So someones gone through the census results and compiled the list of religious affiliations in the UK:
Leave aside the blithering idiots in the various new age and made up cults at the bottom. The most interesting number is that for Jedi Knight. No, there are not really 390,127 people who follow that (non-existent by the way) religion, whatever one might think of the sad state of civilisation we have not quite sunk to the point where that number of people seek spiritual succour from a Hollywood movie series. Political views perhaps, as Tubby Reifenstahl’s ouevre shows us, but religion no.
It’s actually a reflection of that famous quirk of our island race, the British sense of humour, for as noted:
A number of students, encouraged by a tongue-in-cheek internet
campaign, also registered themselves as Jedi Knights, after the
fictional characters in the Star Wars films.
Twit the authorities? Make up things on Government forms? A robust and Anglo-Saxon response to bureaucratic prying into our innermost thoughts? Perhaps, even, not taking government itself seriously? All true in part I think but the most important factor was "Hey, Andy, look, I put down Jedi Knight"…chortle chortle.
As the census is used to plan Governement services and budgets for the decade ahead there may be those who dream of snagging a grant or two for Jedi Knight based religious groups. Doomed to failure I fear as, contrary to expectations, British bureaucrats also share that sense of humour as this rejection of a patent application shows.
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