Religion
Although the 1851 census had included a question about religion on a separate response sheet, whose completion was not compulsory, the 2001 census was the first in Great Britain to ask about the religion of respondents on the main census form. An amendment to the 1920 Census Act (the Census (Amendment) Act 2000) was passed by Parliament to allow the question to be asked, and to allow the response to this question to be optional. The inclusion of the question enabled the Jedi census phenomenon to take place in the United Kingdom. In England and Wales 390,127 people stated their religion as Jedi, as did 14,052 people in Scotland. The percentages of religious affiliations were:
- Christian: 72.0%
- Muslim: 3%
- Hindu: 1%
- Sikh: 0.6%
- Jewish: 0.5%
- Buddhist: 0.3%
- Any other religion: 0.3%
15% declared themselves of no religion (including Jedi at 0.7%, so more than declared themselves as Sikh, Jewish or Buddhist) and 8% did not respond to the question.
Read more about this topic: United Kingdom Census 2001
Famous quotes containing the word religion:
“Your honesty is not to be based either on religion or policy. Both your religion and policy must be based on it. Your honesty must be based, as the sun is, in vacant heaven; poised, as the lights in the firmament, which have rule over the day and over the night.”
—John Ruskin (1819–1900)
“The proper office of religion is to regulate the heart of men, humanize their conduct, infuse the spirit of temperance, order, and obedience; and as its operation is silent, and only enforces the motives of morality and justice, it is in danger of being overlooked, and confounded with these other motives.”
—David Hume (1711–1776)
“The more powerful and original a mind, the more it will incline towards the religion of solitude.”
—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963)