Revelation and revelation: the development and utilization of privacy rules by individuals who have adopted significantly different religious beliefs than their exclusivist christian families

Exclusivist Christians are defined as people who hold that their religious beliefs are exclusively correct and that all those who do not believe and/or practice Christianity as they do are lost and/or damned. Communication Privacy Management theory is employed as a sense-making tool for understanding how people who have adopted religious beliefs that significantly differ from the exclusivist Christian religious beliefs of their family members develop and utilize rules surrounding this private information. Sixteen individuals who have significantly different religious beliefs than their exclusivist Christian family members were interviewed in an effort to discern the privacy rules that guide their decisions regarding the revelation and concealment of their religious beliefs from their family members. An analysis of interview transcripts demonstrated that participants created rules that guided their decisions about what information about their religious beliefs to reveal, reasons to conceal their religious beliefs, when to reveal information about their religious beliefs, to whom they could reveal information about their religious beliefs, how to reveal information about their religious beliefs, and whether family members that were informed of the participant’s differing religious beliefs could be allowed to tell others. These results are considered in light of preceding literature on privacy management.