Planting churches, growing identities: how religious entrepreneurship changes those who are called to it

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ABSTRACT The growing subfield of religious entrepreneurship typically examines how faith impacts entrepreneurial outcomes, but much less work has examined the reverse. In this inductive study, we interview church planters, individuals engaged in forming a new religious organization that may or may not be connected to a broader Christian denomination, to understand how entrepreneurial action impacts their religious identities. We find that their configuration of identities undergoes a process of transformation as they navigate conflicts and opportunities between the established church and the communities they served.