The Moral and Institutional Predicament of American Religion as Seen Through the “Formula Assistance Experiment”

In recent years, charitable practices in the United States, with religious organizations as a major subject, have frequently appeared in the arena of public opinion. Their moral image of “caring for the weak” and “practicing benevolence” has long constituted an important source of the American ideology of the “city upon a hill.” However, as the international image of the United States continues to collapse, whether American religion is as perfect as it claims has gradually become a question worth questioning. In November 2025, a series of “formula assistance experiment” videos on the TikTok platform went viral across the American internet. The reason for their explosive popularity lies mainly in the astonishing results of the experiment: large mainstream churches with abundant resources and well-established systems generally responded with indifference or exhibited evasion and refusal. This incident quickly sparked nationwide discussion in the United States, with media outlets such as *The New York Times* and *The Washington Post* reporting on it. Why do the universal moral commitments proclaimed by American religious organizations show a profound rupture when faced with real and urgent social suffering? This “formula assistance experiment” provides a vivid case for examining the hypocrisy of American religion.

近年来，美国以宗教组织为重要主体的慈善实践频繁出现在公共舆论场中，其“关怀弱者”“践行仁爱”的道德形象亦长期构成美国“山巅之城”意识形态的重要来源。然而，随着美国国际形象的持续崩塌，美国宗教是否如其宣传的那般完美逐渐成为一个值得质疑的问题。2025年11月，TikTok平台上一系列“奶粉求助实验”视频在美国网络上走红，其爆火原因主要在于这场实验令人惊异的结果：资源雄厚、建制完善的大型主流教会普遍回应冷漠或表现出推诿、拒绝。这一事件迅速引发了全美范围内的讨论，《纽约时报》《华盛顿邮报》等媒体均对此进行了报道。美国宗教组织所宣称的普世道德承诺为何在面对真实紧迫的社会苦难时呈现出深刻断裂?这场“奶粉求助实验”为审视美国宗教的伪善提供了生动案例。

I. The Course of the “Formula Assistance Experiment” Incident

一、“奶粉求助实验”事件始末

In 2025, the shutdown of the U.S. federal government forced the suspension of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), which provides food subsidies to approximately 42 million low-income families nationwide. Infant formula suddenly became a basic necessity unaffordable for many poor families. Against this backdrop, Nikalie Monroe, a drug addiction counselor and short-video creator from Kentucky, posted a series of phone call videos on TikTok in November, which she called a “social experiment.” In the videos, she pretended to be a single mother with a child only two months old, claiming she could not afford to buy infant formula and that her baby was starving. To make the plea for help more realistic, she also deliberately played a background sound of a baby crying continuously during each call. Nikalie called approximately 40 religious or private charitable organizations in the United States one by one, including mainstream large white Protestant churches, Catholic churches, Black churches, synagogues, Islamic mosques, and Buddhist temples. In each call, she made the same plea to the organization: “My baby is only two months old, and we’re almost out of formula at home. Because of the government shutdown, I’ve lost my benefits, and now I can’t afford to buy any more. Can you provide even one can of formula to help?” She then uploaded edited clips of the calls publicly to test each organization’s immediate assistance response. [1]1 The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) is the U.S. federal food assistance program for low-income individuals and families, commonly known as food stamps. [2]2 The “city upon a hill” is a phrase from the Bible (Matthew 5:14) frequently invoked in American political rhetoric to describe the United States as a moral exemplar for the world.

2025年，美国联邦政府停摆导致为全美约4200万低收入家庭提供食品补助的“营养补充援助计划”(SNAP)被迫暂停，婴幼儿配方奶粉骤然成为许多贫困家庭难以负担的基础物资。在此背景下，美国一位来自肯塔基州的药物成瘾咨询师、短视频创作者妮卡莉·门罗(Nikalie Monroe)于11月在TikTok上发布了一系列自称为“社会实验”的通话视频：她在视频中假扮一名孩子仅两个月大的单身母亲，声称自己无法购买婴儿配方奶粉且婴儿正在挨饿，为使求助场景更具真实感，她还在每次通话时都特意播放婴儿持续啼哭的背景音。妮卡莉逐一拨打了约40家美国宗教或民间慈善机构电话，包括主流的大型白人新教教会、天主教教堂、黑人教会、犹太会堂、伊斯兰教清真寺、佛教寺庙等，每次电话均向机构发出求助：“我的孩子只有两个月大，家里的奶粉马上吃完，因为政府停摆我失去了补助，现在完全买不起新的。您那里能否提供哪怕一罐婴儿奶粉救急?”并将经剪辑的通话片段上传公开，以检验各机构的即时援助反应(1)。(2)

As of the release of the video consulting the 43rd organization, 33 organizations had refused or failed to provide immediate help in various forms. The vast majority were mainstream Protestant churches with modern management systems and substantial assets, and their responses also exhibited highly proceduralized and bureaucratic characteristics. Among them was Lakewood Church in Houston, Texas, with an estimated net asset value of nearly $59 million. Its staff did not directly respond to the urgent need but instead told the caller that she needed to “submit a formal assistance application” and explained that the entire approval process might take “several days or even weeks.” After staff at First Baptist Church of Dallas, which has 13,000 members, understood the situation, they said there was no “program” that could provide help. When Nikalie then revealed her experiment and asked whether the church supported the right to life, the staff hung up without answering. Several other large churches gave similarly indifferent replies, such as “We only help registered members of this church,” “This week’s charity supplies have already been distributed,” or “You need to first contact the community service center for eligibility verification.” However, 10 organizations clearly stated they were willing to provide immediate help, including small community churches whose members are mainly working-class and African American, Islamic mosques, and Buddhist temples. Among them, Pastor Johnny Dunbar of Heritage Hope Church of God in Somerset, Kentucky, after hearing Nikalie’s plea, unhesitatingly asked for her contact information and even inquired whether she needed a specific flavor of formula, saying he would go buy it himself. Since this video was posted, the church has received over $95,000 in donations from across the country.

