How a church-shaming TikTok star in KY is making good from her viral prank | Opinion
.png "Nikalie Monroe did a viral TikTok prank asking church for formula, but she said it’s turned into a large movement.")
By now, you’ve probably heard about the Eastern Kentucky woman who called churches, mosques and temples all over Kentucky, West Virginia, and Ohio, asking them for formula for her 2-month-old baby.
The subsequent TikTok videos of most of them saying no made Nikalie Monroe a social media star, increasing her followers from 20,000 to more than 500,000 in a few weeks.
Monroe’s children are much older than 2 months; she lives with them in Eastern Kentucky, where is she is a drug addiction counselor after a stint in the military. But when the federal government shut down in October and SNAP benefits were delayed, she saw the urgent need. As someone who deeply opposes Donald Trump and his policies, she wanted to make a point about how the federal government treats us, and how we treat each other.
“We are not doing enough to help each other,” Monroe said in a recent phone interview. “It was really depressing how many churches said no.”
Now, to be fair, a lot of churches don’t keep baby formula in their community closet. A lot of people who answered the phones looked for other solutions, like money or other resources Monroe could call. But plenty just turned her down flat. Monroe said she wasn’t trying to make any religion look bad per se, but she wanted to see how the help of last resort would react to this kind of emergency.
“It was one of those moments people knew folks would suffer, but if you’re not struggling yourself, you might not know what a mother is going through,” Monroe said. “We have 200 churches in every city, and you might get one that might be able to help. It’s been really eye-opening.”
But what also opened Monroe’s eyes were the few places that did say yes. Pastor Johnny Dunbar at Heritage Hope Church of God in Somerset, for example, was ready to go buy formula himself. So Monroe decided to drive to Somerset and visit his church and have a visit.
“He supports Trump, but he said I changed the way he thought about a lot of things, like a lesbian covered in tattoos, which I am,” she said. “We have to find middle ground with everyone before we can even try to grow.”
Dunbar calls Monroe “the little girl who deceived me,” but in a loving way.
“We actually got along pretty good,” he said in a phone interview. “She’s very liberal and I’m very conservative, but we love the baby.”
Dunbar said he used to be more judgmental about people who are very different, but a few years ago, he had a change of heart.
“We are so divided that we’re judging everything,” he said. “I want to come across as someone who can love people in spite of our differences. If I hug a gay person, I’m not affirming their lifestyle, but I’m telling them that Jesus loves them, and I love them.”
He’s not mad that Dunbar fooled him, he said, because “preachers get deceived and rejected all the time.” And besides, he’s now got a TikTok account of his own (”It’s like a puzzle to me”), and substantial donations and messages that have come in from all 50 states and 34 countries.
With some of the money, he bought $250 Kroger gift cards, handed them out to congregation members and told them to give them to the neediest people they knew.
“I’ve always prayed that my church would touch the world,” he said.
Monroe also went to Jeffersontown Baptist Church in Louisville, because they had reacted positively. But beyond making connections, she’s thrilled to see what her viral prank has started: people donating money and formula to churches all over.
“I’ve been tagged in videos of people giving more, and it’s been beautiful to see,” she said.
So what started as a gotcha prank has been turned into a kind of movement that reminds us — especially in this holiday season, in our terribly divisive political climate — to be kinder and more generous with one another.
She wants to keep making videos that harp on giving and compassion, because she believes that’s the only way to move this country forward.
“This is the only way to beat Trump,” she said. “His only mission is to divide people, and he’s done a really good job of that. I’m hoping to open more people’s eyes to compassion, to not judge people so much, I’m hoping that it makes people live a little differently.”
This story was originally published December 4, 2025 at 11:07 AM.
