This week’s viral news story comes from a TikTok creator: Nikalie Monroe. She’s been conducting a “social experiment,” in which she calls various churches, pretending to be a single mother of a starving baby and in need of baby formula. After tabulating the results, a trend is obvious; the most likely churches to offer help were Black churches, Catholic churches, synagogues, and even mosques. Meanwhile, the least likely churches to help were the most prevalent type in America—white, Protestant churches, especially evangelical ones.

The experiment has triggered a strong community response. Monroe has directed her viewers to donate to churches who passed the test, culminating in hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of donations. At the other end of the spectrum, some churches who failed responded with outright hostility. Most prominently, one pastor said she has the “spirit of a witch” because of her trickery. 

Monroe’s videos have also sparked a conversation about the function of churches—a “Come to Jesus” moment, if you will. Outrage has especially been directed at megachurches like Lakewood Church, the fourth-largest church in the U.S. by average attendance, which wanted her to complete an application process for their “benevolence ministry” before receiving a container of baby formula. 

But the fact that 33 out of the 43 tested churches refused to help should not be a surprise to anyone who is aware of religion’s prevalence in politics in America. Enshrined in our constitution is a separation of church and state. This critical distinction was established at a time when the framers of the constitution were wary of corruption, both by the government persecuting religious minorities and by the clergy securing preferential treatment from governments. This is why America’s religious policy is one of the most lenient in the world, giving all churches tax-exempt status and very light regulations, while also feverishly protecting freedom of religion. Importantly, this tax-exempt status is also justified by the claim that churches are non-profit charitable organizations, a status whose authenticity is rarely investigated by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).

But organized religion has not held up its end of the bargain. Not only do some churches shirk their charitable duties, but the concept of a secular America is now consistently under attack. As a macabre example, one of the many sources of Charlie Kirk’s infamy before his assassination was his political advocacy to strengthen the link between Christianity and conservatism. He regularly held events at Protestant megachurches and repeatedly framed liberal politics as an existential threat to Christianity. The result of this political doctrine is that legal arguments for preserving conversion therapy for queer people or overturning gay marriage are made on the grounds of religious freedom. Blurring the lines between religion and politics doesn’t just turn a political enemy into an unholy one; it also galvanizes support for your political goals.

But the political concept most relevant to Monroe’s experiment is the concept of the “undeserving poor,” one of the most important mechanics of conservatism. The “underserving poor” is an organization of society into those who deserve power and wealth and those who don’t. Accordingly, giving welfare to able-bodied unemployed people or social security to the elderly still able to work is a perversion of their natural order of society. Not to mention that the “undeserving poor” often has a racial element. The most common stereotypes of the undeserving poor population are Black people, who are simultaneously “lazy” and “thugs,” or illegal immigrants, who are somehow stealing our social security benefits despite not being eligible for them. Then, is it any surprise that Lakewood Church has an application process for financial aid? The corruption caused by a linking of conservative politics and Christianity goes both ways. The same gatekeeping that conservatives insert into our social safety nets is mirrored in their own forms of charity.

And now we must bring back the context of Monroe’s experiment. It happened at the height of the government shutdown, when the Trump administration was defying court orders in order to starve millions of Americans by denying them Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits. One common argument against “government handouts” is that assistance for the poor could be better handled by charitable organizations like churches. In calling up all these churches, she wanted to test whether that argument actually holds any water. The results have shown us the reality behind this rhetoric: when a conservative government expands the “undeserving poor” to include anyone who needs help, churches willing to be complicit in the conservative project will happily introduce their own methods of gatekeeping to make sure that food will be given only to the starving babies who deserve it.

When Atheists criticize Christians, one of their favorite techniques is to smugly recite Bible quotes to parrot back all the ways that Christians fail to live up to their ideals. I’ll restrain myself to just one example: the parable of the Good Samaritan from the Gospel of Luke. Once, a follower of Jesus asked him: “What must I do to reach Heaven?” Jesus responded with a story about a Jew who had been robbed and beaten while traveling. Both a priest and a fellow Jew passed by without helping. But then, a Samaritan—traditionally a bitter enemy to a Jew—stopped and helped the injured Jew by carrying him to an inn where he could be fed and healed. The moral of the story is clear: it’s not enough to protect those who are close to you. Those who claim to love their neighbor, yet, deliberately choose to hurt the tired, the poor, the huddled masses yearning to breathe free. Those are the types of “Christians” that will never see the light of Heaven.