[thechat] Census Officials Blunt Jedi Campaign
Hugh Blair
hblair at hotfootmail.com
Sun Oct 14 08:37:27 CDT 2001
Updated: Fri, Oct 12 8:05 AM EDT
LONDON (Reuters) - The Force will not be with you despite
many Star Wars fans registering their religion as Jedi
Knight in this year's British census.
Officials said on Thursday there was "absolutely no
possibility" of Jedi appearing as a choice of religion
on future census forms after officials created a code for
Jedi to help them analyze responses to the 2001 population
survey.
"Because a certain number of people were likely to have put
Jedi Knight as a response to that question, it has been
included as a code simply to help speed the forms through
the machine-readers," a spokesman for the Office of National
Statistics told Reuters.
"All that will happen is that it will be recorded as 'Other',"
he said. "It certainly does not mean it is recognized as a
religion."
An email campaign had circulated before the national survey
in April aiming to persuade up to 10,000 people to enter
themselves as followers of the science-fiction films'
mystical faith -- with its mantra "May the Force be with you."
The spokesman said it was up to Parliament to decide on what
questions appeared in the next census, due in 2011.
"There is absolutely no possibility of it appearing on the
census form," he said.
"We will not be using taxpayers' money to publish how many
people put 'Jedi' in," he added.
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