So, religion is a pretty big thing. And there’s a whole bunch of them.
From Christianity to Islam and from Judaism to the one with the flying spaghetti monster
But that’s a whole other video.
In the 2001, what would you guess was English and Welsh
fourth biggest religion? For example what if I told you it had something to do with these guys?
(sick Jedi lightsaber nosies)
The super thrilling read of the Census Act of 1920
says that you can be fined up to £1000, or the price of around 4,761 McNuggets,
for refusing to answer a question in the UK census.
A census is a system of recording information and data about any given population.
They’re normally conducted with postal slips and in the UK they happen every 10 years.
This allows the government to ask all sorts of questions that might not go down too well
at a dinner party such as questions about sex, age or
whether you were long-term sick or disabled last week. As if you might suddenly not be this week.
One controversial question asks participants to identify their religion.
And in the England and Wales 2001 census the results looked like this.
Christianity lead the pack with 70% Then came the non-religious or atheist people
with 16% In third was muslim with 3.1%
Closely followed by Hindu with 2.1% And coming in as the fourth biggest religious
group if you minus the no religious people is...
Jedi with 0.7%
390,127 people chose to assign their religion as Jedi as a protest against the government
forcibly collecting information about the population’s religion.
Even though technically they amended the law a year earlier to mean the fine couldn’t
be imposed for not answering the religious question.
But who cares about a little technicality when you can potentially spoil an important piece of
history with a nerdy joke. Although, John Pullinger, Director of Reporting
and Analysis for the Census, noted that many of the people may have only
completed the Census to mark their religion as Jedi,
so this joke helped to improve the quality of the Census in other areas.
Unfortunately for the fight against the dark side, the numbers of Jedi declined by over
half in the following decade making it only the 7th largest religion in the UK
The Office for National Statistics didn’t
even refer to Jedi in its assessment of religion in 2011,
but in 2001 released the statistic in a press release tastefully titled
"390,000 Jedi there are".
And, although England and Wales might have the highest population of Jedi they’re not
the only countries that are in touch with the force.
Here’s a list of countries with census data to support Jediism ranked by number of Jedi Knights.
The most interesting out of these are New Zealand and Scotland.
Ahhhhhh, New Zealand the land of kiwis, kiwis, kiwis.
This is where the phenomena is thought to have started with 53,000 Jedi identifying
individuals. Why is that notable?
Because that is 1.5% of the population. And why is that noteable?
Because it made it New Zealand’s 2nd biggest religion
And why is that noteable?
Because it’s a religion entirely derived from a film.
Ahhhhhh Scotland the land of Scotch Eggs, Scotch Tape and Hopscotch?
If you’re not from the UK you might be wondering: “Aren’t Scotland, England, Wales and Northern
Ireland all part of the UK? Wouldn’t it make sense for them to do one
census all together?” But what you might not know is that we actually
for some reason all hate eachother! So Scotland conducts its own census and they
have a question that goes along the lines of “(in scottish accent) What is your religious
upbringing?” Where 15 people declared it was “The Darkside”
but when asked about their current religion only 14 people entered “Sith”.
So there's a Scott out there somewhere who escaped the Dark Side. Every cloud has a silve rlining.
Or as they say in Scotland… Ummm, I actually
don’t know what they say but if my childhood has taught me anything
it probably has something to do with “(scottish accent) Donkey”.
So if you’re ever wondering who that person being religiously discriminated against for
wearing a hood is, now you know there are thousands of people
who like Star Wars enough say it is their religion. I bet they hated The Last Jedi.
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