Unless you consider yourself a member of your home country's state church, or a Catholic, or a Lutheran, or think that's your a member of religion due to an accident of birth, then you're not obliged to pay church tax. I don't see anything underhand or devious about this. It's just a matter of understanding how the system works.

For example - before we arrived in CH, I was asked by my new employer if I was in receipt of child benefit. To which I answered yes, because, as a UK citizen, living in the UK, we got child benefit. It wasn't until later that I found out that what was meant was whether I was already getting child benefit from another source (i.e. via my wife's employer) in Switzerland. It was two years before the mistake was noticed and rectified, with a nice lot of back child benefit. Nothing devious about it. Simply a misunderstanding on how Swiss child benefit works, and lack of explanation from my employer.

I really don't understand why people get so worked up about it. It's a voluntary tax.