Arcane religious practice involving supporter, not leader (9)
I believe the answer is:
recondite
'arcane' is the definition.
(thesaurus)
'religious practice involving supporter not leader' is the wordplay.
I cannot really understand how this works, but
'not' could be 'con' (I've seen this in other clues) and 'con' is found in the answer.
'leader' could be 'red' (red is a kind of leader) and 'red' is found within the remaining letters.
This explanation may well be incorrect...
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for recondite that I've seen before include "Mysterious" , "Abstruse" , "Difficult to understand" , "Direct one to be obscure or difficult" , "Enigmatic" .)