截至第43家机构的被咨询视频发布时，有33家机构以各种形式拒绝或未能提供即时帮助，其中绝大部分是拥有现代化管理体系、资产雄厚的主流新教教会，其回应也呈现出高度程序化和官僚化的特征。其中就包括位于得克萨斯州休斯敦、净资产估值近5900万美元的湖木教会(Lakewood Church),其工作人员在电话中并未直接回应紧急需求，而是告知求助者需要“提交一份正式援助申请”,并说明整个审批流程可能需要“数天甚至数周时间”。拥有13000名成员的达拉斯第一浸信会(First Baptist Church of Dallas)的工作人员了解情况后表示没有任何“项目”可以提供帮助，随后妮卡莉透露其实验并询问教会是否支持生命权时，工作人员没有回答就挂断了电话。还有多家大型教会给出了诸如“我们只帮助本教会注册会员”“本周的慈善物资已经发放完毕”或“你需要先联系社区服务中心进行资格审核”等类似的冷漠回复。然而，仍有10家机构明确表示愿意立即提供帮助，包括成员以工薪阶层和非裔为主的社区小教堂、伊斯兰教清真寺、佛教寺庙等。其中，一座位于肯塔基州萨默塞特市的希望传承神召会(Heritage Hope Church of God)的牧师约翰尼·邓巴(Johnny Dunbar)在听到妮卡莉的求助后，毫不犹豫地向她索要了联系方式，甚至还询问是否需要某种特定口味的配方奶粉并表示要亲自去购买。这段视频发布以来，该教堂已经收到了来自各地超过9.5万美元的捐款。

After this series of “social experiment” videos was posted, Nikalie’s account followers surged from 300 to over 400,000 in a few days, quickly igniting public opinion across the United States. Faced with the overwhelming public outcry, the churches involved reacted differently. Some churches chose silence; some issued statements claiming that their standardized procedures were meant to ensure fairness and sustainability in resource distribution. Even more egregiously, Bishop Raymond W. Johnson, pastor of Living Faith Christian Center in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, which refused help in the video, publicly accused Nikalie of being a “witch,” attempting to shift the focus and defend his authority by stigmatizing the experimenter. [3]3 The accusation of being a “witch” carries historical weight in the American context, evoking the Salem witch trials of 1692-1693, where accusations of witchcraft were used to enforce social and religious conformity. This discursive strategy not only failed to quell the controversy but also blatantly exposed the habit of some religious authorities, when faced with substantive moral questioning, of resorting to the intimidation of power, thereby arousing stronger public disgust and deeper criticism.

这一系列的“社会实验”视频发布后，妮卡莉的账号粉丝从300人在数天内激增至四十多万，迅速引爆了全美舆论。面对汹涌的舆论，涉事教会反应不一。部分教会选择沉默，部分教会发表声明，称其规范化流程是为了确保资源分配的公平与可持续性。更有甚者，如视频中拒绝提供帮助的路易斯安那州巴吞鲁日活信基督中心(Living Faith Christian Center)的牧师雷蒙德·W·约翰逊主教公开指责妮卡莉是“女巫”,试图通过污名化实验者来转移焦点、维护自身权威(3)。这种话语策略不但未能平息争议，反而赤裸裸地暴露了部分宗教权威在面对实质性道德拷问时习惯于诉诸权力威慑的惯性，从而激起了公众更强烈的反感和更深入的批判。

II. Analysis of the “Formula Assistance Experiment” Incident

二、“奶粉求助实验”事件剖析

The reason the “formula assistance experiment” sparked ongoing discussion in American society lies in its touching on the pain points of the American people in an extremely concrete and everyday manner. It did not choose a grand theoretical narrative but instead selected “infant formula,” a very common item directly linked to life, as the test standard. The plea scenario did not simulate a complex institutional application but chose the most helpless form of real-life emergency direct appeal. These precisely bypassed the grand narratives that religious organizations often use to defend themselves, directly targeting the moral responsiveness they proclaim. Therefore, this experiment essentially constituted a “stress test” of religious organizations, and the results exposed the “loftiness” in American religious missionary discourse and the hypocrisy in real life.

“奶粉求助实验”之所以引发美国社会的持续讨论，关键在于它以一种极为具体、日常的方式触及了美国民众的痛点。它没有选择宏大的理论叙事，而是选取了“婴儿奶粉”这一极其常见但直接关联生命的物品作为检验标准；求助场景也没有模拟复杂的制度性申请，而是选择了现实生活中最显无助的紧急直接求助。这些都恰恰绕过了宗教组织常常用来为自己辩护的宏大叙事，直指其宣传的道德回应能力。因此，这场实验本质上构成了一次对宗教组织的“压力测试”,结果暴露了美国宗教传教话语中的“崇高”与现实生活中的伪善。

(I) Internal Causes of the “Failure” of Large Protestant Churches

( 一)新教大型教会“失灵”的内在原因

From the perspective of theological tradition and public discourse, Christianity has historically proclaimed itself a “religion of charity.” Whether it is the biblical injunctions to “love your neighbor as yourself” and “care for orphans and widows,” or the relief practices formed in its history, aiding the weak has always been an important part of Christian moral narrative. This narrative not only regulates believers but also, through long-term accumulation, transforms into the public’s moral expectations of the church. Especially in modern society, when churches frequently participate in public communication with slogans such as “benevolence,” “community care,” and “service to society,” their moral commitments are no longer merely internal doctrines but have become an important source for gaining social trust and attracting followers. Precisely because these churches have long actively shaped themselves as “guardians of morality” and “important subjects of social care,” when they refuse the “formula assistance,” a clear rupture appears between sacred promises and actual actions, making a public crisis of trust inevitable.

