The Church Tax in Germany. Exploitation or Bad Advertisement.

2019 marked the year with the highest church tax revenues since its early beginnings in the 19th century. However, the amount of people leaving the church has risen as well, especially when it comes to young people entering the workforce and being confronted with the church tax for the first time. In the German society of today, the question of how timely the concept of the church tax is comes up again and again, resulting in debates about its abolishment being ever-present. But why does the church tax have such a bad reputation in society? This research question is answered through highlighting various layers of society. First, the overall acceptance of the church in 2020 is compared to the status quo in 1950, the year after its implementation of how the tax is understood today. Quantifiable data, such as statistics, is used to compare the membership, church attendance and church wedding figures, as well as the welfare institution usage. Second, within society the differences of opinion and attitudes between general public and clergy are explored to understand how belonging to either side plays a role. For the purpose of this research, narrative interviews were conducted and analysed through Critical Discourse Analysis. Lastly, looking into the general public side specifically the information currently provided to the public through internet articles is examined. Through text analysis, the tone of the articles and the amount of background information provided was evaluated. This research concludes that societal acceptance has decreased over time with only the welfare institutions run by the church advancing their reputation over time, but not the church nor the church tax themselves. The belonging to either clergy or general public informs about the source of education about the topic, the opinion formation process the person went through, as well as the probable vastness of the background knowledge. The information currently available to the public depends heavily on which source type is consulted with the private newspapers leaning more critical in tone and providing less background information, the Christian press differing depending on the denomination and only the governmental sources providing ample neutral material for a person to have enough background to form their own opinion. Therefore, the bad reputation of the church tax in the German society is influenced by the decreased contact of the individual with the church, caused by the lack of knowledge surrounding the topic, and fuelled by the negative press and the fact that clarification of the topic needs to be specifically sought out.