Description
The growing presence in Western society of non-mainstream faiths and spiritual practices poses a dilemma for the law. 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” (SBNR) on the future legal understanding of religious freedom. Unlike SBNR belief systems that can encompass multiple religions, philosophies, and folklore, traditional legal interpretations of “freedom of religion” are based on organized religion and are ultimately shown to have failed to evolve along with ideas about religion itself.
Reviews
Faith or Fraud is a valuable contribution to the study of legal responses to fortune-telling...A comprehensive survey of this nature has never been conducted, and this is both an insightful and full addition to current scholarship.
- Taryn McLachlan, University of Saskatchewan Law School
Faith or Fraud is a thought-provoking read which could provide the catalyst for much further work. It provides a wonderful opportunity to confront our attitudes towards 'new Age' faith and to modern manifestations of faith...All this is done in the context of tantalising glimpses of other topical issues around the transmission of legal ideas within the common law world.
- Charlotte Smith, University of Reading
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 or Fraud makes a valuable contribution to the field
- Tisa Wenger, Yale Divinity School