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The Church of England meets Star Wars


SteveThaiBinh

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"The service also included a hymn sung to the John Williams Star Wars theme."

 

What can I say?

 

 

 

 

:thumbsup:

"I tried the most potent Noise Amplification spell once upon a time. Mavellous spell. I could hear the birds speaking to one another in trees over the horizon, I could hear the rustlings as the clouds rubbed against each other in the sky. I could hear the sound a rainbow makes as it arches it's back over the world. Then a dog barked behind me and I burst my left eardrum."

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If you look at the series as a whole, yes, there's redemption and the triumph of good. It's still remarkable to see an established religion embracing something which is so 'new age' - the Force is the kind of woolly 'Oh, we believe in something but we're not quite sure what' belief that church leaders rail against.

"An electric puddle is not what I need right now." (Nina Kalenkov)

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Star Wars is a powerful story of redemption. On the other hand, it's weird to have a church celebrate a series like this. Why not celebrate the Lord of the Rings, then?

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Its for the kids.

It's an example of "The Church" "reaching out" and "getting down" with their modern audience, in an effort to be "more relevant".

 

It is also a neat way of piggy backing on the GL marketing juggernaut ... I can't wait for religious Operating Systems:

Micro$oft's Stained Windows ...

 

 

:luck:

OBSCVRVM PER OBSCVRIVS ET IGNOTVM PER IGNOTIVS

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OPVS ARTIFICEM PROBAT

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I remember the only interesting sermon our priest ever gave was after his kids dragged him to see "Return of the Jedi".

 

Basically he was talking about how the Emperor represented the temptation of the Devil and that despite his many sins, Vader got redemption at the end.

 

So SW made me listen in church for the first (and last) time in my life!

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In the last English census, enough people put Jedi down as a religion that the English government recognized it as an official religion.  I'm not kidding.

Lots of people did in fact put down Jedi as their religion, though the census-takers claim these are still useful data as it reveals the growing disenchantment with organised religion and a tendency to look for new age solutions, as well as the power of the internet to organise large practical jokes.

 

However, the UK government doesn't recognise Jedi as an official religion.

"An electric puddle is not what I need right now." (Nina Kalenkov)

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My father in law is an English citizen, and he swears it's true. Even better, I've seen the news reports myself.

 

There were enough votes that the census recognized it as an official religion. Imagine on principle if the government went out of their way to announce that they don't recognize the results of their own census as being valid, and better yet that they officially announce that they assume the answers on said census are inherently dishonest.

 

Also imagine what kind of precedent you set by saying the government can take a religion claimed by large numbers of people, and declare it to be a mockery?

 

Why not just declare Christian Science and Scientology to be jokes while we're at it?

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I don't think that just having lots of names on the census is enough to confer official status. You would need to have practicing Jedi 'priests' make a formal application for official status, I suppose. If there are such people, I'm sure we would have heard about them by now. George Lucas would probably be suing them for copyright infringement.

 

I found a news article about it here.

"An electric puddle is not what I need right now." (Nina Kalenkov)

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You are still wrong, your father in law is mistaken or pulling your leg. And i think you misunderstand how the UK govt uses census data.

 

Please forgive the tone of the post but we are just not that nerdy.

 

Look here. Its from the department that actaully handle the data and it is more up to date than the BBC article posted by steve.

 

 

A campaign on the internet claimed - wrongly - that Jedi, the belief system at the heart of the Star Wars films, would receive official government recognition as a religion if enough people quoted it on their Census forms.

 

Well if you or your father in law are saying that some people put down "jedi" as their religion in the Uk census of 2001 you would be correct.

 

However if you are saying this:

the English government recognized it as an official religion
you are incorrect.
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How is he wrong?

 

The above article seems to suggest official recognition is tenuous, as it is officially recognized on the census, but not necessarily by the government (who runs the census).

 

It's really a wishy-washy answer, but the BBC does in fact still have an article there to demonstrate it did occur.

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How is he wrong?

 

The above article seems to suggest official recognition is tenuous, as it is officially recognized on the census, but not necessarily by the government (who runs the census).

 

It's really a wishy-washy answer, but the BBC does in fact still have an article there to demonstrate it did occur.

 

No, it's not recognised as a religion, it is just a seperate code for processing the census data. Since a lot of people put it on their forms, the cencus office just created an extra statistic in order to better store the census data. It is merely an effort to reduce the number of people they'd be putting into "Other". Since "Other" has a code, is "Other" a religion? "None" has a code too, but would you call "none" a religion? Many forms that ask you for your ethnic background also have an option to the effect of "I prefer not to say". Would you then consider "I prefer not to say" to be an ethnicity?

 

The Government is not recognising that Jedi is a religion. They are recognising that a lot of people claimed it was their religion.

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