Internet Deconstructing State Church in Finland

Agnostic writes "Freethinkers of the city of Tampere, who advocate separation of state and church in Finland, created a Web site in 2003 to assist people in resigning from the church. The Web site soon became a big success in Finland. 39% of all resignations in 2004 went through the web site and 69% of all resignations in 2005. In the same process 22% more people resigned from the church in 2005 than in 2004. The most common reason cited for resigning from the church has been saving church income tax (1.3% on average)."

Comments

Why is this on /.?

[psymastr]

Is this News for nerds? I submitted a story the other day about Bill Gates' left toe being slightly bigger than his right and it got rejected. And *this* thing comes through? Come on!

Re:How is that subversive?

[Jerim]

I just want to make it clear, I am not calling those who oppose religion, crazy. They may very well have a valid viewpoint. My viewpoint is that religion has an inherent positive nature. Trying to get someone to cut their ties to that is destructive. The way I see it, there are people out there trying to actively destroy organized religion. The posts I have read on this board seem to back that up.

It isn't really about the tax or the church vs. state issue. It is the non-religious crowd wanting to destroy organized religion. I find that to be wrong. True, churches can go overboard sometimes in recruiting new members, although I have never been approached by anyone to join their church. If we want to fight overly agressive recruitment by the church, we don't do that by being overly agressive in getting people to abandon church.

I just find it wrong to get people to abandon something that makes them happy and may give them meaning in their lives, just because a group out there doesn't like it. The church may try to shove their viewpoints down everyone's throat, but so is the non-religious crowd. That isn't really a good example to set.

Re:10%-Baptists-Christian Coolition-Bush-War

[NDPTAL85]

A clump of cells is a baby? I didn't know that. Did anyone else here know that?

Re:Finnish Line

[Doc Ruby]

How Republican of you, Anonymous Republican Coward, to think that merely denying that the Republican Party is a threat to Freedom will either make it so, or even fool any of us any more.

Karl Rove, is that you? Roger Ailes? Sean Hannity? Rush Limbaugh...

Re:10%-Baptists-Christian Coolition-Bush-War

[Fordiman]

Wheee! Tangent! Someone mod this joker offtopic.

A Modding Experiment?

[caudron]

So, I wonder if I can get this post modded up by being the first person to use antidisestablishmentarianism in a slashdot thread properly and in context?

Tom Caudron
http://tom.digitalelite.com/

Re:Anti-religion

[CRCulver]

They're not being coerced to abandon religion. Everyone, no matter their religious affiliation, is a member of the Church of Finland upon birth. So all these people who are resigning? They're resigning either because they didn't have a religious affiliation to begin with, or because they don't like to be taxed just because they were born and the government decided to automatically make them members of their church. RTFA.

You, sir, know nothing about Finland and should be ashamed of speaking authoritatively on the matter when you are ignorant of it. There is no single "Church of Finland". In fact, there are two churches in Finland that the government recognizes and passes on income tax money to, the Lutheran Church and the Finnish Orthodox Church. One gets enrolled in them only if one's family is already in the church, it's not applied to all and sundry regardless of their religious affiliation. The people who are "opting out" of the church right now are indeed abandoning religion, because they are turning against their own family's decision to enter them in the rolls.

Re:I'm a hard-core atheist...

[Fordiman]

Credible religious right. Is that actually possible?

I know we don't have one in the U.S.

Not if 'credible' is a requirement...