Is "You're not a Jedi" telling it straight?

There have been a lot of tweets going round about the You're not a Jedi page that while quite rightly saying it is better to be honest on the census, however it is also suggesting:

Every tick towards any religion, no matter if it is real or a bit of a joke (or both for that matter), gets counted towards the figures of religious people in the UK.

I fully support the need for an accurate an inclusive census as the data is used in important ways such as apportioning money. This is why despite important and worthy claims about privacy concerns and private contracts I am on board for it. But something rang untrue about the claim that Jedis were being used in order to fund religious groups. So I went to look at the numbers for the 2001 census, the ONS commentary page on the England and Wales data says:

At the time the Census was carried out, there was an internet campaign that encouraged people to answer the religion question "Jedi Knight". The number of people who stated Jedi was 390,000 (0.7 per cent of the population).

Below is the raw data pulled out of nomis and it shows that unless Jedi was characterised as a sect of Christianity or Islam anyone who put that as their religious preference was put under “No religion” or “Religion not stated” they wouldn’t fit anywhere else (unless there are only about 150,000 Hindus and they lumped them in there).

Cell	England	Wales	England and Wales
T53:1 (ALL PEOPLE : ALL PEOPLE )	49,138,831	2,903,085	52,041,916
T53:2 (ALL PEOPLE : Christian )	35,251,244	2,087,242	37,338,486
T53:3 (ALL PEOPLE : Buddhist )	139,046	5,407	144,453
T53:4 (ALL PEOPLE : Hindu )	546,982	5,439	552,421
T53:5 (ALL PEOPLE : Jewish )	257,671	2,256	259,927
T53:6 (ALL PEOPLE : Muslim )	1,524,887	21,739	1,546,626
T53:7 (ALL PEOPLE : Sikh )	327,343	2,015	329,358
T53:8 (ALL PEOPLE : Any other religion )	143,811	6,909	150,720
T53:9 (ALL PEOPLE : No religion )	7,171,332	537,935	7,709,267
T53:10 (ALL PEOPLE : Religion not stated )	3,776,515	234,143	4,010,658

So if you are a group who believe that statistics are being used to disproportionately support the religious over the secular I would think it would be effort better spent working on finding out how many of the 37 million who put “Christian” down on the census are doing so out of force of habit.

a Synod in the right direction.

Even the most liberal Christian will acknowledge that as archaic as the staunch traditionalist view is on gay clergy, it is at least based on something explicitly stated in the bible.

The arguments against women as priests before and as bishops now are altogether more to do with interpretation and supposition. The Internet and academia are littered with essays written on this subject from both sides none of which have the direct word of Christ or God on the matter. There is the primary argument that we should follow his example and he only chose penis wavers to be fishers of men. However on that note no vicar can eat pizza, Christ didn't. Archbishop don't get on that aircraft, is is not approved by the demonstrative school of rules about following the apostolic succession.

The secondary arguments are mostly based on readings of the Epistles, the salutation to Junia (along with Andronicus) in Romans "my fellow-prisoners, who are of note among the apostles, who also were in Christ before me" Vs 1 Timothy and "Let the woman learn in silence with all subjection" with of course the attendant debates about authorship of those letters.

In any case we can but speculate about the motivations for the all boys club, so why do some people hold that there opposition to the ordination of women is a gospel truth?

Is it really bothering God?

I have already posted what I think about the current schism in the church over homosexuality. It looks like the idea of a split in the church is in the offing again. The booklet for the 'Gafcon' meeting in Jerusalem says

"We want unity… but not at the cost of re-writing the Bible to accommodate the latest cultural trend."

by latest cultural trend I assume they mean not persecuting your fellow man for being overly fond of his fellow man. I am also not 100% convinced that setting up this rival to the Lambeth Conference they are in any way promoting unity. Oh well if they do decide to bugger off out of the Anglican Communion I won't miss them and it saves me having to become a Scottish Episcopalian (after all it is vitally important to identify which church you don't get round to going to).

I have little sympathy for those that say that the bible is the word of God and inviolate because they are all so selective in which practices they think we need to return to in order to be good Christians, which parts of a rule set designed for a desert people thousands of years ago we should pay attention to, I would have much more respect if they had 100% courage in all their convictions. I also suspect that they don't follow all the rules about food that are in Leviticus and Deuteronomy, why are these any less important that who you fuck given most of us eat more in our lives than we screw? I shall leave you with one of my favourite pieces of writing on the subject from the West Wing.

Jed Bartlet: I like your show. I like how you call homosexuality an "abomination"!
Jenna Jacobs: I don’t say homosexuality is an abomination, Mr. President. The Bible does.
Jed Bartlet: Yes it does. Leviticus!
Jenna Jacobs: 18:22.
Jed Bartlet: Chapter and verse. I wanted to ask you a couple of questions while I had you here. I wanted to sell my youngest daughter into slavery, as sanctioned in Exodus 21:7. She’s a Georgetown Sophomore, speaks fluent Italian, always cleared the table when it was her turn. What would a good price for her be?
(Bartlet only waits a second for a response, then plunges on.)
Jed Bartlet: While thinking about that, can I ask another? My chief of staff, Leo McGary, insists on working on the Sabbath. Exodus 35:2 clearly says he should be put to death. Am I morally obligated to kill him myself? Or is it okay to call the police?
(Bartlet barely pauses to take a breath.)
Jed Bartlet: Here’s one that’s really important, because we’ve got a lot of sports fans in this town. Touching the skin of a dead pig makes one unclean. Leviticus 11:7. If they promise to wear gloves, can the Washington Redskins still play football? Can Notre Dame? Can West Point? Does the whole town really have to be together to stone my brother John for planting different crops side by side? Can I burn my mother in a small family gathering for wearing garments made from two different threads? Think about those questions, would you?

