An unlikely alliance took center stage on Sunday. Rapper Nicki Minaj, who is known for extremely explicit lyrics and sexually charged music videos, joined Erika Kirk, Charlie Kirk’s widow and CEO of Turning Point USA, on stage at AmericaFest, where she received a standing ovation for her staunch support for persecuted Christians in Nigeria. Speaking to a crowd of more than 30,000, the singer reminded the college-age crowd:

“Right now, in this world, there are people who cannot worship God as they please, where they please. If we take them for granted because we have it — we can’t even imagine not having that, right? — but every time we pray in fellowship, we have to remember the people that are right now in this world hiding to pray in fellowship.”

The words from Minaj came on the exact day that 130 kidnapped schoolchildren were freed. They will be home with their families in time to celebrate Christmas. 

“And we have to pray for them,” Minaj, 43, said about those suffering in the war-torn country. 

For the music and fashion icon, it is personal. 

“First of all, Nigeria is a place I’ve always loved. Someone very dear to me, my pastor, is Nigerian; I have lots of Nigerian bonds, and so hearing that people are being kidnapped — while they’re in church, people are being kidnaped, people are being killed, brutalized, all because of their religion — that should spark outrage in America, and that’s what it’s doing.”

Although the singer’s voice on Christian persecution can help sound the alarm on this dire situation to her millions of fans, Minaj has offended many with her scandalous promotion of pornography and scantily-clad clothing. Her newly found convictions have yet to address any of this behavior or reference a change in heart when it comes to songs unsuitable for children and adults alike. 

“We’re not backing down anymore. We are not going to be silenced by the bullies anymore. Okay? Know that. Hear that. Receive that. Bullies: We won’t be silenced ever again. We will speak up for Christians wherever they are in this world.”

Minaj also took her recent platform with Kirk to share her own faith journey and the role her grandmother played in teaching her how to pray.

“My relationship with God started, well, when I was a toddler in Trinidad. My grandmother, if things got spicy in the house, if the kids and grandkids were arguing or fighting, she would make all the little kids go in her room and make us say a prayer. When I was like 10, 11, 12, I started going to church in New York, and it changed everything — changed my life for the better because I was going every week. I was hearing the word of God being preached, and then I was going home and I was applying it to my life. Even as a little girl, I learned how to pray very early.”

And for young Nicki, she said her faith was not lukewarm. 

“I always had this faith that made people think, you know, the kind of faith that you think a person is crazy, like, ‘Oh, please,’ like, you know, but I had that, instinctively, once I started getting more into the Bible. I got baptized when I was about 13. I got baptized, and I have just always applied those teachings to my life. I try to, I mean, and that’s the thing: We’re not perfect. I’m trying."

Minaj also spoke openly about feeling isolated in this secular world, falling away from her faith, but finding God waiting for her when she came back.

“Sometimes I would wake up and feel so far removed, not from God, but from fellowship,” she said, explaining how she used to attend services and events three times a week when she was younger. “And then later on in your life, you become busy and you start thinking, ‘Oh, well, God is in my heart.’ But then sometimes you can be in an industry as well that pulls you away even more, so lately I’ve been feeling like you haven’t seen a long-lost best friend for a long time, and then you bump into them again — that’s how it’s been feeling for me, like just going back to God and praying and talking to him, and you know, he said to me, ‘Where were you? Where’ve you been? I’ve been waiting on you!’”

Kirk asked Minaj why she thought that telling the truth or speaking one’s mind has become so controversial. 

“Because people no longer are using their minds, their brains. So right now, just imagine, we’re not allowed to have a different opinion anymore. We’re not allowed to think out loud anymore. This is not what the world used to feel like.”

Speaking to the “young people,” as she called them, Minaj said:

“If you’re growing up in a world that tells you it’s taboo to say something that the masses don’t agree with, well, that’s not okay; we’re not going to have it. And I love that it’s given the younger people confidence that they will need later on in life. You guys will need it, and you will have it. So, yeah, I’m rooting for you.”

Before Vice President JD Vance took to the stage, Minaj ended her countercultural message rallying the throngs of college students in the building:

“We’re going to stay thinkers in a world that doesn’t want us to think. We will think by ourselves on our own. We will continue to think.”