The shared center — held across the tradition
The Force is real and it is not a person.
An energy generated by living things and binding them, attended to rather than prayed to. Jedi doctrine is careful on this point: the Force does not intend, answer or judge, and treating it as a god is a category error the Temple corrects in new members.
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Contested within — affirmed by some schools, refused by others
Whether this is a religion at all is answered differently in two countries.
The Temple of the Jedi Order holds United States tax-exempt status as a church. On 16 December 2016 the Charity Commission for England and Wales refused the same body charitable registration, finding that Jediism lacks the necessary spiritual or non-secular element and could be followed as a secular belief system. Jedi themselves split the same way.
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