Impact
Australia
In Australia, more than 70,000 people (0.37%) declared themselves members of the Jedi order in the 2001 census. [5] The Australian Bureau of Statistics issued an official press release [6] in response to media interest on the subject. The ABS announced that any answers that were Jedi-related in the religion question were to be classified as "not defined" and stressed the social impact of making misleading or false statements on the census. An ABS spokesperson said that "further analysis of census responses has been undertaken since the release of census data on 17 June to separately identify the number of Jedi-related responses". [5] It is believed that there is no numerical value that determines a religion per definition of the ABS, but there would need to be a belief system or philosophy as well as some form of institutional or organisational structure in place. [7]
The push for Australians to declare themselves as members of the Jedi order was one of the first examples of a concept going "viral" on the internet in Australia. The website which was set up to promote the concept was visited over 100,000 times in a five-week period and was first archived by the Wayback Machine on 21 October 2001. [8]
The 2006 census recorded 58,053 Jedi. [9] [10] In the 2011 census, the numbers listing their faith as Jedi had picked up from the 2006 census to 65,000. [11] [12] Close to 48,000 people reported themselves as Jedi for the 2016 census. [13]
The Jedi Census phenomenon attracted the attention of sociologist of religion Adam Possamai who discusses it in his book Religion and Popular Culture: A Hyper-Real Testament. [14] Possamai's study placed Jediism in the context of a specific methodological classification ('hyper-real religions') and attempted to demonstrate that hostility existed towards new religions in Australia. [15]
In the lead-up to the 2006 census, there were reports that writing Jedi on the 2006 census could lead to a fine for providing "false or misleading" information. This is despite previous admissions by the ABS that they were "fairly relaxed" about the issue in 2001 and that nobody had been prosecuted in at least 15 years. [16]
In the lead-up to the 2016 census, there was a push from atheists warning not to use Jedi, imploring that it could be counted as being religious. [17] The Australian Bureau of Statistics did not publish the number of people claiming Jedi as their religion in its reports on the 2016 census. [18]
Canada
In the 2001 census, 21,000 Canadians put down their religion as Jedi Knight. This fact was referenced by the prime minister's office as a rationale for making the 40-page long census form voluntary. In the 2011 National Household Survey, the number fell to 9,000. [19]
Croatia
In the 2011 census, 303 Croats put Jedi as their religion. [20]
Czech Republic
The 2011 census preliminarily recorded 15,070 people answering the voluntary question on religion as belonging to the Jedi religion, described by the Czech Statistics Office as "the moral values of the Jedi knights". The office noted that this is an international phenomenon. As the 2011 census form did not list religions, these having to be filled out, the total number of Jedi is not artificially boosted by those who were not aware of the phenomenon prior to filling out the census form. On the other hand, many people encouraged others in discussions and then media to fill the Jedi religion prior 2011 census (as a form of protest against range, overall cost and obligatory filling of the census), which is probably the cause. [21] The highest number of Jedi were recorded to live in Prague. [22]
In 2021 the number of people reported belonging to Jedi increased to over 21,000. (516 people reported being Sith)
Ireland
In a May 2012 review of the 2011 census, the Dáil Public Accounts Committee asked the Central Statistics Office about the reliability of self-reported answers, instancing people listing Jedi as their religion. The response was "We could probably tell you the number of people who have declared themselves as such, but we don't publish it". [23] [24] [25] The 2016 census results list all religions receiving more than 30 responses, including 2,050 (0.085%) under "Jedi Knight". [26] [27] As of the 2022 census, there are 1,800 Jedi knights, a decrease of 250 since the 2016 census results. [28]
Montenegro
In the 2011 census in Montenegro, a group of young men declared themselves as "Jedi" on the ethnicity question, as they believe that ethnicity should not be an issue today. [29]
New Zealand
Over 53,000 people listed themselves as Jedi in New Zealand's 2001 census. New Zealand had the highest per capita population of reported Jedi in the world that year, with 1.5% marking "Jedi" as their religion. [30] Statistics New Zealand treated Jedi responses as "Answer understood, but will not be counted".
There was a fall in the number of New Zealand Jedi five years later, with some 20,000 people giving this as their religion in the 2006 census.
