Jedi census phenomenon

While giving false information on a census form is often illegal, any religion question is sometimes an exception; in any case, prosecutions are rare.

[1] The email asserted that any religion passing a minimum threshold (given variously as 8,000[2] or 10,000[3]) would be entitled to some form of official recognition.

[5] The Australian Bureau of Statistics issued an official press release[6] 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.

[5] 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.

[7] 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 21 October 2001.

[17] The Australian Bureau of Statistics did not publish the number of people claiming Jedi as their religion in its reports on the 2016 census.

This fact was referenced by the prime minister's office as a rationale for making the 40-page long census form voluntary.

The percentages of religious affiliations were: It was confirmed prior to the census that citizens were not liable for a fine in relation to question 10 (on religion).

During a subsequent committee debate on the bill, the Conservative Member of Parliament for Beaconsfield, Dominic Grieve, proposed as "a bit of a joke" to exclude Jedi Knights from the protection of the proposed act, along with Satanists and proponents of animal sacrifice, illustrating the difficulty of defining religious belief in legislation.

[42] Similarly, in April 2006, Edward Leigh, the Conservative Member of Parliament for Gainsborough, asked whether he would be allowed to set up a Jedi knights faith school during a Committee debate on the Education and Inspections Bill.

[43] On 16 November 2006, two Jedi delivered a protest letter to UN officials in recognition of the International Day for Tolerance.

[47] The 2021 United Kingdom census recorded a dramatic decline in the number of Jedi Knights with fewer than 1,600 followers in England and Wales.