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On November 1, due to the ongoing government shutdown, funding ran out for beneficiaries of the SNAP program. According to the USDA, children comprise about 39% of SNAP recipients, with children under 5 years old making up 11% alone. Our youngest, most helpless citizens are going hungry because the government can’t agree.

In times of need, we’re traditionally told that one place we can go for help is churches, so a mom decided to perform a social experiment to see how helpful churches actually are when someone is desperate for help. 

Nikalie Monroe filmed herself calling 43 different churches with a fake scenario. She claimed that she was the mother of a 2-month-old who ran out of formula and was going hungry. She wanted to see who would be willing to help her. Monroe wasn’t optimistic about how her experiment would go, and it turned out that she was right to feel that way.

A mom called 43 different churches to see which ones would be willing to feed a starving baby.

In a TikTok video explaining what her plans were, Monroe asked an important question. “For those of you that actually go to church, and donate your hard-earned money, do you actually know what your money goes to when you donate to your church?” she asked. “If you’re investing your hard-earned money to give to your church, that church should be giving back to you and your family when you’re in need, and it should be giving back to your community with that money.”

Monroe admitted that she does not attend church herself, so she felt pretty apprehensive about the chance that anyone would help. “I want y’all to know that I want to be proven wrong,” she insisted. She began her experiment by calling churches in her hometown of Somerset, Kentucky, but eventually expanded her search to other states and even called churches that commenters specifically asked her to test.

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Most churches didn’t go out of their way to be helpful when Monroe called.

She called a total of 39 Christian churches of various denominations. Only seven said they would be willing to help her out with formula. These included Heritage Hope Church of God, Storyside Church, Our Lady of Fatima Catholic Church, First Baptist Church of Jeffersontown, Our Lady of the Hills Catholic Church, Linden Church of Christ, and Olathe Church of Christ. That’s a success rate of roughly 18%.

Interestingly, as another TikToker who caught wind of Monroe’s experiment, Bo Grant, pointed out, there were two religions that Monroe had a 100% success rate with — Islam and Buddhism. She called the Islamic Center of Charlotte, which readily agreed to help, as did the Won Buddhism Temple of North Carolina. 

Of course, it skews the numbers a bit to say these two religions were 100% successful when she only called one worship center per religion, but it is intriguing.

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People had a lot of strong feelings about Monroe’s experiment.

Jubilee Dawns addressed the experiment on Instagram. She noted that many, if not all, of these churches probably considered themselves pro-life, but when it came to potentially saving a life, they weren’t interested.

Monroe shared her final thoughts on the experiment in a video she made after all of the phone calls. 

“So my message out of all of this experiment is to look at each other kinder, help more people, and forgive and show empathy and compassion,” she said. “That’s what I want you all to do. Don’t let this experiment darken you and bring just more chaos and more hurt.”

A 2018 poll from NBC News and the Wall Street Journal found that there was only one issue Americans could agree on. 80% of respondents said the country was hopelessly divided. It was good for Monroe to make the point that she wasn’t trying to make that division worse through her experiment. However, it’s hard not to feel that way when it seems to prove that the world is more divided than ever.

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Mary-Faith Martinez is a writer with a bachelor’s degree in English and Journalism who covers news, psychology, lifestyle, and human interest topics.