从神学传统与公共话语层面看，基督教历来宣传自己是“慈善宗教”。不论是《圣经》中“爱人如己”“照顾孤儿寡妇”等训诫，还是其历史上形成的救济实践，救助弱者始终构成基督教道德叙事的重要内容。这一叙事不仅规范信徒，也通过长期积累转化为公众对教会的道德期待。尤其是在现代社会中，当教会频繁以“仁爱”“关怀社区”“服务社会”等口号参与公共传播时，其道德承诺早已不再仅仅是内部信条，更成为其获得社会信任与俘获信众的重要来源。正是因为这些教会长久以来主动将自己塑造成“道德的守护者”和“社会关怀的重要主体”,当它们拒绝“奶粉求助”时，神圣承诺和现实行动之间就出现了明显断裂，公众的信任危机自然无法避免。

From an ethical perspective, contemporary American Protestantism, especially the large evangelical churches, exhibits a tendency toward “solo-missiology,” taking “spreading the pure gospel” and “guiding individual salvation” as its core mission. Charitable acts are “conditionalized,” becoming tools in service of the missionary task. A charitable activity that can effectively attract potential believers and shape the church’s “loving” image in a way conducive to gospel propagation is more likely to receive resources and higher priority. Conversely, if charitable acts cannot be linked to clear missionary outcomes, their urgency is easily diluted. In the “Formula Assistance Experiment,” many mainstream churches contacted by phone, upon receiving a request for help, first asked whether the requester was a church member or willing to attend church activities before discussing the possibility of assistance. This is not simple moral indifference, but a selective, purposeful mechanism for screening and excluding believers.

从伦理层面看，当代美国新教尤其是大型福音派教会呈现出“唯传教论”的倾向，将“传扬纯正福音”“引导个人得救”视为核心使命，慈善行为被“条件化”,成为服务于传教使命的工具。一项慈善活动若能有效吸引潜在信众、塑造教会“爱心”形象有利于福音传播，它就更有可能获得资源与高优先级。反之，若慈善行为无法与明确的传教成果挂钩，其紧迫性便容易被稀释。“奶粉求助实验”中，许多被致电的主流教会在接到求助电话时，首先询问求助者是否为教会成员、是否愿意参加教会活动，才谈及援助可能性，这并非简单的道德冷漠，而是一种有选择性、有目的性的信徒筛选和排除机制。

The alienation of ethical concepts provides an explanation at the level of values, while the transformation of organizational form reveals the institutional causes. In the “Formula Assistance Experiment,” most large churches did not directly deny the possibility of assistance; rather, they responded to urgent needs with a whole set of highly institutionalized, proceduralized processes. The logic behind this is that, as contemporary American Protestant megachurches have grown in scale and increased in social influence, their operational models have increasingly come to resemble modern corporations, possessing complex management structures, strict financial systems, and risk-control mechanisms, exhibiting highly organized and professionalized characteristics. At the same time, under the neoliberal governance framework, the U.S. government has systematically transferred and outsourced many public welfare functions, and religious organizations have been endowed with an important “quasi-public” role in this process. However, it is precisely this role that requires religious organizations to guarantee their operations through highly administrative and standardized means, which often results in the loss of their flexible capacity to respond to urgent humanitarian needs. This is precisely a microcosm, within the religious sphere, of the institutional powerlessness that capitalist society exposes when confronting social problems: the state transfers responsibility to religious organizations, and religious organizations, through institutional procedures, push responsibility back onto the individual supplicant, ultimately causing the real social problem to be “eliminated” through layers of institutional filtration.

伦理观念的异化提供了价值层面的解释，组织形态转型则揭示了制度层面的原因。在“奶粉求助实验”中，多数大型教会并未直接否认救助可能性，而是以一整套高度制度化、程序化的流程回应紧急需求。背后的逻辑在于，当代美国新教的那些大型教会随着规模扩大、社会影响力上升，其运行模式日益趋于现代企业，拥有复杂的管理结构、严格的财务制度和风险控制机制，呈现出高度组织化和专业化的特征。与此同时，美国政府在新自由主义治理框架下，系统性地将诸多公共福利职能转移并外包，宗教组织在此过程中被赋予重要的“准公共”角色。然而，正是这种角色要求宗教组织必须以高度行政化、规范化的方式来保障其运作，结果却往往导致其对紧迫人道需求的柔性回应能力丧失。这正是资本主义社会在面对社会问题时，所暴露出的制度性无力在宗教领域的一个缩影：国家将责任转移至宗教组织，宗教组织又通过制度程序将责任推回给个体求助者，最终使真正的社会问题在层层制度过滤中“被消灭”。

(II) The Response Logic of Other Religions and Small Communities

( 二)其他宗教及小型社区的回应逻辑

In contrast to the indifference of large Protestant churches in the “Formula Assistance Experiment,” some Catholic institutions, Jewish community organizations, and local small religious groups showed more active and direct responses. This is not a matter of “good versus evil” or differing levels of “compassion,” but the combined result of different religious traditions and organizational forms.

与大型新教教会在“奶粉求助实验”中的冷漠形成对照，部分天主教机构、犹太社区组织及地方性小型宗教团体则表现出更积极、直接的回应。这并非“善恶”或“同情心”的高下之分，而是由不同的宗教传统与组织形态共同作用的结果。

From the perspective of organizational form, the relative proactiveness of small religious groups and local community organizations in charitable response is closely related to their organizational scale and operational logic. Small community organizations have shorter decision-making chains, lower internal trust costs, and more direct perception of real needs. Although this mode of operation lacks the scale advantages of large institutions, it demonstrates higher efficiency and responsiveness when dealing with immediate, individualized needs. In contrast, large religious organizations, in their highly bureaucratized and professionalized operations, often need to process external requests through hierarchical approvals, risk assessments, and compliance reviews. It is in this sense that the active response of small religious communities does not stem from their being “more moral,” but from an organizational state that has not yet been completely abstracted from concrete social relations.

