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Gavin Haynes Sleepless Nights

The Demise of the Zany Jedi Wankers

Ten years ago, there were 390,000 Jedis in Britain. Now, there are only 170,000.

This is genocide. Right now, the Great British Jedi is dying out faster than the Mayans ever did. Soon, we'll be telling our kids that once there were Jedis here. Sad but true.

In the census of 2001, some 390,000 people told the form-fillers that Jediism was their religion. In 2011, figures released last week showed that the number had slumped to 170,000. It dropped to sixth-most popular religion in Britain, falling back behind its near-phonetic cousin Judaism, and 90s fad Buddhism.

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What has happened to prompt this collapse in numbers? There are many obvious culprits. Firstly: The Revenge Of The Sith. Secondly: that other film no one ever remembers. Thirdly: every time George Lucas shows his fat money-hose face in public. Fourthly: our entire attitude to sniggering japes has undergone a revolution. It's hard to believe that back in '01 no one had ever flash-mob Thriller-danced at Liverpool Street station on behalf of T-Mobile. This was a time so naïve that when a song got to Christmas number one it was because people wanted to buy it, not because they wanted to fart all over Simon Cowell's party. So simple that no one had even thought of creating a Facebook page called "If I Get 200,000 People To Like This Page Then My Wife Will Let Me Call Our Baby Spiderman". If you wanted to call your baby Spiderman you just had to damn well do it and put up with the emotionally-crippling, marriage-shattering consequences.

Back then, for the most part, people just sat around refreshing PWoT or the Hamster Dance, biding time waiting for someone to invent Gawker. So when a few nerds in Totnes decided that everyone should prank the statisticians and their years of careful preparation, it seemed like something people could get behind. Nowadays, our attention is constantly split between any one of a hundred worthless calls for collective action, every gap in our awareness plugged with this do-something-zany mental junk food. They never stood a chance.

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Still, the Great British Jedi ought to be mourned as he passes, with his stupid ponytail and his silly overpriced blue wand. What began here has since gone right around the world. There are now people in Montenegro, who, rather than Serb-ing or Croat-ing, are declaring themselves ethnic Jedis for the purposes of racial classification. It's the second-largest faith in New Zealand. In 2005, an MP, Jamie Reed, announced he was the first practising Jedi in Parliament a full seven years ago, while another proposed setting up Jedi faith schools.

Sure, Jediism's a busted flush. In the end, it couldn't go the distance with a creed like: "Emotion, yet peace. Ignorance, yet knowledge. Passion, yet serenity. Chaos, yet harmony. Death, yet the Force." These weren't particularly helpful koans for living life on a day-to-day basis, even less than 90s fad Buddhism. You might as well go "Mars, yet Snickers. Tuesday, yet soup." Fighting with electric swords didn't necessarily make them any more true, although it was a very effective marketing campaign.

But its death opens a window of opportuinty. Everyone knows made-up religions are always the best kind. Just as everyone says that the very theological flimsiness of made-up Anglicanism was why it was such a strong tool in British global success, now that the CofE have penned their long-winded suicide notes on gays and women, it's time we took a leaf out of Henry VIII's book and made up a religion to suit the national taste.

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Any successor must firstly offer us all a decent belief structure to stop us all from wanting to kill ourselves all the time at the horrible state of our lives – surely the point of religion for 90 percent of all adherents for most of the past 4000 years. And if it's really going to work now, any such faith also needs to allow people to sleep late on a Sunday – also known as "The Chief Way In Which Christianity Erred Over The Last 2000 Years". It'd need to offer Britain a smug sense of being the best nation in the world, to make up for no longer actually being the best nation in the world, and to show us why, if God exists, he allowed Northampton.

Also: it would be best if it could allow shy gays to hide within its ranks – for many years, the chief purpose of the Catholic Church has been to shield shy gays from the inquisitiveness of their families, which explains quite clearly why the Papacy is so against getting rid of its own homophobia – it needs that homophobia to protect the gays. Think about it.

Also: arranged marriages would be very convenient, TBH. And maybe kill a goat every now and then, just to show them who's boss?

This should all be pretty easy. I'll leave it to you to join the dots. Once the finer details are sorted, I suggest we make Tony Blair into Pope Tony I, as he seems to like religion anyway, he already glows, and he's clearly angling for a promotion from Prime Minister.

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Follow Gavin on Twitter: @hurtgavinhaynes

Previous Sleepless Nights:

Is It Time for Britain to Turn Into a Dictatorship?

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British People Are So Fat You Can See Them from Space