Germany is the case worth knowing because it makes the arrangement visible. Registered Catholics and Protestants pay a church tax, Kirchensteuer, of eight or nine percent of their income tax, collected by the state tax office and passed to the churches, giving them budgets in the billions and making them among the largest employers in the country. Leaving is a bureaucratic act — you file a declaration at a registry office and pay a fee — and a few hundred thousand people do it annually, with the numbers spiking after abuse revelations. Elsewhere the model is the plate and the standing order, supplemented by endowments and, in the American case, by the tax-exempt status of churches and the deductibility of donations. The Church of England lives largely off historic endowments managed by the Church Commissioners plus parish giving. Where the money comes from shapes what clergy can say: a state-funded church is insulated from its congregation, and a donation-funded one is not.