Regulating religious diversification: a legal perspective

Abstract

This chapter seeks to rely solely on primary legal materials to bring a legal perspective to the theme of this collection and to explore how English and Scots law deal with diversification within religious groups, looking not only at how the law deals with schisms within new religious movements and more traditional religions but also at the extent to which the law recognises new forms of religiosity or doctrinal developments. As the chapter will demonstrate, although the law in both jurisdictions is supposed to protect a right to manifest religion or belief in any form, in reality the courts readily assume a direct link between credal belief and behaviour and often fail to protect those who profess membership of a religion but adhere to a personalised interpretation of that religion and so feel themselves bound to manifestations that are not common or mandated within their religion as a whole. The chapter will examine how the courts have dealt with new forms of religiosity through two case studies: the first will explore how the courts have dealt with mainstream religious groups that have splintered and the second will look at the extent to which the courts have dealt with individual claims concerning manifestations of religion that differ or deviate from the mainstream of the religion in question.