Well, I actually don’t know if he was the first, but Adam Smith can legitimately be classified as an economist of religion. His insights into religious organizations put forth in the Wealth of Nations have been largely ignored. Why? IMO, the short answer is that there is a tradition of thinking that religion was outside of the realm of economic analysis–a view that is still held by many. E.g., the Penguin edition of Wealth of Nations that I purchased and read as an undergraduate had actually removed those sections, probably because the editors naively thought those comments by Smith had nothing to do with economics. So I was not exposed to Smith’s insights until well after finishing graduate school.
There have, however, been some attempts to reintroduce Smith’s ideas to the academy. In a 1988 Journal of Political Economy article, Gary Anderson summarizes Smith’s ideas:
(1) he offered a theory explaining the…
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Utopia, you are standing in it! 
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