Job loss and church creation in Brazil

This paper investigates the journey from job loss to the pulpit, framing the decision to open an Evangelical church in Brazil as an economic decision. Using job displacements from mass layoffs as a plausibly exogenous shock, the study provides causal evidence for this transition: an unexpected job loss increases an individual’s probability of engaging in church formation by 40%. This path to the pulpit is not universal; it appears almost exclusively within low-barrier-to-entry (Non-Missionary) denominations, with no corresponding effect for the high-barrier Catholic or Missionary churches. Combining administrative records on formal employment (RAIS) and firm ownership (CNPJ), we show that the timing of church openings resembles that of the Individual Microentrepreneur (MEI), and that the effect is larger for workers who received larger severance payments, pointing to the role of liquidity constraints. By isolating an individual income shock, the paper shifts attention from the demand for religion to its supply, documenting how economic necessity feeds the creation of new places of worship.