This past week Heather and I spent some time away celebrating our 20th anniversary. The actual day isn’t until next month, so I’ll wait a few weeks to write about our marriage, the blessing it’s been, and the role faith has played in it. This week I want to share some news about Jedi and how they’re affecting religious politics in Australia.
Every 4 years Australia conducts a census, and one of the questions asks about the participant’s religion. In 2011 over 64,000 people marked “other” and wrote in “Jedi.” With just a few days to go before the 2016 census, the Atheist Foundation of Australia is urging people carefully to consider their response this year noting that writing in “Jedi” categorizes a participant as part of a “not defined” religion rather than having “no religion.” A Twitter campaign emphasizes that this makes Australia look more religious than it is and skews religious affiliation data used for “public policy, city planning, community support facilities, and more.”
There are several things we might take away from this story, and I’ll suggest two. First we might take away the realization that atheists and Christians agree that religion goes deeper than just giving ourselves a popular label. And second, we might take away a smile that there’s a place in our world for 64,000 people to have some mostly harmless, quirky fun – and that place is Australia.
Be sure to join Access this Sunday for our final 5:00 p.m. weekly service. We’ll worship God with music from the Access band, conclude our Birds, Bees, and Christians sermon series, celebrate Holy Communion, and share ice cream after the service. We’ll also look forward to special events between now and December when Access will move in to the new Worship and Arts Center and resume weekly worship services at 11:00 a.m.
In Christ,
Rich
Rich Rindfuss
Access pastor
First United Methodist Church Richardson