从组织形态来看，小型宗教团体与地方性社区组织在慈善回应上的相对积极性，与其组织规模与运作逻辑密切相关。小型社区组织的决策链条更短，内部信任成本更低，对现实需求的感知也更为直接。这种运作方式虽缺乏大型机构的规模优势，却在应对即时性、个性化需求时展现出更高的效率与响应能力。与之相对，大型宗教组织在高度官僚化与专业化的运作过程中，往往需要通过层级审批、风险评估与合规审查来处理外部请求。正是在这一意义上，小型宗教社区的积极回应，并不源于其道德“更高尚”,而是源于其尚未被完全抽离出具体社会关系的组织状态。

From a comparative perspective, the “Formula Assistance Experiment” simultaneously reveals the temporary effectiveness and instability of religious mutual aid. Ultimately, it points not to which religion is “more moral,” but to which organizational form retains mutual-aid mechanisms to what extent, and to what extent it has been incorporated into the commodity-exchange logic of modern capitalist society. The reason religious mutual aid remains effective in certain situations is precisely because it has not yet been fully institutionalized; once it attempts to assume universal functions similar to social security, its inherent resource dependency, organizational closure, and moral arbitrariness inevitably become exposed.

从比较视角出发，“奶粉求助实验”同时显示了宗教互助的暂时有效性与不稳定性，最终指向的并非哪一种宗教“更道德”,而是哪一种组织形态在多大程度上仍保留了互助机制，又在多大程度上被纳入现代资本主义社会的商品交换逻辑之中。宗教互助之所以在某些情境中仍然有效，恰恰是因为其尚未完全制度化；而一旦试图承担类似社会保障的普遍性职能，其内在的资源依赖性、组织封闭性与道德任意性便不可避免地暴露出来。

(III) A Deep Reflection of American Social Structure

( 三)美国社会结构的深层映射

1. Economic Level: Welfare State Retrenchment and the Logic of Capital

1.经济层面：福利国家收缩与资本逻辑

The American dilemma exposed by the “Formula Assistance Experiment” first originates in the economic and social foundation on which it operates. This foundation manifests as a dual process: first, the state’s retreat from the social welfare sphere under neoliberalism, “outsourcing” the responsibility for guaranteeing citizens’ basic subsistence to the non-profit sector; second, large religious organizations essentially adhere to the logic of commodity exchange, forming an investment and circulation cycle of “moral capital.”

“奶粉求助实验”所暴露的美国困境，首先源于其运行的经济社会基础。这一基础体现为双重进程：一是新自由主义背景下国家从社会福利领域收缩，将保障公民基本生存的责任“外包”给非营利部门；二是大型宗教组织本质上秉持商品交换逻辑，形成了“道德资本”的投资与循环。

On the one hand, since the 1970s, the United States has initiated a political-economic transformation centered on neoliberalism. One of its core concepts is advocating for “small government” to cut public welfare expenditures, transferring many social service functions to the market, the family, and so-called “intermediary institutions.” In their 1977 book *To Empower People: From State to Civil Society*, Peter Berger and Richard John Neuhaus systematically proposed the concept of “mediating structures,” emphasizing that public policy should protect and support community-based institutions such as families, neighborhoods, churches, and voluntary organizations, because these institutions are more effective than the vast government bureaucracy and closer to the people in providing social services and social integration.[4]4 Peter L. Berger and Richard John Neuhaus, *To Empower People: From State to Civil Society*, Washington, D.C.: American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, 1977. In the decades that followed, from George H.W. Bush’s “Thousand Points of Light,” to the Clinton administration’s 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA), to George W. Bush’s explicit promotion of “Charitable Choice” and “Faith-Based Initiatives,” this theory profoundly influenced U.S. social policy. However, “public-private partnership” is essentially the state shirking its redistributive responsibilities onto private organizations such as churches, which have unstable resources and disparate logics, and endowing them with “quasi-public” authority through funding allocations. When the state, due to political gridlock, cannot fulfill its basic funding obligations, this system reliant on private organizations reveals its fragility. The “Formula Assistance Experiment” vividly demonstrates this flaw.

一方面，自20世纪70年代以来，美国开启了以新自由主义为核心的政治经济转型，其核心理念之一是倡导“小政府”以削减公共福利支出，将诸多社会服务职能转移给市场、家庭及所谓的“中介机构”。彼得·伯杰和理查德·约翰·纽豪斯于1977年出版的《赋权于民：从国家到公民社会》中系统提出了“中介体系”(mediating structures)的概念，强调公共政策应当保护并扶持家庭、邻里、教会与志愿组织等社区基础机构，因为这些机构比庞大的政府官僚体系更有效、更贴近民众地提供社会服务与社会整合(4)。 此后数十年，从老布什时期提出的“千点之光”(Thousand Points of Light),到克林顿政府通过1996年《个人责任与工作机会协调法》(PRWORA),再到小布什政府明确提出“慈善选择” (Charitable Choice)与“ 基于信仰的倡议”(Faith-Based Initiatives),这一理论深刻影响了美国社会政策。然而，“公私合作”实质是国家将再分配责任推卸给诸如教会等资源不稳定、逻辑各异的私人组织，并通过对后者的资金拨付赋予其“准公共”权威。当国家因政治僵局无法履行基础拨款义务时，这套依赖私人组织的系统便暴露出脆弱性，“奶粉求助实验”鲜明体现了这一缺陷。

