Jedi census phenomenon

In some national population censuses which include a question on religious identity, media report numerous respondents giving their religion as Jedi (or "Jedi Knight") after the quasi-religious order in the Star Wars science fiction franchise. While a few individuals claim to practise Jediism sincerely, the answer can be also a joke or a protest against the religion question. While giving false information on a census form is often illegal, any religion question is sometimes an exception, and in any case prosecutions are rare. The Jedi census phenomenon sprang from a 2001 urban legend spread by chain email prior to the separate censuses that year in New Zealand, Australia, and the United Kingdom. The email asserted that any religion passing a minimum threshold (given variously as 8,000 or 10,000) would be entitled to some form of official recognition. Other reasons proffered include "do it because you love Star Wars" or "just to annoy people". The 2001 censuses recorded Jedi as 1.5% of New Zealanders, 0.37% of Australians, and 0.8% of Britons. Later censuses there and elsewhere have recorded smaller proportions. In some cases any "Jedi" responses are collected under "other" rather than reported separately. 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 17 June 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.