“Luke I am you’re father,” (Darth Vader, 1880). This is one of the most significant and iconic lines in movie making history, particularly for fans of the beloved Star Wars Saga made by George Lucas Inc. But the Jedi’s in the movies and the Jedi’s that follow the quickly emerging religion of Jediism are on two different wave lengths. According to the last Census of the United Kingdom in 2001 nearly four hundred thousand people claimed to follow Jediism. This established Jediism as a religion in the United Kingdom and also helped Jediism become recognized as the fourth largest religion, with more followers than Judaism or Buddhism (Bryan, 2011). Even with so many followers, Jedi’s are being criticized greatly because of the religion that they are following. When being told that someone is a Jedi one’s mind might automatically flash through visions of Darth Vader and lightsaber battles. But what a lot of people are not aware of is that Jediism dates back thousands of years before the Star Wars Saga made it famous.
The earliest records of Jediism start at over five thousand years ago. The basis of the religion comes from a combination of Hinduism, Confucianism, Buddhism, Gnosticism, Stoicism, Catholicism, Taoism, Shinto, Modern Mysticism, Way of the Shaolin Monks, the Knight’s Code of Chivalry and the Samurai Warriors (Jediism.org). The Jediism that most people follow today is a more modern version. It still incorporates all of the root beliefs but with a few modern twists. Who exactly started Jediism isn’t known and a lot of other information on its early days is very difficult to find. The religion was rather secretive when it first started and therefore records were probably not kept, and those that were kept are most likely hi...
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...is is hard to believe.
Works Cited
Kieron, B. (2011, February 26). Jedi-ism, Britain’s fourth-largest religion, is still going strong. The Times.
n.d. Retrieved December 2, 2011, from http://www.jediism.org/#
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Daily Mail Reporter. (2009, September 18). Jedi church founder thrown out of Tesco for refusing to remove his hood was left ‘emotionally humiliated’. Mail Online.
Wardrop, M. (2009, September 18). Jedi ejected from Tesco for wearing hood. The Telegraph.
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(2007, January 12). Retrieved December 10, 2011, from http:// setiishadim.wordpress.com/2007/01/12/21-maxims-of-the-jediism-code/
In Cool Hand Luke, the movie begins with the word, VIOLATION, across the screen. The word is from a parking meter and sets the tone for the entire movie. Luke Jackson, the title character, is arrested for cutting off the heads of the town’s parking meters while drunk, or in legal terms, for destroying municipal property while under the influence of alcohol. When asked why he cut the heads off the parking meters, Luke answers, “You could say I was settling an old score.” While it leaves the viewers believing that he probably received a parking ticket at some time in the past, no clues are given to what the old score may have been.
Between 1947 and 1971, even if you did not practice your religion it was still expected that you would identify yourself as being a part of your/ your family’s religion. In 1947 the ‘no religion’ category made up only 0.3% of religious affiliation in Australia. A change in social values and attitudes has since seen a dramatic increase in people identifying as belonging to ‘no religion’ with the category reaching 6.7% in 1971, “The specific instruction 'if no religion, write none' included in the 1971 Census saw an increase in this response from 0.8% in the previous Census to 6.7%.”(Australian Social Trends, 2013). The chart below is a visual representation of the growth in the ‘no religion’ category.(sourced from Australian Social Trends, 2013).
Sacks, B. (2014). Modern Jainism: One Of The Fastest Growing Religions Is Changing Tradition. Retrieved from http://www.neontommy.com
Stanley, Tim. “Give Me that Old Time Religion.” History Today 63.8 (2013): 50. Academic Search Premier. Web. 4 Nov. 2013.
Luke Skywalker is an example of someone who embodies a modern epic hero. Skywalker is the central figure in the movie Star Wars IV A New Hope written by Gorge Lucas who reflects the values and heroic ideas of his society. Luke faces many laborious challenges throughout his journey to destroy the evil Empire. Throughout this journey, Luke stays true to himself and does not give into the thought of failure and believes in the force. Luke is tenacious, courageous, and determined to defeat the mighty evil Empire.
Smart, Ninian. "Blackboard, Religion 100." 6 March 2014. Seven Dimensions of Religion. Electronic Document. 6 March 2014.
It is predicted that in the 21st century there will be a jump in the number of people identifying themselves as Muslims, Buddhists and Hindus. At the same time, in recent years, there has been a decl...
"Religions of the World: Numbers of Adherents; Growth Rates." ReligiousTolerance.org by the Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance. Web. 27 July 2010. .
Heroes are often perceived as characters who leap great distances in a single bound. However, they actually have three distinct stages where they develop into the character we grow to love. In George Lucas` “StarWars IV: A New Hope.” Luke Skywalker is a quintessence of of an archetypal hero because he goes through initiation stage through distinct phases of separation, transformation and the return stage. Luke Skywalker begins his journey as farmer boy on a remote planet and becomes the hero of the galaxy. However, this process the not happen quickly. Rather, it is a difficult journey where is is faced with multiple tests and obstacles and pushes his endurance to the limit.
Eastman, Roger. The Ways of Religion: An Introduction to the Major Traditions. Third Edition. Oxford University Press. N.Y. 1999
If there is one aspect of society that has endured the ages and is an integral part of society today is religion. There are currently about 7 billion people on earth and of those 7 billion more than half adhere to some form of organized religion. The world’s top religion with about 33% of the population or 2.1 billion followers is Christianity, followed by Islam and Hinduism with 1.3 billion and 851 million adherents respectively. These are just a few of the most well-known religions in the world but; what of the religions obscured in mystery and left in the background? The religions you don’t hear much about in your classrooms or in the media. What is their history? What are their beliefs? I hope to shed some light on these questions and bring to light some of the less popular religions in the world. I will be covering several different religions in this paper, Sikhism, Jainism, Confucianism, and Shinto
young, and given power to prevent other doctrines from being introduced.” But on the smaller scale, the personal level, people interpret these doctrines in their own way, causing thousands, even millions of differing opinions on the same subject.
I will now examine what it means to be religious with a critical enquiry into Buddhism, Hinduism and
Everyone has that one person in their life has influenced to be who they are. Some weren’t meant to be looked up to, still somehow that person shaped them to be who they are today. It could be anyone, a friend, teacher, most of the time a parent. A parent that has influenced their child would be a hard parent, who disciplined and showed the real world to their kid, for what it really is. In hopes that their kid will survive the real world and pass on their knowledge to their kids and their children and so on.
Bali is quite complex in their belief systems, especially when perceived by the western world. Their belief system is not comprised of a singular core religion, but of a sort of amalgam of various world religions. The religion of Bali is referred to as Hindu-Balinese Religion, or Agama Hindu Bali (Ramseyer 93), but the true religion of this culture is far more multi-faceted than this title justifies. The people of Bali have essentially created their own individualized religion by combining Mahayana Buddhism, orthodox Siwaism, “demonic practices of Trantric sects”, and Javanized Hinduism from Majapahit, joined by a dualistic world view and worship of nature and ancestors (Ramseyer 93).