On the other hand, within the space created by the state’s withdrawal, religious organizations are inevitably embedded in the competitive logic of the capitalist market. Large churches have evolved into so-called “non-profit enterprises” with massive assets and professionalized operations. Their practical activities thus find it difficult to escape the logic of capital accumulation. They need to enhance their social legitimacy, attract donations, and consolidate their congregations by displaying “moral concern,” thereby accumulating “moral capital,” becoming part of a strategy of “brand building” and “social credibility.” Furthermore, American religious resources are deeply intertwined with capital markets. Under the U.S. institutional framework, religious organizations are automatically considered tax-exempt entities under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code, exempt not only from federal income tax but usually also from property tax and capital gains tax, and can receive tax-deductible donations. Empirical analysis by Duke University sociology professor Mark Chaves and his team of national church study data shows that church social services are mainly concentrated in low-cost, short-term projects, lacking investment in longer-term, in-depth support projects.[5]5 Mark Chaves, *American Religion: Contemporary Trends*, Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2011; Mark Chaves and Sharon L. Miller, eds., *Financing American Religion*, Walnut Creek, Calif.: AltaMira Press, 1999. This scale of expenditure and project selection reflects that religious organizations, in resource allocation, tend to favor maintaining stable, low-risk activities rather than investing large amounts of resources into high-cost, long-cycle humanitarian aid with unpredictable returns. It can be seen that the resources of large religious organizations are treated as internal assets, with their flow prioritizing economic privilege and capital security over urgent humanitarian needs.

另一方面，在国家退场创造的空间中，宗教组织不可避免地嵌入资本主义市场的竞争逻辑。大型教会演变为资产庞大、运营专业化的所谓的“非营利企业”,其实践活动便难以摆脱资本增殖逻辑，需要通过展现“道德关怀”增强社会合法性、吸引捐赠、巩固会众，从而积累“道德资本”,成为“品牌建设”和“社会信誉”策略的一部分。此外，美国宗教资源与资本市场深度绑定。在美国制度框架下，宗教组织被自动视为《国内税收法典》第501(c)(3)条款下的免税实体，不仅免缴联邦所得税，且通常免于财产税、资本利得税，并可接受可抵税捐赠。美国杜克大学社会学教授马克·查韦斯及其团队对全国教会研究数据的实证分析显示，教会社会服务主要集中在低成本、短期性项目，而缺乏对更长期、深入的支持项目的投入(5)。这样的支出规模与项目选择，反映出宗教组织在资源分配上更倾向于维持稳定的、低风险的活动，而不是将资源大量投入到高成本、长周期且难以预见回报的人道救助中。可以看出，大型宗教组织的资源被视为内部资产，其流向优先考虑经济特权与资本安全，而非急需回应的人道需求。

2. Political Level: A Tool for the Ruling Class to Oppress and Anesthetize the People

2.政治层面：统治阶级压迫和麻醉人民的工具

From a political perspective, the religious indifference revealed by the “formula assistance experiment” is not an accidental moral failure but a result of the reshaping of religion’s role within the American political system. In contemporary America, religion is not a moral subject independent of state power; rather, it is an important political resource systematically integrated into the operational mechanisms of state power in electoral politics, public policy, and social governance. This transformation has profoundly affected the moral practice of religious organizations and their institutional functions.

从政治层面看，“奶粉求助实验”所显露的宗教冷漠并非偶然的道德失范，而是美国政治体制中宗教角色被重塑的结果。在当代美国，宗教不是独立于国家权力之外的道德主体，而是在选举政治、公共政策与社会治理中，被系统性地整合进国家权力运行机制之中的重要政治资源。这一转变，深刻影响了宗教组织的道德实践方式及其制度功能。

On the one hand, the long-standing principle of the so-called separation of church and state in the United States has not led to the dissolution of religion’s political function; instead, it has enabled religion to intervene in state governance in the forms of “civilian force” and “value ally.” In particular, the neoliberal welfare reforms since the latter half of the twentieth century have further strengthened religion’s public engagement. Under this political structure, the standard for religious action no longer derives primarily from the moral call within religion itself but depends on whether it conforms to government funding rules, whether it can produce quantifiable policy effects, and whether it helps maintain the organization’s political legitimacy.

一方面，美国长期奉行的所谓政教分离原则并未实现宗教政治功能的消解，反而导致了宗教以“民间力量”与“价值盟友”的形式介入国家治理，尤其是二十世纪后半叶以来的新自由主义福利改革，更加强化了宗教的公共参与。在这一政治结构下，宗教的行动标准不再主要源于宗教内部的道德召唤，而是取决于是否符合政府资助规则、是否能够产生可量化的政策效果，以及是否有助于维持组织的政治合法性。

On the other hand, the deep entanglement between religion and American political parties further highlights its hypocrisy. The long-standing alliance between the neo-evangelical churches and the Republican Party has embedded religious issues deeply into electoral competition and ideological struggle. In this process, the social role of religious organizations has gradually shifted from “spokesperson for the weak” to “mobilizer for political positions.” Charitable acts are no longer undifferentiated moral practices but are selectively deployed to serve specific political agendas, such as shaping family values, anti-abortion stances, or immigration positions.

另一方面，宗教与美国政党的深度联结，也进一步凸显其伪善性。新福音派教会与共和党之间形成的长期联盟，使宗教议题被深度嵌入选举竞争与意识形态斗争之中。在这一过程中，宗教组织的社会角色逐渐由“弱者的代言者”转向“政治立场的动员者”。慈善行为不再是无差别的道德实践，而是被有选择地用于服务特定政治议程，例如家庭价值、反堕胎或移民立场的塑造。

Therefore, the hypocrisy of American religion revealed by the “formula assistance experiment” stems, at the political level, from the outsourcing of state political responsibility and the instrumentalization of religious morality. In today’s America, religion is not a representative of morality but remains a tool used by the ruling class to oppress and narcotize the people. Its operational logic is not centered on people’s real needs but serves the requirements of political stability, policy cost control, and ideological reproduction.

