Holy Entrepreneurship and the Commodification of the Sacred: A Critical Synthetic Realist Analysis of Faith, Markets, and Exploitation in a Global Context

Abstract

The contemporary expansion of holy entrepreneurship—the strategic conversion of religious authority, sacred symbols, and communal trust into economic value—has become a salient feature of global religious life. This phenomenon cuts across religious traditions and geographical contexts, encompassing Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, and New Religious Movement settings. Drawing on sociology of religion, migration studies, and theological ethics, this article examines the mechanisms, ethical tensions, and structural consequences of holy entrepreneurship. Employing Critical Synthetic Realism (CSR) as a normative epistemic framework, the study argues that while some forms of religious entrepreneurship function as survival-oriented community mobilization, others constitute exploitative commodification of the sacred. Empirical evidence from Western legal systems demonstrates that religious authority—across traditions—has at times been weaponized for financial fraud, coercion, and abuse, underscoring the necessity of moral evaluation beyond confessional boundaries. Through a comparative Global South–Global North analysis, the paper distinguishes between entrepreneurship as extraction and entrepreneurship as survival, and demonstrates how neoliberal market logic, migration, and digital platforms intensify religious commodification. The article concludes that exploiting human vulnerability through the instrumentalization of God or the sacred is ethically impermissible and theologically corrupt, calling for renewed normative discernment and the recovery of de-commodified sacred spaces.