A higher Power

Our favourite journalistic cliché is out in force once again to describe the “landmark” case of Power v Greater Manchester Police. All the Employment Tribunal decided at a preliminary hearing was that Spiritualism was a religion for the purposes of the Employment Equality (Religion & Belief) Regulations 2003. Although those Regulations have no definition of “religion” Spiritualism has been recognised by the state as a religion for some time and the Charity Commissioners confirmed in 2001 that it passed muster as a religion so it could gain the benefits of charitable status.

As the report at PoliceProfessional.com indicates there are statistics from the 2001 census about the religious make up of the UK – the full figures were:

Christian 41,014,811

No religion/atheist/agnostic 8,596,488

No response 4,443,520

Muslim 1,588,890

Hindu 558,342

Sikh 336,179

Jewish 267,373

Buddhist 149,157

Spiritualists 32,000

Pagans 31,000

Jain 15,000

Wiccan 7,000

Rastafarian 5,000

Baha’i 5,000

Zoroastrian 4,000

For those of you wondering the census answer “Jedi” was treated as being the same as no religion.