Around the time of the last census was conducted in the United Kingdom there was a popular Internet campaign that said that if over a certain amount of people stated their religion was Jedi, that it would become an officially recognized religion. Because of this, thousands of people then proceeded to state that their religion was indeed Jedi, and it is now a genuine religion in the United Kingdom and throughout the commonwealth. Distinguishing as to whether people said they were Jedi because they really were, or were either protesting or joking is more difficult to ascertain however.

Firstly of the millions of star wars fans there are out there, there is in fact a small minority that consider themselves to actually be Jedi, and have established churches to this effect. These are of course the minority of the thousands of people who called themselves Jedi in the census, but they do exist. To most people however these are just fans of the movies that have taken their stereotypical sci-fi fan geek image to a whole new level, and shouldn’t be taken too seriously.

There were of course a huge number of people who would have called themselves Jedi simply for the novelty of helping to make it a recognised religion. Of course this was probably motivated mostly by the fact that they might have found this amusing, not that they were pointing out a flaw with the census system. This also goes to show that many people are fans of star wars and that they wanted to see if the campaign was actually true. Which we know now it was, leading to yet another official religion that surely no right-minded person would worship.

Undoubtedly there were those who might have called themselves Jedi for more political reasons as well. Firstly there are those who wanted to point out that the system for acknowledging a religion as genuine is ridiculous. Seemingly all that was needed was for enough people to write it down on a consensus form, not matter how ridiculous. The fact that the Jedi religion was officially recognized showing that the government seemingly missed the message and ignored the error of their processes.

The second group who might have put Jedi as a political statement would have been people who were protesting the fact that the government wants to know everything about someone on the census forms. In years past census forms were just concerned with ethnicity and population spread, but more recently they have been getting more and more detailed. To the point that some people feel that what they are being demanded to provide is an infringement of their human rights.

The fact that a religion has been started on the basis of the writings of a science fiction writer isn’t something entirely uncommon these days however. The recent and well-publicised success of the church of Scientology is testament to this, and they certainly take themselves seriously. To the extent that they readily tend to sue anyone who insults their supposed beliefs or mentions that the religion is based on an alien story. Which came from a man who wrote fictional stories such as these for a living. So perhaps in the bigger picture, the emergence as Jedi as a religion isn’t really that strange after all

What the fact that people are willing to claim that they are Jedi really shows is that religion is no longer held in very high esteem like it once was. Only 30 or so years ago people would generally have always put Christian as their religion, even if they weren’t actually religious and never went to church. More recently though religion has become less and less important in many peoples lives, to the point that people are no longer concerned about keeping up the appearance of being religious.

The United Kingdom was one of the first countries to officially accept Jedi as a religion, and seemingly it was the start of a process. Now many different countries have accepted Jedi as a genuine religion, despite the fact that it plainly isn’t. Working with figures alone Jedi is one of the fastest growing religions in the world. This despite the fact that the actual numbers of people who would seriously consider themselves Jedi is tiny.