“If it was just about cool powers, people could just be New Age” : En kvalitativ jämförande intervjustudie av Temple of the jedi Order och Force Academy

Sammanfattning: Jediism is a new religious phenomenon where fictitious material is used as religious source material. The phenomenon is called hyper-real religion because the fictitious source material being used in the real world makes it ‘hyper-real’. This study explored Jediism and its usage of Star Wars as a religious source material.  Semi structured interviews with participants from the two largest Jedi communities were conducted: Temple of the Jedi Order and Force Academy. The informats only answered about the Light Aspect of the community, which means that there is still more to be explored in Jediism as it has sides primarily focused on the Dark and the Shadow Aspects of the ‘Force’. Furthermore the phenomenon of Jediism is put in the context within the theoretical approaches of secularization, sacralization and post secularity by Liselotte Frisk and Peter Åkerbäck. By using this theoretical framework the questions regarding who the people are that are looking for this kind of religion, why they chose to be part of it and how the informants from Temple of the Jedi Order and Force Academy speak of Jediism in terms of religious ideas and praxis were explored.     It is argued that Star Wars is the main source material for the studied communities and that it's part of a larger religious movement in Europe and the U.S through the processes of secularization, sacralization and post secularity. Jediism and hyper-real religion, as is shown by this study, should be included in the larger religious landscape that has been shaped by other forms of New Age religion.