Overview

The growing presence in Western society of non-mainstream faiths and spiritual practices poses a dilemma for the law. For example, if a fortune teller promises to tell the future in exchange for cash, and both parties believe in the process, has a fraud been committed? Building on a thorough history of the legal regulation of fortune-telling laws in four countries, Faith or Fraud examines the impact of people who identify as “spiritual but not religious” on the future legal understanding of religious freedom. Traditional legal notions of religious freedom were conceived in the context of organized religion. Jeremy Patrick examines how the law needs to adapt to a contemporary spirituality in which individuals can select concepts drawn from multiple religions, philosophies, and folklore to develop their own idiosyncratic belief systems. Faith or Fraud exposes the law’s failure to recognize individual spirituality as part of modern religious practice, concluding that legal understanding of freedom of religion has not evolved along with religion itself.

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9780774863339

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[Patrick] builds a compelling case for how and why legal conceptions of religious freedom can change to better accommodate nonmainstream forms of spiritual practice. * Nova Religio *

As a detailed history of the debates over fortune-telling in four different countries, and as an argument for the expansion of religious freedom law to include this kind of practice, Faith orFraud makes a valuable contribution to the field -- Tisa Wenger, Yale Divinity School * Nova Religio *

Author Information

Jeremy Patrick is a lecturer in the School of Law and Justice at the University of Southern Queensland, Toowoomba, Australia, where he also convenes the law, religion, and heritage research program team. His work on religious freedom, the separation of church and state, blasphemous libel and similar topics can be found in journals such as the Journal of Law and Religion, the University of British Columbia Law Review, and the University of Queensland Law Journal.

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