Халық санағындағы «Джедай» дінінің құбылысы

People reporting their religion was Jedi
the 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 also be a joke or protest against the religion question. While giving false information on a census form is often illegal, any religion question is sometimes an exception; 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. 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". 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. The 2006 census recorded 58,053 Jedi. In the 2011 census, the numbers listing their faith as Jedi had picked up from the 2006 census to 65,000. Close to 48,000 people reported themselves as Jedi for the 2016 census. The Jedi Census phenomenon attracted the attention of sociologist of religion Adam Possamai who discusses it in his book Religion and Popular Culture: A Hyper Real Testament. Possamai's study placed Jediism in the context of a specific methodological classification ('hyper real religions') and attempted to demonstrate that hostility existed towards new religions in Australia. In the lead up to the 2006 census, there were reports that writing Jedi on the 2006 census could lead to a fine for providing "false or misleading" information. This is despite previous admissions by the ABS that they were "fairly relaxed" about the issue in 2001 and that nobody had been prosecuted in at least 15 years. In the lead up to the 2016 census, there was a push from atheists warning not to use Jedi, imploring that it could be counted as being religious. The Australian Bureau of Statistics did not publish the number of people claiming Jedi as their religion in its reports on the 2016 census.

In the 2001 census, 21,000 Canadians put down their religion as Jedi Knight. This fact was referenced by the prime minister's office as a rationale for making the 40 page long census form voluntary. In the 2011 National Household Survey, the number fell to 9,000.

In the 2011 census, 303 Croats put Jedi as their religion.

The 2011 census preliminarily recorded 15,070 people answering the voluntary question on religion as belonging to the Jedi religion, described by the Czech Statistics Office as "the moral values of the Jedi knights". The office noted that this is an international phenomenon. As the 2011 census form did not list religions, these having to be filled out, the total number of Jedi is not artificially boosted by those who were not aware of the phenomenon prior to filling out the census form. On the other hand, many people encouraged others in discussions and then media to fill the Jedi religion prior 2011 census (as a form of protest against range, overall cost and obligatory filling of the census), which is probably the cause. The highest number of Jedi were recorded to live in Prague. In 2021 the number of people reported belonging to Jedi increased to over 21,000. (516 people reported being Sith)

In a May 2012 review of the 2011 census, the Dáil Public Accounts Committee asked the Central Statistics Office about the reliability of self reported answers, instancing people listing Jedi as their religion. The response was "We could probably tell you the number of people who have declared themselves as such, but we don't publish it". The 2016 census results list all religions receiving more than 30 responses, including 2,050 (0.085%) under "Jedi Knight". As of the 2022 census, there are 1,800 Jedi knights, a decrease of 250 since the 2016 census results.

In the 2011 census in Montenegro, a group of young men declared themselves as "Jedi" on the ethnicity question, as they believe that ethnicity should not be an issue today.

Over 53,000 people listed themselves as Jedi in New Zealand's 2001 census. New Zealand had the highest per capita population of reported Jedi in the world that year, with 1.5% marking "Jedi" as their religion. Statistics New Zealand treated Jedi responses as "Answer understood, but will not be counted". There was a fall in the number of New Zealand Jedi five years later, with some 20,000 people giving this as their religion in the 2006 census. The 2011 census was postposed to 2013 due to an earthquake in Christchurch and the number of Jedi in New Zealand fell to 19,089. In the 2018 census, the figure increased again, to 20,409 (0.43% total responses).

In the 2011 census in Serbia, 640 people identified as Jedi.

In Scotland, 14,052 people stated that Jedi was their current religion (14,014 "Jedi", 24 "Jedi Order" and 14 "Sith") and 2,733 stated that it was their religion of upbringing (2,682 "Jedi", 36 "Jedi Order" and 15 "The Dark Side") in the 2001 census. The proportion of people stating their religion as Jedi in Scotland was lower than that in England and Wales, at 0.277%. In April 2009, it became known that eight police officers serving with Scotland's largest police force, Strathclyde, listed their official religion as Jedi in voluntary diversity forms. The details were obtained in a Freedom of Information request by Jane's Police Review.

The Atheist Foundation of Australia objects to non religious individuals answering with any joke answer as this would lead to an underrepresentation of non religious people in census data.