Keeping God’s Secrets: On the Psychology of Secrecy in
Religion
David William Mac Gillavry, Thesis for Masaryk University 2018
https://is.muni.cz/th/slqf8/David_William_Mac_Gillavry_Dissertation_3.6.2018_print.pdf
Although it is widely accepted amongst scholars of religion that secrecy, at least with regard to religion, can best be understood in relation to its form, a general theory of secrecy in religion has not yet been put forth. Instead, scholars have predominantly focussed on isolated test cases while theoretically grounding their work in the theories of sociologists like Georg Simmel (1906) and Erving Goffman (1956). This dissertation is a first attempt at advancing an updated theory of secrecy in religion which is rooted in the experimental study of human behaviour. Rather than focus on the cultural/religious expression of secrecy I will re-assess the assumptions about human secret keeping and human-supernatural agent relationships, which underlie most of the current research in the field and I will argue that some of these assumptions, most notably the idea that people are naturally inclined to revealing their secrets, fall short in light of new evidence from the cognitive sciences. Rather than an exchange in which the secret keeper is the active and the potential receiver a passive partner, secrecy communications (revelation or concealment) form a multi-layered means through which individuals enter into and strengthen personal relations with others, against the backdrop of a specific social context. Religious secrecy should, accordingly, be viewed in light of the personal relationships which are forged through revelation and the application of secrecy to a unit of religious information as a means through which believers enter into a personal relationship with the revealing supernatural agent.
revealation of secrets from the gods
p 34 Simmel first observed, ‘Secrecy is always a social phenomenon” (1906), in that it requires more actors, who fulfil different roles within a social/historical setting.
David William Mac Gillavry, Thesis for Masaryk University 2018
https://is.muni.cz/th/slqf8/David_William_Mac_Gillavry_Dissertation_3.6.2018_print.pdf
Although it is widely accepted amongst scholars of religion that secrecy, at least with regard to religion, can best be understood in relation to its form, a general theory of secrecy in religion has not yet been put forth. Instead, scholars have predominantly focussed on isolated test cases while theoretically grounding their work in the theories of sociologists like Georg Simmel (1906) and Erving Goffman (1956). This dissertation is a first attempt at advancing an updated theory of secrecy in religion which is rooted in the experimental study of human behaviour. Rather than focus on the cultural/religious expression of secrecy I will re-assess the assumptions about human secret keeping and human-supernatural agent relationships, which underlie most of the current research in the field and I will argue that some of these assumptions, most notably the idea that people are naturally inclined to revealing their secrets, fall short in light of new evidence from the cognitive sciences. Rather than an exchange in which the secret keeper is the active and the potential receiver a passive partner, secrecy communications (revelation or concealment) form a multi-layered means through which individuals enter into and strengthen personal relations with others, against the backdrop of a specific social context. Religious secrecy should, accordingly, be viewed in light of the personal relationships which are forged through revelation and the application of secrecy to a unit of religious information as a means through which believers enter into a personal relationship with the revealing supernatural agent.
revealation of secrets from the gods
p 34 Simmel first observed, ‘Secrecy is always a social phenomenon” (1906), in that it requires more actors, who fulfil different roles within a social/historical setting.
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