Secrecy, Religion, and the Ethics of Discernment

ABSTRACT

A common dilemma in practices of secrecy concerns the actors’ obligation to conceal the secret while keeping it socially present and animated. This quandary often generates moral ambivalence about acts of concealing, revealing, and discerning the hidden. We explore these and similar tensions with a focus on what we call the ethics of discernment: those political and moral ambiguities involved in the uncovering, translation, and circulation of secrets. While such issues can be explored in all areas of social and cultural life, religious practices provide a particularly rich area to explore. The links between religion and secrecy intersect with questions of authority, hierarchy, and the ostensibly set-apart, transcendent character of the sacred. Contributions to this special issue explore the tensions and resonances between concealment, revelation and ethics in a variety of religious contexts.

KEYWORDS:

• Secrecy
• ethics
• discernment
• privacy

Acknowledgements

We thank Nils Bubandt and Mark Graham for their comments on the pieces in this special issue, and for their careful editorial work. The special issue also benefited greatly from the discussant’s comments by Nicholas Harkness, given originally in his role as discussant for the panel ‘Secrecy, Religion, and the Anthropology of Ethics’, held on the 17th of November at the American Anthropological Association meetings, Washington D.C.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).