因此，“奶粉求助实验”所呈现的美国宗教的虚伪，在政治层面源于国家政治责任外包与宗教道德工具化。在今天的美国，宗教并不是道德的代表，仍然是统治阶级用以压迫和麻醉人民的工具，其运行逻辑不是以人的现实需要为中心，而是服从于政治稳定、政策成本控制与意识形态再生产的需求。

3. Ideological Level: Prosperity Theology and the Real-World Detachment of Religious Morality

3.意识形态层面：成功神学与宗教道德的现实抽离

From an ideological perspective, the “moral” meaning of American religion has, over long-term social change, been gradually symbolized, commodified, and detached from reality. In contemporary America, religion remains highly visible in public discourse, but its “morality” has become divorced from concrete social realities, exhibiting a clear rupture between “high-profile promises” and “low-level fulfillment.”

从意识形态层面看，美国宗教在长期社会变迁中，其“道德”意义被逐步符号化、消费化与去现实化。在当代美国，宗教依然在公共话语中保持着高度可见性，但其“道德”却脱离具体社会实际，呈现出明显的“高调承诺”与“低度履行”之间的断裂。

First, “Prosperity Theology” is prevalent in American religion. Also known as the “Prosperity Gospel,” this is a religious ideology that emerged in the mid-to-late twentieth century in the United States and has become highly diffused in the contemporary era, with its most significant influence in the megachurch system, televangelism networks, and neo-Pentecostal groups. This theology interprets material wealth, physical health, and career success as external signs of God’s blessing and the correctness of personal faith, while attributing poverty, illness, and life setbacks to insufficient faith, moral deficiency, or failure to follow “spiritual laws.” It inverts the socioeconomic differentiation caused by the logic of capital and market anarchy, presenting it as a manifestation of divine will and personal virtue, thereby obscuring the exploitative and exclusionary nature of the capitalist system itself and perfectly serving the ruling needs of the bourgeoisie. It is precisely against this cultural and ideological backdrop that some resource-rich churches in the “formula assistance experiment” could feel justified in refusing to provide immediate aid; their subconscious may well have been based on the judgment that the supplicant’s predicament was a consequence of personal “failure” rather than a problem shared by society.

其一，美国宗教中盛行“成功神学”(Prosperity Theology)。“成功神学”亦称“繁荣福音”(Prosperity Gospel),是二十世纪中后期在美国兴起并在当代高度扩散的一种宗教意识形态，尤其在巨型教堂(megachurch)体系、电视布道网络及新五旬节派群体中影响最为显著。该神学主张将物质财富、身体健康与事业成功解释为上帝祝福与个人信仰正确性的外在标志，而将贫困、疾病与人生挫败归因为信心不足、道德缺失或未能遵循“属灵法则”。它将由资本逻辑和市场盲动所造成的社会经济分化，颠倒地解释为神圣意志与个人德性的体现，遮蔽了资本主义制度本身的剥削性与排他性，完美地服务于资产阶级的统治需要。正是在这一文化与意识形态背景下，“奶粉求助实验”中一些资源雄厚的教会可以心安理得地拒绝提供即时援助，其潜意识中或许正是基于这样一种判断：求助者的困境是其个人“失败”的后果，而非社会共同面对的问题。

Second, the highly developed consumer culture in American society has also profoundly altered the mode of existence of religion. Shaped by market logic, religion has gradually been packaged as a selectable, replaceable cultural product. Believers are treated as “religious consumers,” and churches have transformed into service-oriented institutions providing emotional support, psychological comfort, and lifestyle guidance. This “commodification of religion” leads religious organizations to invest resources more heavily in activities that enhance the sense of participation and satisfaction. Consequently, the value of practical acts such as charity depends on whether they can enhance the religious consumption experience, rather than whether they respond to urgent needs in the real world. This makes the practice of religious morality more prone to sliding into formalism and symbolism.

其二，美国社会高度发达的消费文化，也深刻改变了宗教的存在方式。宗教在市场逻辑的塑造下，逐渐被包装为可选择、可替代的文化产品，信徒被视为“宗教消费者”,教会则转型为提供情感支持、心理安慰与生活方式指导的服务型机构。这种“宗教消费化”导致宗教组织更倾向于投入资源到可提升参与感和满意度的活动中，因而慈善等实践行为的存在价值取决于是否能够增强宗教消费体验，而非是否回应了现实社会中的紧迫需求，这使宗教道德的实践更容易滑向形式化和象征化。

Therefore, the predicament of American religion is a historical form that religion necessarily assumes within a specific social structure. When religious organizations are deeply integrated into the capitalist economic system, political power structure, and ideology, their proclaimed universal morality inevitably submits to real interests and the logic of domination. This also demonstrates that under capitalism, religion is essentially an “effective and convenient” tool for the bourgeoisie to oppress and narcotize the people.

因此，美国宗教的困境是宗教在特定社会结构中必然呈现的历史形态。当宗教组织深度融入资本主义的经济体系、政治权力结构与意识形态中时，其宣称的普遍道德必然服从于现实利益和统治逻辑。这也说明了在资本主义社会，宗教本质上是资产阶级压迫和麻醉人民“有效且好用”的工具。

3. Rethinking the “Formula Assistance Experiment” Incident

三、“奶粉求助实验”事件再思考

The “formula assistance experiment” reveals two expectations commonly placed on religion in contemporary American society: first, its symbolic role as a so-called “moral authority,” and second, its practical role as a “supplementary force for social security.” Yet both expectations exhibit systematic failure in reality. From the standpoint of Marxist atheism, we can further rethink the reliability of the moral promises of religion as shown in the experiment, as well as the institutional stability of relying on religion to provide social security.

“奶粉求助实验”揭示了宗教在当代美国社会中被普遍赋予的两种期待——其一是作为所谓“道德权威”的象征性角色，其二是作为“社会保障补充力量”的现实性角色。但这两种期待在现实中呈现出系统性的失效。从马克思主义无神论的立场来看，还可以对实验中呈现出的宗教道德承诺的可靠性以及依赖宗教提供社会保障的制度稳定性进行再思考。

(1) Is the Moral Promise of Religion Reliable?

( 一)宗教的道德承诺是否具有可靠性?

