The Adornment of Secularity: Secrecy and the Ordinary in Opus Dei Britain

The Roman Catholic group Opus Dei is widely regarded as a secretive organisation, yet many of its members reject the label. Drawing from ethnographic fieldwork in London, UK, this article asks why non-members perceive the group as secretive when members do not. It examines instances of when members discern when to reveal their affiliation and shows how their possible reluctance to disclose is not related to secrecy but instead their conceptualisation of secularity. I explore the connection between the secret and the secular through what I call the adornment of secularity, which I argue explains the discrepancy in how members understand themselves and how non-members see them.