“IJNIPA” – Prayer Apps, Entrepreneurial Christianity, and the Spirituality of Business

Alex Jones [not the shock jock], the CEO and Co-Founder of the Catholic prayer and meditation app, Hallow, posted on LinkedIn in March 2025 that, “No faith-based app had ever cracked the top 10 before in the App Store. Hallow has now been in the top 3… 3 years in a row. Glory to God.” The success of Hallow points to a larger phenomenon of prayer apps as a prominent part of religious practice across traditions (Bellar, 2017; Patel, 2021). 

Anthropologists of Christianity have long argued that it is essential to pay attention to the ways that interactions with Scriptural practices and prayer are transformed in different media environments, including online and in apps (Bielo, 2021). Fifteen years ago, Matthew Engelke prophesied that anthropology of religion was “undergoing what might be remembered in a generation’s time as ‘the media turn’” (Engelke, 2010, 371). He was right. Social media and phone apps are at the very center of lived religious practice for millions of American Christians. Research into prayer apps has documented the impacts of spirituality on curating prayerful audio content and guided meditations (Bellar, 2017, 2021; Campbell et al, 2014; Dugan, 2019; Karis, 2020; Laird et al, 2024; Rinker et al, 2016; Wagner, 2012). Our paper moves the study of media, technology and spirituality forward by studying content that the prayer app users themselves upload.

Our paper will analyze publicly shared, anonymized data from a prominent prayer app [to remain unnamed until research is completed early summer 2025] used by over 15,000 people daily to better understand the cross-pollinating of Christian Spirituality and entrepreneurial and business practices (LoRusso 2016, 2017, 2020). Thousands of prayers are submitted each day to be prayed for by other users on the prayer app we study. Frequently, those prayers invoke God’s blessing, the Holy Spirit’s guidance and wisdom, and even Jesus’ blood over business endeavors, job searches, startups and searches for angel investors. A platform created by Christian tech entrepreneurs and sold to, typically, large evangelical churches, is used by aspiring Christian entrepreneurs to seek spiritual investors – “prayer warriors” – in the outcome of their prayer requests. 

We have been given unprecedented access granted to us by the founders of the app, including: 

• the publicly-shared in-app data on daily prayers of thousands of users [users can restrict prayers, and we do not have access to anything on "private" setting]
• the numbers of people who responded to each of those prayer requests with either a prayer [clicking “prayed”] or an emoji, or both
• the follow-up data supplied by the requestor on whether those prayers were “answered” or not 

We can paint a hyper-accurate and up-to-the-minute picture of the impact of the prayer-app business on how and what Christians pray for others and themselves. Perhaps even more interestingly, we demonstrate the prevalence of trickle-down entrepreneurship within Christian Spirituality, as an increasing number of prayers are directed toward gaining help in business ventures on the prayer apps, which are themselves business ventures for the founders.

 Far from being a “stress-free zone,” prayer app users bring their cares, concerns, stresses and fears to strangers who volunteer to regularly take on the burdens of others in prayer, asking God to intervene in the situations faced by peers. Usually these prayers can be broadly categorized into requests concerning 1) health/illness, 2) relationships, or 3) businesses/employment. Data show that prayers for the sick and for restoration of relationships are losing ground in the spiritual marketplace of prayer-attention to prayers for success in business, especially launching new endeavors and business startups. 

Research on the psychology and emotional experience of entrepreneurs demonstrates that the entrepreneurial boom and bust cycle is especially brutal to humans, and the worst experiences of high-highs and low-lows are shown to be mitigated through prayer and a relational identity with God (Smith et al, 2023). By soliciting prayer, entrepreneurs understand themselves to be seeking spiritual angel investors in their own mental and emotional help, staving off the dreaded burnout and all too real increased rates of depression, divorce and self-harm among entrepreneurs (Smith et al, 2023).

The difficulties of business endeavors and entrepreneurship are not experienced equally across the board.  Early data suggest that both women [self-identified in app] and people of color [assessed by uploaded picture] request prayers for entrepreneurial encouragement or for business venture success at a higher per capita rate than men or white folks, respectively. Moreover, early results suggest that white men tend to request prayers for additional clients or for meetings to go well, whereas women and racial and ethnic minorities more often seek prayers for encouragement and sustainability in their endeavors. As we continue to analyze the data, if clear patterns of correlation between business-focused, or entrepreneurial mental/emotional health prayers and either gender or race continue, we will note and theorize the significance of differing practices of use of prayer apps.  

We are excited to present the findings of our continuing research on the usage of prayer apps. Outside of God, and aside from the tech-founders themselves, no one has had access to the content of so many prayers. The increasing integration of business and entrepreneurship with Christian spirituality is but one promising avenue that we can pursue with this data set. We look forward to advancing the conversation on the integration of media, tech, capitalism and Christian Spirituality.