My friend Cliff and I were joking around this weekend, talking a little bit about Scientology and how silly it is, and Cliff mentioned that he’s surprised that the Star Wars fans don’t have an actual Jedi religion of their own. Well, guess what I found today while I was surfing the web? This post is dedicated to my good friend, Cliff, and I’m chuckling out loud as I write it.
First site I want to point to is Christian Wisdom of the Jedi Masters. I’ve read quite a few of the articles here, and the author is obviously a big C.S. Lewis fan, which he gets a lot of credit for IMO. His site is also mentioned in this article about a school teaching the Wookie language and discussing the religious implications of George Lucas’s work and how it relates to both Eastern philosophical and religious traditions like Zen Buddhism and Taoism, and how he even conflicts with his own beliefs. (Lucas calls himself a Buddhist Methodist. Which I suppose is a pretty good kind of Methodist to be.)
I’m reminded also of a conversation with another friend of mine where he told me he could still remember watching Star Wars with his father, and his father explaining to him on the drive home that the Force was God. That would have been in 1977, which would have made my friend 7 years old at the time. I don’t remember much from being 7, and most people I know don’t either, so I guess it made a pretty big impression on him. And I also suspect that his experience on the drive home that night wasn’t that unusual.
Also, on a semi-related-but-not-really note, here’s Darth Vader’s blog. Great reading, this, even if it’s clunky and falls flat in a couple of places.