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Re:Montreal is taxing churches (2017) by throwaway894345 on Sunday July 26, 2020 @08:53AM (#23956721)
> China aside given that it's an authoritarian state I much prefer the control the state has over the church here in Germany, because it eliminates virtually all religious sectarianism and has led to the church having adopted teaching and a curriculum that is largely in line with the basic constitutional law and secular values rather than existing outside of it.

The picture you paint of government control over religion sounds very authoritarian to me. As far as “parallel societies are bad”, what happened to “diversity is our strength”?

Re:Montreal is taxing churches (2017) by Barrin92 on Sunday July 26, 2020 @09:02AM (#23956763)
Diversity is a good thing, that's not changed. But diversity doesn't mean 'anything goes'. There's boundaries in a civil society for a reason.

Religious practice is fine but withholding a secular education from children or ditching modern medicine, or attacking the rights of women or exercising corporal punishment isn't.

I don't see how having the ability to put a stop to it is authoritarian, at least not any more than religious extremism itself is. The alternative to government exercising control over religion is having religion exercise control over government. The problem doesn't go away.

Re:Montreal is taxing churches (2017) by throwaway894345 on Sunday July 26, 2020 @09:41AM (#23956982)
> Religious practice is fine but withholding a secular education from children or ditching modern medicine, or attacking the rights of women or exercising corporal punishment isn't.

Fair enough. That’s not what I thought you meant by “keeping religious orgs in line with state secular views” or whatever. Even still, you don’t need state control over religion to achieve those ends, and indeed in the US where the state is constitutionally prohibited from interfering with religion, these things aren’t problems (at least not to any reasonable interpretations).