Religious entrepreneurship: advancing a distinctive domain

Although interest in the topic of religion and economic activity is not new – dating back to seminal works of Durkheim Citation([1912] 1965) and Weber Citation([1930] 2013), there is a difference in both the quantity and quality of an emerging research stream in entrepreneurship. In the past, a number of barriers have limited the development of this research, including lack of personal relevance to scholars, the declining importance of religion in parts of the world, scepticism about the validity of research on religion, and the seeming inevitability of secularization, among others (King Citation2008). However, scholars are overcoming these obstacles – real or perceived – because of religion's prevalence, centrality, established base of literature, and ability to provide novel answers to important questions in entrepreneurship (B. Smith, McMullen, and Cardon Citation2021; Tracey, Phillips, and Lounsbury Citation2014). In short, religion is a very old and still contemporary social phenomenon concerning varying populations worldwide, and which today increasingly attracts the attention of entrepreneurship scholars.