University of British Columbia Press Faith or Fraud: Fortune-Telling, Spirituality, and the Law (Law and Society)

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.