Ten years ago, a campaign largely fueled by the Internet encouraged hundreds of thousands of people to identify themselves as a Jedi Knight in the religious section of the British Census. The campaign was largely a joke: while there are people who follow the philosophy of the Jedi as religious practice, it is widely believed that most people who identified themselves as such on the census were not actual practitioners.
This year the Pagan Federation is urging neopagans to identify themselves on the census to bring more awareness of their community to light with the general public. Unlike the previous campaign, this one is serious, targeting only people who actually identify themselves as pagans.
The United States, in comparison, has no questions in its census regarding religious affiliation.
The US government would be very much out of line to pose any questions regarding religion being, at least theoretically, secular.
The British government, on the other hand, has been directly tied to the Church of England for over a thousand years.
The day the US census starts asking about religious persuasion is the day we should all refuse to take part in the census.
And the day they take religious viewpoints as part of their rhetoric and policy? What then? Not that I would ever imagine such a secular state would ever do such a thing.