Jedi census phenomenon

The Jedi census phenomenon is a grassroots movement that was initiated in 2001 for residents of a number of English-speaking countries, urging them to record their religion as "Jedi" or "Jedi Knight" (after the quasi-religious order of Jedi Knights in the fictional Star Wars universe) on the national census.

In Australia more than 70,000 people (0.37%) declared themselves members of the Jedi order in the 2001 census. The Australian Bureau of Statistics issued an official press release 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 June 17 to separately identify the number of Jedi-related responses". 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.

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 the 21st of October, 2001.

The 2006 census recorded 58,053 Jedi. In the 2011 census, the numbers listing their faith as Jedi had picked up from the 2006 census to 65,000.

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. 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.

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