Your help please

I need a word for a section of the reporting spectrum, you can probably imagine which papers are included, which bloggers, most commercial radio news fits in. The defining characteristics are those outlets that enrage me when they report anything that needs a shred of human decency. They will have used the term McALevel for a start. Any suggestions for a collective term for these bastards most welcome.
Today they are reporting a speech by Dr Rowan Williams about faith based law, they are mostly ignoring what he actually said which was measured, calm, and advised caution. It was about all faiths including other sections of Christianity who may feel they are not directly served. It was about civil issues, marital disputes or financial matters for example. What they are reporting is that he wants to introduce Sharia Law.
What none of them are reporting either is we have plenty of this happening on a semi-formal basis, backed by money from several bodies as an offshoot of the sharia councils. The other thing they are glossing over is how any of this is different from the rabbinical courts. If you are going to make a fuss about law from other faiths surely all of it bad? Of course all this has flared up at the smae time as the debate over the blasphemy laws.

Judging someone’s morals

From the Ministry of Justice website, the magistrates have an oath: 'If you are appointed, you will be required to swear that you "will be faithful and bear true allegiance to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Second, her heirs and successors, according to law" and that you "will well and truly serve our Sovereign Lady Queen Elizabeth the Second in the office of Justice of the Peace, and will do right to all manner of people after the laws and usages of this realm without fear or favour, affection or ill will".' The problem that Andrew McClintock has is that he doesn't think that same-sex couples count under the all in all manner of people. Bystander in his Magistrate's Blog points out that he believes that as a JP Mr McClintock's boss is Her Majesty, I unfortunately can't find an official report online to confirm whether the action was taken against the crown, although it technically may have been anyway even if the tribunal considered the government department to be the employer.

I did at the time of reading about this wonder what the Church of England position was on the whole thing, given that the established church and the judiciary all report to the same MD, in a manner of speaking. I found out listening to PM last night; of the two people brought on from each side of the debate, the Bishop for Urban Life and Faith, Rt Rev Stephen Lowe was on the side arguing that what was best for the children was paramount and that was a loving family, no matter how that family was composed. I was impressed, now if only they had that compassion towards gay clergy.

Bigger than any election

There is a political division that has existed in this country for far longer than any of our current political parties and can even be said to have been part of the reasons that party politics in this country started when the Whigs and Tories coalesced from loose interest groups. So for centuries, before we developed anything you would call a multicultural society, there was a tremendous and on occasions violent battle for the Hearts, Minds and Souls of everyone between the Church of England and the Church in Rome. These days everything is a lot more civilised and all of the major faiths and their component denominations are happy mostly to avoid anything more vicious than a heated debate as they attempt to recruit and retain congregation. But your soul is still a bigger deal than any election to a temporal authority, even if you could use how long Tony Blair dragging out his last days in power as an analogue for eternal torment. As I get older, I get more cynical and add more and more layers of scepticism onto the "this is another form of politics" thesis I latched onto when studying comparative religion when I was younger. This means that while I welcome news that the Church of England is promoting organ donation as a dutiful act (in a response to the House of Lords’ EU Social Policy and Consumer Affairs sub-committee) I wonder why they are being irresolute on the subject of opt-in verses opt-out systems. Where is the angle, what is being spun, why have they chosen this particular set of words, what is their aim? The specific quote that got me thinking along theses lines is:

Whether organ donation should be arranged through an "opt-in" or an "opt out" system is not a question on which Christians hold a single set of views, the response explains. The opt-in system, where people sign up to be donors if they die, reflects Christian concern ‘to celebrate and support gracious gifts, freely given’. An opt-out approach, where people state that they do not wish to donate organs, ‘could stress the Christian concern for human solidarity and living sacrificially for others’. — Rt Revd Tom Butler, Bishop of Southwark

If it is Christian duty to donate and the Church of England wishes to maintain the position that this is a Christian country then surely it is their "duty" to promote an opt-out system. It isn’t as if anyone will be forced to donate, all the proposals I have seen include opportunities for the next of kin to argue that the deceased didn’t really want it and other safeguards.

It is entirely possible that my position on this is affected by the fact that I am a little grumpy at Lambeth Palace at the moment over their treatment of the American Episcopal Church. I don't think Rowan Williams should be bowing to the ultra conservative African churches on this one, especially as it is known that he personally believes that homophobia has no place in the church. On the flip side I have no great investment the latitudinarian unity of the Anglican Communion. I am C of E, not due to any burning sense of buy in to global group of Anglicans, but precisely because it is a broad church pun intended. I had kind of hoped that the Episcopal Church would decide they want to stand by their position. I know that would have lead to them being asked to leave, or the homophobic churches storm off in a huff. Either of which would probably bring about the end of the global Anglican Communion but I won't see that as a loss. I am watching to see what comes out of the moves by the Scottish and Mexican branches of the Anglican Communion, if they do manage to bring this to a head and create a breakaway Communion I would probably become a Scottish Episcopalian.

As a footnote, while researching this post, I realised that of the five primates in the home nations, three are Welsh, one is English and the other Ugandan.