Religion and spirituality Jedi census phenomenon

The Jedi census phenomenon is a grassroots movement that was initiated, around 2001, for citizens of a number of English-speaking countries, urging them to record their religion on national censuses as “Jedi” or “Jedi Knight” after the quasi-religious order of Jedi Knights in the fictional Star Wars universe. It is believed the majority of self-reported Jedi claimed the religion for their own amusement, to poke fun at the government, or as a protest against the inclusion of the religion question on the census form. 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 countries. Jedi was assigned its own code in the United Kingdom for census processing. Officials from the Office for National Statistics in the UK 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. In 2001, over 53,000 people listed themselves as Jedi in New Zealand’s 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. New Zealand treated Jedi responses as “Answer understood, but will not be counted.” If Jedi were counted it would have been the second largest religion in the country. John Pullinger, Director of Reporting and Analysis for the Census in the United Kingdom, 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.