Routledge Handbook of Religion and Secrecy

<p>Secrecy is a central and integral component of all religious traditions. Not limited simply to religious groups that engage in clandestine activities such as hidden rites of initiation or terrorism, secrecy is inherent in the very fabric of religion itself. Its importance has perhaps never been more acutely relevant than in our own historical moment. In the wake of 9/11 and other acts of religious violence, we see the rise of invasive national security states that target religious minorities and pose profound challenges to the ideals of privacy and religious freedom, accompanied by the resistance by many communities to such efforts. As such, questions of secrecy, privacy, surveillance, and security are among the most central and contested issues of twenty-first century religious life.</p><p><i>The Routledge Handbook of Religion and Secrecy</i> is the definitive reference source for the key topics, problems, and debates in this crucial field and is the first collection of its kind. Comprising twenty-nine chapters by a team of international contributors, the Handbook is divided into five parts:</p><ul> <li>Configurations of Religious Secrecy: Conceptual and Comparative Frameworks</li> <li>Secrecy as Religious Practice</li> <li>Secrecy and the Politics of the Present</li> <li>Secrecy and Social Resistance</li> <li>Secrecy, Terrorism, and Surveillance.</li> </ul><p>This cutting-edge volume discusses secrecy in relation to major categories of religious experience and individual religious practices while also examining the transformations of secrecy in the modern period, including the rise of fraternal orders, the ongoing wars on terror, the rise of far-right white supremacist groups, increasing concerns over religious freedom and privacy, the role of the internet in the spread and surveillance of such groups, and the resistance to surveillance by many indigenous and diasporic communities.</p><p><i>The Routledge Handbook of Religion and Secrecy</i> is essential reading for students and researchers in religious studies, comparative religion, new religious movements, and religion and politics. It will be equally central to debates in the related disciplines of sociology, anthropology, political science, security studies and cultural studies.</p> <p>Introduction: From the Social Lives of Secrecy to the Secret lives of the Social: Notes on Religion, Power, and the Public <i>Paul Christopher Johnson and Hugh B. Urban </i><b>Part 1: Configurations of Religious Secrecy: Conceptual and Comparative Frameworks </b>1. Mysticism and Secrecy <i>Arthur Versluis </i>2. Esotericism and Secrecy <i>Kennet Granholm </i>3. Gender, Sexuality, and Secrecy <i>Hugh B. Urban </i>4. Psychedelics and Secrecy <i>Christopher Partridge </i>5. Architectures of Secrecy <i>Paul Christopher Johnson </i>6. Secrecy, the Paranormal, and the Imaginal: The Remote Viewing Literature <i>Jeffrey J. Kripal and Christopher Senn </i><b>Part 2: Secrecy as Religious Practice </b>7. Secrecy in Islam, Sufism, and Shi’ism <i>Mark Sedgwick </i>8. Concealing the Concealment: Towards a Theopolitics of Kabbalistic Esotericism <i>Elliot R. Wolfson </i>9. Keeping Secrets: The Social Practice of Gnostic Secrecy <i>April D. DeConick </i>10. Secrecy’s Situational Ironies: Hiding and Its Consequences for Covert Buddhists in Japan <i>Clark Chilson </i>11. Notions of Secrecy and the Unknown/ Hidden in Chinese Religions <i>Barend ter Haar </i>12.<i> </i>Secrecy in South Asian Hindu Traditions: "The Gods Love What is Occult" <i>Gordan Djurdjevic </i>13. Reflections on Secrecy in Yolngu Religion <i>Ian Keen </i>14. AWO: The Nature of Secrecy in YoruÌbaì Religious Traditions: Conversations with <i>Ifa </i>Diviners <i>Jacob K. Olupona </i><b>Part 3: Secrecy and the Politics of the Present </b>15. Secrecy and Freemasonry <i>Henrik Bogdan </i>16. The Sacred, the "Secret," and the Sinister in the Latter-day Saint Tradition <i>Christopher James Blythe </i>17. The High Magic of Jesus Christ: Materializing Secrets in Brazil’s Valley of the Dawn <i>Kelly E. Hayes </i>18. Secrecy, Sex Abuse, and The Practice of Priesthood <i>John C. Seitz </i>19. From Resistance to Terror: The Open Secret of Jonestown <i>Rebecca Moore </i><b>Part 4: Secrecy and Social Resistance </b>20. "Crypto-Paganism" in the Late Antique World: Models of Concealment in a Christian Empire, Fourth to Sixth Century CE <i>David Frankfurter </i>21.<i> </i>Hopi Knowledge and the Ethnographic Allure of Secrets <i>Adam Fulton Johnson </i>22. Secrecy, Spirit Work, and Women’s Fugitive Speech in the Creolophone Caribbean <i>Elizabeth McAlister </i>23. Lifting the Eucharistic <i>Veil</i>: Allan Rohan Crite as Afro–Anglican Mystagogue <i>Hugh R. Page, Jr. and Stephen C. Finley </i><b>Part 5: Secrecy, Terrorism, and Surveillance </b>24. Weaponizing Secrecy: The FBI’s War on Black Radical Religion <i>Sylvester Johnson </i>25. Varieties of Secrecy and Symbolism in American White Power Movements <i>Damon Berry </i>26. The Islamic State and the Management of Secrecy <i>Haroro J. Ingram and Craig Whiteside </i>27. Conspiracy Theories about Secret Religions: Imagining the Other <i>David G. Robertson </i>28. Xenophobia and Conspiracism after 9/11 <i>Michael Barkun </i>29. Imagining Secret Wars <i>Mark Juergensmeyer. </i><i>Index</i></p>