The 2011 census was postposed to 2013 due to an earthquake in Christchurch and the number of Jedi in New Zealand fell to 19,089. In the 2018 census, the figure increased again, to 20,409 (0.43% total responses). [31]
Serbia
In the 2011 census in Serbia, 640 people identified as Jedi. [32]
United Kingdom
England and Wales
In England and Wales, 390,127 people (almost 0.8%) stated their religion as Jedi on their 2001 Census forms, surpassing Sikhism, Judaism, and Buddhism, and making it the fourth largest reported religion in the country. [33] In the 2001 census, 2.6% of the population of Brighton claimed to be Jedi. The percentages of religious affiliations were:
It was confirmed prior to the census that citizens were not liable for a fine in relation to question 10 (on religion). [34] This was based on section 1(2) of the Census (Amendment) Act 2000, [35] which amended section 8 of the Census Act 2000 to state that "no person shall be liable to a penalty under subsection (1) for refusing or neglecting to state any particulars in respect of religion". The change in the law was implemented by The Census (Amendment) Order 2000 [36] and The Census (Amendment) Regulations 2000. [37]
Jedi Knight was assigned its own code in England and Wales for census processing, numbered 896. [38] Officials from the Office for National Statistics pointed out that this merely means that it has been registered as a common answer to the "religion" question and that this does not confer on it the status of official recognition. [39] John Pullinger, Director of Reporting and Analysis for the Census, noted that many people who would otherwise not have completed a Census form did so solely to record themselves as Jedi, so this joke helped to improve the quality of the Census. The Office for National Statistics revealed the total figure in a press release entitled "390,000 Jedi there are". [40]
In June 2005, Jamie Reed, newly elected Labour Member of Parliament (MP) for Copeland in Cumbria, declared himself to be the first Jedi Member of Parliament during his maiden speech. [41] The statement, made in the context of an ongoing debate regarding the Incitement to Religious Hatred Bill, was confirmed by Reed's office to be a joke instead of a serious statement of faith. During a subsequent committee debate on the bill, the Conservative Member of Parliament for Beaconsfield, Dominic Grieve, proposed as "a bit of a joke" to exclude Jedi Knights from the protection of the proposed act, along with Satanists and proponents of animal sacrifice, illustrating the difficulty of defining religious belief in legislation. [42] Similarly, in April 2006, Edward Leigh, the Conservative Member of Parliament for Gainsborough, asked whether he would be allowed to set up a Jedi knights faith school during a Committee debate on the Education and Inspections Bill. [43]
On 16 November 2006, two Jedi delivered a protest letter to UN officials in recognition of the International Day for Tolerance. The letter, written by Simon Cohen of the Global Tolerance public relations agency, [44] requested that it be renamed the "UN Interstellar Day of Tolerance" and cited the 2001 Census showing 390,000 Jedi in England and Wales.
According to 2011 census figures, the number of Jedi had fallen to 176,632, placing it in seventh place, having been overtaken by Judaism and Buddhism, but still comfortably outnumbering any other alternative or mock religions. [45] The magazine Metal Hammer also encouraged readers to mark "Heavy Metal" as their religion, leading to over 6,000 responses. [46]
In 2021, Humanists UK asked nonreligious people not to protest the census religion question by writing in "Jedi" but rather to select "no religion" instead. [47] The 2021 United Kingdom census recorded a dramatic decline in the number of Jedi Knights with fewer than 1,600 followers in England and Wales. The 2011 census recorded over 176,000 followers and the 2001 census recorded over 390,000 followers. [48]
Scotland
In Scotland, 14,052 people stated that Jedi was their current religion (14,014 "Jedi", 24 "Jedi Order" and 14 "Sith") and 2,733 stated that it was their religion of upbringing (2,682 "Jedi", 36 "Jedi Order" and 15 "The Dark Side") in the 2001 census. [49] The proportion of people stating their religion as Jedi in Scotland was lower than that in England and Wales, at 0.277%. [50]
In April 2009, it became known that eight police officers serving with Scotland's largest police force, Strathclyde, listed their official religion as Jedi in voluntary diversity forms. The details were obtained in a Freedom of Information request by Jane's Police Review . [51]
The demographics of New Zealand encompass the gender, ethnic, religious, geographic, and economic backgrounds of the 5.3 million people living in New Zealand. New Zealanders predominantly live in urban areas on the North Island. The five largest cities are Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch, Hamilton, and Tauranga. Few New Zealanders live on New Zealand's smaller islands. Waiheke Island is easily the most populated smaller island with 9,420 residents, while Great Barrier Island, the Chatham and Pitt Islands, and Stewart Island each have populations below 1,000. New Zealand is part of a realm and most people born in the realm's external territories of Tokelau, the Ross Dependency, the Cook Islands and Niue are entitled to New Zealand passports.
The population of the United Kingdom was estimated at 67,596,281 in 2022. It is the 21st most populated country in the world and has a population density of 279 people per square kilometre, with England having significantly greater density than Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland. Almost a third of the population lives in south east England, which is predominantly urban and suburban, with 8,866,180 people in the capital city, London, whose population density was 5,640 inhabitants per square kilometre (14,600/sq mi) in 2022.
A nationwide census, known as Census 2001, was conducted in the United Kingdom on Sunday, 29 April 2001. This was the 20th UK census and recorded a resident population of 58,789,194.