In American public opinion, religion is often regarded as a natural moral resource, whose doctrines, rituals, and symbolic systems are believed to provide stable ethical guidance for members of society. American atheists are thus considered a group lacking morality because they are远离了宗教 [n]. However, can religion truly become a reliable source of morality?

在美国的公众舆论中，宗教往往被视为一种天然的道德资源，其教义、仪式与象征体系被认为能够为社会成员提供稳定的伦理指引。美国的无神论者由此被认为是缺少道德的群体，因为他们远离了宗教。然而，宗教真的可以成为可靠的道德来源吗?

First, all morality is in essence not derived from divine revelation or any transcendental authority but is rooted in humanity’s concrete social production practices and relations of interaction. Engels clearly stated: “All moral theories have been hitherto the product, in the last analysis, of the economic conditions of society obtaining at the time. And as society has hitherto moved in class antagonisms, morality has always been class morality.” [6]6 Friedrich Engels, *Anti-Dühring*, in *Marx & Engels Collected Works*, vol. 25 (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1987), p. 87. As an important component of social consciousness, morality is likewise a product of social existence—norms of conduct gradually formed by people in specific historical conditions as they handle material production, social division of labor, and relations of interest. Religious morality often appears in the form of “divine revelation” or “eternal commandments,” as if it possesses natural universal validity. But this abstract universality is itself an ideological illusion; once it touches upon real social relations of production, its inherent particularism and exclusivity immediately manifest. For this very reason, so-called religious morality is nothing but the hypocritical cloak of the ruling class, essentially a false proposition. In the “formula assistance experiment,” the screening mechanism based on conditions such as “whether one is a church member” or “whether one meets established project criteria” is precisely an example of how so-called religious morality, when encountering concrete social relations, rapidly commodifies and serves the interests of specific groups.

其一，任何道德在本质上都并非源自神启或任何超验权威，而是根植于人类具体的社会生产实践与交往关系之中。恩格斯明确论述道：“一切以往的道德论归根到底都是当时的社会经济状况的产物。而社会直到现在是在阶级对立中运动的，所以道德始终是阶级的道德。”(6)道德作为社会意识的重要组成部分，同样是社会存在的产物，是人们在特定历史条件下处理物质生产、社会分工与利益关系时逐步形成的行为规范。宗教道德常以“神启”或“永恒律令”的形式出现，仿佛具有天然的普遍有效性。但这种抽象的普遍本身就是一种意识形态幻象，一旦触及现实的社会生产关系，其内含的特殊主义与排他性便会立即显现。正因为如此，所谓的宗教道德不过是统治阶级伪善的外衣，本质上是个伪命题。“奶粉求助实验”中，以“是否为教会成员”“是否符合既定项目条件”为前提的筛选机制，正是所谓的宗教道德在遭遇具体社会关系时迅速商品化、服务于特定群体利益的例证。

Second, in bourgeois society, religion bears the function of obscuring class contradictions through ideological means. In his *Introduction to a Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right*, Marx made the classic judgment on religion: “Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, just as it is the spirit of a spiritless situation. It is the opium of the people.”(7) This judgment profoundly reveals the dual function of religion in real society — it both expresses a protest against real suffering and, by providing symbolic consolation, reincorporates this suffering into the existing social order. Religious charity and moral discourse are not aimed at changing the institutional roots that produce poverty; rather, they bear the function of reconciling social contradictions and stabilizing the existing order. On the one hand, charitable behavior provides moral legitimacy and spiritual satisfaction for religious organizations and their followers; on the other hand, it beautifies the unequal social structure in the form of “pity” and “alms-giving,” thereby shifting social problems into individual cases or moral exceptions.

其二，在资产阶级社会中，宗教承担着通过意识形态方式遮蔽阶级矛盾的功能。马克思在《〈黑格尔法哲学批判〉导言》中对宗教作出了经典论断：“宗教是被压迫生灵的叹息，是无情世界的感情，正像它是没有精神的制度的精神一样。宗教是人民的鸦片。”(7)这一论断深刻揭示了宗教在现实社会中的双重功能——既表达了对现实苦难的抗议，又通过提供象征性的安慰，将这种苦难重新纳入既有社会秩序之中。宗教的慈善和道德话语并非旨在改变产生贫困的制度根源，而更多承担着调和社会矛盾、稳定既有秩序的功能。一方面，慈善行为为宗教组织及其信徒提供道德正当性与精神满足；另一方面，它以“怜悯”“施舍”的形式美化不平等的社会结构，使社会问题被转移为个别案例或道德例外。

In sum, in a class society, the moral commitments of religion can hardly possess the universal and absolute reliability they claim for themselves. In essence, it is an ideological superstructure determined by the socio-economic base and serving specific functions of social integration and ideological function; its actual effectiveness is heavily constrained by the specific configuration of interests. The “baby formula assistance experiment” verifies, in a comparative manner, that once religious morality is stripped of its sacred rhetoric, it reveals its fragility and instrumentality in the face of secular interests and power structures.

总之，在阶级社会中，宗教的道德承诺难以具备其自我宣称的那种普世与绝对的可靠性。它在本质上是一种被社会经济基础决定的、服务于特定社会整合与意识形态功能的观念上层建筑，其现实效力深受具体利益格局的制约。“奶粉求助实验”以一种对照的方式，验证了宗教道德一旦脱离神圣修辞，在世俗利益与权力结构面前就会显示出脆弱性与工具性。

(B) Why Reliance on Religion for Social Security Must Fail

( 二)为何依赖宗教提供社会保障必然失败

The government shutdown leading to the interruption of public welfare programs is the background against which the “baby formula assistance experiment” occurred, and this in itself profoundly reveals the fragility of the U.S. social security system. The experimental results also show that when the state’s public functions fail, the religious organizations placed under high expectations cannot provide stable, reliable alternative support. This leads to a second fundamental question: Why must entrusting social security functions to religious charity inevitably fail?

