Importan to list your religion correctly!

[laura_seabrook]

The Australian Census night approaches and it's important (if you want it to be counted) to list your religion accurately. There is a movement at the moment to mark NO RELIGION. All well and good, if you have no religion as such (thought Atheism is a defined category as well)  but I do, and in general it's not one that shows up in the statistics much.

I used to work for the Australian Bureau of Statistics in the last century, and I care what gets put in the census. Last time around I had a bit of a battle with Jedi Knights, who thought they were being funny or clever by putting their religion down as that. But the reality is that even if the Bureau listed that as a religion (and it doesn't, go have a loo here) that doesn't make it "official". This time around I'm concerned that pagan folk like myself are represented correctly.

So what is listed in this area in the Australian Standard Classification of Religious Groups? Here's a sample:

• Alexandrian
• Amorc (Rosicrucian)
• Deistic Evolutionist
• Devil Worshipper
• Earth Goddess/Mother/Nature
• Eckankar
• Gaian
• Gurdjieff
• Occultist
• Paganism
• Pantheism
• New Age
• Satanism
• Satan's Disciple
• Sceptic
• Shamanist
• Astrology (but no Astartu)
  
• Voodoo

...and so on. Well my being a Galla of Cybele isn't listed as such (though maybe Earth Mother would almost be accurate) so what can I do?