Religion in the United Kingdom is mainly expressed in Christianity, which dominated the land since the 7th century. Results of the 2021 Census for England and Wales showed that Christianity is the largest religion, followed by the non-religious, Islam, Hinduism, Sikhism, Judaism, Buddhism, and Taoism. Among Christians, Anglicanism is the most common denomination, followed by Catholicism, Presbyterianism, Methodism, Unitarianism, and Baptism.
The Baháʼí Faith formed in the late 19th century in the Middle East, later gaining converts in India, East Africa, and the Western world. Traveling promoters of the religion played a significant role in spreading the religion into most countries and territories during the second half of the 20th century, mostly seeded out of North America by the planned migration of individuals. The Baháʼí Faith was recognized as having a widespread international membership by the 1980s. One author has asserted that Baháʼí Faith is the second-most geographically widespread religion after Christianity.
Coincident full censuses have taken place in the different jurisdictions of the United Kingdom every ten years since 1801, with the exceptions of 1941, Ireland in 1921/Northern Ireland in 1931, and Scotland in 2021. In addition to providing detailed information about national demographics, the results of the census play an important part in the calculation of resource allocation to regional and local service providers by the UK government.
Religion in Australia is diverse. In the 2021 national census, 43.9% of Australians identified with Christianity and 38.9% declared "no religion".
The Atheist Foundation of Australia (AFA) was established in South Australia in 1970, when The Rationalist Association of South Australia decided upon a name change to better declare its basic philosophy, namely atheism.
The Census (Amendment) Act 2000 and Census (Amendment) (Scotland) Act 2000 are acts of the Parliaments of the United Kingdom and Scotland, respectively. They introduced a question on the religion of respondents to the censuses of Great Britain.
A Practical Reference to Religious and Spiritual Diversity for Operational Police is a publication of the Australia New Zealand Policing Advisory Agency.
Religion in New Zealand encompasses a wide range of groups and beliefs. New Zealand has no state religion and freedom of religion has been protected since the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi.
The predominant religion in the Republic of Ireland is Christianity, with the largest denomination being the Catholic Church. The Constitution of Ireland says that the state may not endorse any particular religion and guarantees freedom of religion.
Atheism, agnosticism, scepticism, freethought, secular humanism or general irreligion are increasing in Australia. Post-war Australia has become a highly secularised country. Religion does not play a major role in the lives of much of the population.
Jediism is a philosophy, and, in some cases, a tongue-in-cheek joke religion, mainly based on the depiction of the Jedi characters in Star Wars media. Jediism attracted public attention in 2001 when a number of people recorded their religion as "Jedi" on national censuses.
A census of the population of the United Kingdom is taken every ten years. The 2011 census was held in all counties of the UK on 27 March 2011. It was the first UK census which could be completed online via the Internet. The Office for National Statistics (ONS) is responsible for the census in England and Wales, the General Register Office for Scotland (GROS) is responsible for the census in Scotland, and the Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency (NISRA) is responsible for the census in Northern Ireland.
The 2011 Census of the Czech Republic was conducted by the Czech Statistical Office (CZSO) in 2011 in accordance with Regulation no. 763/2008 of the European Parliament and Council which states that censuses must be carried out in all Member States once every ten years starting in 2011 with more frequent censuses decided by the European Commission.
The 2021 United Kingdom census is the 23rd official census of the United Kingdom. Beginning in 1801, they have been recorded every 10 years. The 2021 censuses of England, Wales, and Northern Ireland took place on 21 March 2021, and the census of Scotland took place 364 days later on 20 March 2022. The censuses were administered by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) in England and Wales, by the Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency (NISRA) in Northern Ireland, and by the National Records of Scotland in Scotland. These were the first British censuses for which most of the data was gathered online. Two of them went ahead despite the COVID-19 pandemic, in part because the information obtained would assist government and public understanding of the pandemic's impact. The census-taking in Scotland was postponed, and took place in 2022 because of the pandemic.
The 2013 New Zealand census was the thirty-third national census. "The National Census Day" used for the census was on Tuesday, 5 March 2013. The population of New Zealand was counted as 4,242,048 – an increase of 214,101 or 5.3% over the 2006 census.
The 2016 Australian census was the 17th national population census held in Australia. The census was officially conducted with effect on Tuesday, 9 August 2016. The total population of the Commonwealth of Australia was counted as 23,401,892 – an increase of 8.8 per cent or 1,894,175 people over the 2011 census. Norfolk Island joined the census for the first time in 2016, adding 1,748 to the population.
Irreligion in Wales or non-religion in Wales has become the most dominant religious identity in Wales in the 21st century, following rapid social secularisation in Welsh society.
