Facebook campaign to make "Heavy Metal" faith in 2011 Census

First it was Jedi. And now... Heavy Metal? Music's most hardy of genres is now the subject of a Facebook campaign to encourage people to write 'Heavy Metal' as their faith on the 2011 Census, and they've got thousands of names in support.


As RockAAA reports, the 2001 census saw some 390,127 people in England and Wales claim that 'Jedi' was their faith -- 0.8% of the population -- resulting in Jedi being the fourth largest 'faith' on record.


And now eager metal fans are hoping to capitalise on the power of social networking website Facebook in an effort to repeat 2001's feat.

They've even got Biff Byford, singer of veteran British heavy metallers Saxon signed up in support.


In a statement published on the campaign's Facebook page, Byford said: "Metal was created here so it must be in the gene pool in the UK, I think! In the early 80s there was a huge number of great bands and we were all part of the same club, whatever we called ourselves, whether it was heavy rock, rock'n'roll or heavy metal, it made no difference.


"There was just this huge following of over a million people in the UK and now it's happening all over again! Getting heavy metal recognised as a religion is a great bit of rebellion, isn't it? This really is going to be a very cool thing."


At the time of writing, the Facebook campaign has enlisted 35,350+ noble warriors so far -- someway off the hundreds of thousands of Jedi out there, however.


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Heavy Metal For the 2011 Census