Emergent spiritual forms are just the repetition of previous ways of making sense of the world
- Beth Singler
In the 2001 Census, 0.7% of the UK population - some 390,127 - declared themselves Jedi: the mystical religion from legendary film franchise Star Wars. This was a result of a viral online campaign to ridicule, or ‘troll’, the Census, which had dared to ask the religion question for the first time in living memory.
Ten years later, the digital gag apparently on the wane, less than half that number self-selected as a Jedi - although the 2011 number was not insignificant. There are allegedly 176, 632 Jedis in the UK.
The Office of National Statistics coded Jedi under ‘no religion’, seeing it simply as an atheistic prank. For most, this is likely accurate. But a minority do, in fact, practise Jediism - a spiritual and religious philosophy that, while looking to Star Wars as the primary source text, is developing in its own right through online communities of believers.
Beth Singler, a researcher at the University’s Faculty of Divinity, is a digital anthropologist studying new religious movements. She says that social media and digital networks allow practicing Jedis to formulate their observances, doctrine and ritual beyond the parameters originally laid out by Star Wars creator George Lucas, filling in gaps and negotiating the directions of this emerging faith - a faith in which they find meaning.
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Image:Lightsaber lessons
Credit: JF Sebastian
Reproduced courtesy of the University of Cambridge
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