Hugh Urban’s latest book, Secrecy: Silence, Power, and Religion, offers the reader a nuanced and novel approach to the ways in which secrecy is utilized as a tool, demonstrating this through the utilization of both historical and present-day esoteric groups and people. Deviating slightly from the habitual sort of historical scholarship on secrecy and religion, Urban argues that secrecy is tied up in broader social, political, and historical interests and is not the monolithic phenomenon that it has previously been analyzed as. The book is historically and thematically formatted into six different sections, each associated with a representative historical group or figure: “the adornment of silence, the advertisement of the secrecy, the seduction of the secrecy, secrecy as social resistance, the terror of secrecy, and secrecy as a historical process.” As a professor in the Department of Comparative Studies at The Ohio State University, the bulk of Urban’s academic tenure has been focused on secrecy in religion, and as such he is considered to be an authoritative scholar on the topic of the text. It is not surprising, then, that the book succeeds in its goal of analyzing secrecy as a tool for the construction and maintenance of religious authority.
Each chapter succinctly covers a separate example of a group, phenomenon, or figure in a manner that provides relevant background information while not overwhelming the reader with unnecessary historical nuance. The groups and figures discussed range from Russian-born Parisian mystic Maria de Naglowska to the Five Percenters to the Church of Scientology to Scottish Rite Freemasonry. Urban has the rare talent of writing a chapter that contains just the right amount of information to support his thesis while also leaving the readers eager to discover more about the topic(s). Although a cohesive text when read from front to back, the chapters do not necessarily build upon one another, making the book more of a collection of thematically related essays. Thus, readers can approach the book in any direction they want, or only read one chapter, without being confused.
More specifically for the field of religious studies, Urban does an apt job making this book intriguing for scholars of religion while also being digestible for a general audience, without compromising the integrity of the field of religious studies. Although a basic familiarity with recent discourses involving theories and methods in the study of religion would be helpful to enhance the reader’s comprehension and appreciation of the text, it is not necessary. Furthermore, Urban also discusses the ethical implications of studying secrets and the approach that he adopts in this endeavor. Rather than focusing on the content of the secrets themselves, Urban advocates for, and then utilizes, an epistemological shift, focusing on the “visible forms through which secrets are concealed, revealed, and exchanged” (16, emphasis in original).
Given the topic of this text—one that revisits some of his previous work—Urban could have easily fallen into an essentialist and reductionist perspective, arguing that secrecy is inherent in all religions everywhere and at all times. He does come close at one point, writing: “As I argue in the pages of this book, secrecy also ties very closely – perhaps intimately and inherently – to religion and to the unique sort of power that religious claims to transcendent authority can wield” (2, emphasis in original). However, the substantial body of his text follows the methods and theories of Jonathan Z. Smith and Bruce Lincoln (the latter of whom Urban worked with during his PhD). More specifically, Urban follows Smith’s argument that comparison does not tell us how things are similar, but rather tells us how we have chosen to see data as similar. This can clearly be seen in the groups and figures that Urban chose to include and examine in this text.
Throughout the book, Urban makes a compelling case for his theory that secrecy is “neither a monolithic nor singular phenomenon; rather, it is better understood as a particular kind of strategy … for the calculated control of knowledge, which in turn can be deployed for a wide array of different social and political purposes” (16, emphasis in original). He does this by incorporating theories from thinkers in a wide array of disciplines; although his book is titled Secrecy: Silence, Power, and Religion, Urban does not solely gather his influence from the field of religious studies. Other examples of thinkers that influenced his research include sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, anthropologist Lamont Lindstrom, and philosopher Georges Bataille. This application of sociological and anthropological theories elevates the topic of the book into something that is both intricate and noteworthy, pushing the scholarly study of secrecy and its strategic uses in new directions. Overall, through Urban’s inquisitive and succinct writing, his book is a notable addition to scholars in religious studies, anthropology, and esotericism that will likely influence the way scholars write and think about secrecy in the future.
Ciara Eichhorst is an independent scholar.
Ciara Skye Eichhorst
Date Of Review:
March 5, 2024