secured an agreement that the churches would not oppose the National Socialists’ rise to power.
Practically overnight, both churches developed active participation in advancing the goals of the Nazis. The Lutheran press began to talk of the Jews as the “natural enemies” of Christianity. The Catholic Church even agreed to an oath of fealty to be taken by all bishops, agreeing “Before God and on the Holy Gospels I swear and promise—as becomes a bishop—loyalty to the German Reich and to the state … and to cause the clergy of my diocese to honor it.”
[…]
The government, to this day, forces all German citizens to pay for the costs, payroll, construction fees and other expenses of churches selected for preferential treatment—the Catholic and Lutheran churches.
If he or she has not resigned his church membership, every German citizen pays a “church tax” to fund the operations of the Lutheran and Catholic churches, a system which sets Germany apart from all other nations. More than 17 billion DM—approximately $10 billion U.S.—are collected in church tax revenues annually and handed over directly to the churches.
Yet the income of these churches is supplemented by yet another 16.3 billion DM obtained from public funds collected by the government from all citizens, whether they belong to a church or not.
Individuals who forward Catholic and Lutheran aims in public institutions are also subsidized by the German government, such as religion teachers in schools, professors of theology, bishops and ministers in the army.
In addition to collecting their church tax, the government also subsidizes the churches in matters of property maintenance, renovation and construction to such a degree that these churches have amassed great material wealth. The total property covered by these churches is estimated at 5,000 square kilometers, which is considerably larger than one entire German state. And the value of this property is estimated in excess of 400 billion DM.
It is important to keep this in mind when considering the recent events in Burma (MyanMar) where the military government has violently suppressed demonstrations by Buddhist monks. Most of the monks have disappeared.
The Roman Empire declared Catholic Christianity the official religion of the Empire after many years of trying to suppress the religion.
In addition, the Bush administration has for years found every way possible to funnel tax dollars into faith-based social programs. To ignore the facts of history is to facilitate its repetition.
I have for years written of the similarities between religion and statism. I even wrote a book about it. The existence in the past and present of this type of tax-supported relationship between church and state illustrates how forced public financing of churches is a way to bring religion under government control so that churches can be used as an additional tool to control the population, rather than having to deal with resistance from religion.
The same rule applies to the marriage of government with science and health care. Once dependent on tax dollars and regulated by the government, both science and health care become political allies of the state. At that point, both science and health care are political tools for controlling the population to guarantee their dependence and their allegiance to the state.