政府停摆导致公共福利计划的中断是“奶粉求助实验”发生的背景，这本身就深刻揭示了美国社会保障体系的脆弱性。而实验结果也表明，当国家公共职能失灵时，被寄予厚望的宗教组织并不能提供稳定、可靠的替代性支持。这引出了第二个根本性问题：为何将社会保障职能寄托于宗教慈善必然失败?

First, U.S. reliance on social organizations such as religion for social security is, in essence, the privatization of social welfare and a transfer of responsibility — a core component of the neoliberal political agenda. By contracting public welfare expenditure, the bourgeois state partially “unloads” onto religious and other non-profit organizations the responsibility for social redistribution and the guarantee of citizens’ basic subsistence rights, which should be borne by the state itself. However, the congenital defect of this model lies in the fact that the resources of religious organizations come from unstable voluntary donations, and their scope of service is constrained by their respective doctrinal orientations, community boundaries, and organizational strategies, making it impossible to provide universal, equal, and sustainable statutory guarantees. The state shirks its responsibility as a public authority, yet fails to establish a public accountability mechanism to maintain the fair and efficient operation of the alternative system. This inevitably produces a hypocritical outcome: on the surface, society has a vast charitable sector serving as a safety net, but its coverage is fragmented, selective, and highly uncertain — just as the “baby formula assistance experiment” saw countless families placed in the perilous situation of lacking baby formula. This instability is not an accident of poor management but a necessity of institutional design.

第一，美国依赖宗教等社会组织提供社会保障，本质上是社会福利的私有化与责任转移，这是新自由主义政治议程的核心组成部分。资产阶级国家通过收缩公共福利支出，将本应由其承担的社会再分配和公民基本生存权保障责任，部分“卸载”给宗教及其他非营利组织。然而，这种模式的先天缺陷在于，宗教组织的资源来自不稳定的自愿捐赠，其服务范围受制于各自的教义导向、社群边界与组织战略，无法提供普遍、平等、可持续的法定保障。国家推卸了其作为公共权力机构应负的责任，却没有建立维系替代系统公平高效运行的公共问责机制。这当然会形成一种虚伪的结果：社会表面上有庞大的慈善部门作为安全网，但其覆盖是碎片化、选择性和高度不确定的，正如“奶粉求助实验”中有无数家庭被置于奶粉短缺的险境一样。这种不稳定性不是管理不善的偶然，而是制度设计的必然。

Second, from a functional perspective, unstable, privatized religious practice precisely plays the role of a “safety valve” for capitalist class rule. Engels incisively analyzed that under the capitalist mode of production, “social forces, like natural forces, work blindly, forcibly, and destructively so long as we do not recognize and take account of them.”(8) The widespread poverty, unemployment, and marginalization are precisely the consequences of the periodic eruption of such blind forces. By providing limited, scattered, and often morally disciplining relief, religious practice performs three key functions: first, it temporarily and partially anesthetizes the pain of class oppression, preventing it from evolving into collective resistance that threatens social stability; second, by explaining the problem of poverty as a problem of relief and individual morality, it obscures the structural and institutional roots behind it — that is, the inequality inherent in capitalist relations of production themselves; third, while providing material relief, it may transmit specific values such as individual responsibility and religious submission, thereby shaping individuals who conform to the system’s requirements. In this sense, the instability of religious practice is precisely an “advantage” for the state: it is sufficient to “manage” the symptoms of poverty, yet it will never eliminate the root causes of poverty, thereby sustaining the reproduction of capitalist society and the stability of the power structure without challenging the fundamental system.

第二，从功能上看，不稳定的、私有化的宗教实践恰恰扮演了资本主义阶级统治“安全阀”角色。恩格斯曾精辟地分析道，在资本主义生产方式下，“社会力量完全像自然力一样，在我们还没有认识和考虑到它们的时候，起着盲目的、强制的和破坏的作用。”(8)普遍存在的贫困、失业与边缘化，正是这种盲目力量周期性发作的后果。宗教实践通过提供有限的、零散的且常常附带道德规训的救济，主要执行着三重关键功能：第一，暂时性地、局部地麻醉阶级压迫的痛苦，防止其演变为威胁社会稳定的集体反抗；第二，通过将贫困问题解释为救济问题和个体道德问题，遮蔽背后的结构性、制度性根源，即资本主义生产关系本身的不平等；第三，在提供物质救济的同时，可能传递个人责任、信仰顺从等特定的价值观，从而塑造符合系统要求的个体。在这个意义上，宗教实践的不稳定性对国家而言恰恰是一种“优势”:它足以“管理”贫困的表征，却永远不会消除贫困的根源，从而在不挑战根本制度的前提下，维系了资本主义社会的再生产与权力结构的稳定。

Therefore, what the “baby formula assistance experiment” exposes is not merely the sluggish response of religious organizations, but more fundamentally the structural contradictions inherent in the institutions of the United States as the leading capitalist country. Within the framework of the capitalist system, attempting to rely on religious practice, which originates from voluntariness and contingency, to compensate for the lack of social welfare is, in essence, making partial repairs without touching the fundamental relations of production. This is both theoretically utopian and destined to fail in practice. It also provides an important reflection for the construction of modern social security systems: any institutional arrangement that entrusts social security to so-called “religious morality” or private goodwill is doomed to fail.

因此，“奶粉求助实验”所暴露的，不只是宗教组织的反应迟缓，更是美国作为头号资本主义国家所固有的制度内部的结构性矛盾。在资本主义制度框架之下，试图依赖源于自愿性与偶发性的宗教实践来弥补社会福利缺失，实质上是在不触动根本生产关系的前提下进行局部修补，既在理论上陷入空想，也在实践中注定失效。这也为现代社会保障制度建设提供了重要反思，即任何将社会保障寄托于所谓“宗教道德”或私人善意的制度安排，注定会失败。