Obi-Wan’s rather eloquent description of the Force was definitely a classic moment in the original Star Wars film.
“The Force is what gives a Jedi his power. It’s an energy field created by all living things,” Kenobi explained to Luke Skywalker.
“It surrounds us and penetrates us, it binds the galaxy together.”
Obviously, the Force encompasses a number of meanings and can also be an analogy for God and spirituality. As we all know, for many fans, Star Wars is practically a religion in itself. Of course, being a Jedi for some is actually a religion.
As The Hollywood Reporter tells us, over 15,000 people in the Czech Republic claimed they were followers of the Temple of the Jedi Order in a recent census. Sure, the Order has a long way to go to beat out Catholicism which currently weighs in as the country’s biggest religion. But still – 15,000 people declaring themselves Jedis?
The Reporter also notes that over 20,000 people in Canada identified themselves as Jedis way back in 2001, along with 53,000 people in New Zealand.
“We are real Jedi,” the Temple of the Jedi Order website explains.
“We believe in Peace, Justice, Love, learning and using our abilities for Good. We are not fictional Jedi, nor are we role playing. We live our lives according to the principles of Jediism and work together as a community to both cultivate and celebrate.”
The great thing about freedom of religion is we can worship whatever or whoever we wish, so if your kid comes home one day and claims he’s now a Jedi, could that be any worse than him wanting to be a Satanist or a Scientologist?
And from the get go, George Lucas did indeed try to give kids watching Star Wars good moral lessons to follow, and considering this new religion, obviously many took the lessons of Obi Wan very seriously.
Star Wars “was a conscious attempt at creating new myths,” Lucas said in Easy Riders, Raging Bulls. ”I wanted to make a kids’ film that would introduce a kind of basic morality. Everybody’s forgetting to tell the kids, ‘Hey, this is right and this is wrong.'”
