"Jedi" Religion Most Popular Alternative Faith In England 262
Posted
by
samzenpus
from the believe-or-believe-not dept.
from the believe-or-believe-not dept.
Census numbers show that 176,632 people in England and Wales ask themselves, "What would Yoda do?" Although the number of people who list their religion as "Jedi" has dropped by more than 50% in the past 10 years, It remains the most popular "alternative" faith in England. From the article: "The new figures reveal that the lightsabre-wielding disciples are only behind Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Sikhism, Judaism and Buddhism in the popularity stakes, excluding non-religious people and people who did not answer."
Re:Survey with "Jedi" option available (Score:5, Interesting)
There was a write-in option ("other, please specify"), and this was the most popular write-in.
Far more interesting to me is that Christianity declined to less than 60% of the population, while No Religion almost doubled to get around 25%. That's a massive attitude shift for a 10 year period. Really brings into question why we have a state religion- although I suspect the figures will have to sink even lower before we can use census data as an excuse to separate church and state.
Re:Survey with "Jedi" option available (Score:4, Interesting)
I put myself down as Jedi in the 2000 census. However, I won't do it again, because the pesky Government looks at the stats and says "X% of people in the UK are religious, so we can open more faith schools". The fact that those faith schools cater for a minority of the total population is neither here nor there, they do it anyway.
I'll put "Jedi" on trivial things (ie. not many), but not on the census anymore.