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Democratic House candidate Sarah Trone Garriott’s campaign is on the defensive after a resurfaced video showed her recounting her role in the marriage of a pair of satanists while serving as a minister-in-training.
Trone Garriott, a Lutheran minister running in a battleground House district in November’s midterm election, participated in the wedding of a satanist couple in 2006 while serving as an intern pastor in a West Virginia parish.
Nearly two decades later, she delivered remarks for the Des Moines Storytellers Project, where she reflected that the marriage of two satanists in the church offered a “spiritual lesson” about love.
“He asked me to pick the Scriptures,” Trone Garriott said on stage in 2023, referring to the senior pastor. “Irritated, I flipped through the Bible. Should I pick something with Satan in it to make them feel more at home?”
State Sen. Sarah Trone Garriott, a candidate for Iowa’s 3rd District, speaks during the Polk County Democrats’ spring dinner on April 7, 2026, in Des Moines. (Cody Scanlan/USA Today Network via Imagn Images)
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“Eventually, I just put the bookmark in at 1 Corinthians 13,” she continued. “If you have ever been to a Christian wedding, you’ve probably heard this Scripture. All they would get from me was [a] basic Lutheran wedding.”
“When the Apostle Paul wrote these words, he certainly never had in mind a small town in West Virginia, two satanists and a Lutheran pastor in training,” Trone Garriott said. “But Paul knew people, and people haven’t changed that much over the centuries. It is hard to love one another. We often need to be reminded how.”
Trone Garriott is vying to unseat Rep. Zach Nunn, R-Iowa, for a “toss-up” congressional seat in the southwestern part of the state. Throughout the campaign, she has been criticized for expressing beliefs that Republicans have argued do not align with the Christian faith she represents.
“She’s made it clear that the values Iowa families live by every single day are the ones she’s running against,” Nunn previously told Fox News Digital.
At the 2023 love-themed storytelling event, Trone Garriott chose to spotlight her “first wedding” with the satanist pair.
She recounted that the couple had shown up under the mistaken belief they had to be married in a church and proceeded to interrogate their Christian beliefs.
“These people could barely stand us. They didn’t believe in or really have any respect for what mattered to us,” Trone Garriott said.
The senior pastor went ahead and married them anyway, with Trone Garriott reading the words, “Love is patient; love is kind” over them.
Though Trone Garriott expressed initial concern about the wedding, by the end of the ceremony she spoke tenderly about the man with a pentagram tattooed on his face.
“Was he getting teary?” Trone Garriott asked during her remarks. “They had a lot of baggage between the two of them, but there was no denying how they were looking at each other.”
At no point in her speech did Trone Garriott suggest that she or the senior pastor had asked the couple to reject satanism.
“So what happened to that couple? I have no idea,” Trone Garriott reflected. “We never saw them again.”
Rep. Zach Nunn speaks to members of the press as he exits a Republican Caucus meeting at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., Oct. 12, 2023. (Anna Rose Layden/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
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Asked for comment, a spokesperson for Trone Garriott’s campaign told Fox News Digital, “As a minister in training, Sarah followed the direction of her supervising pastor and had no control over who walked through the church’s doors — it was her job to minister to everyone, including people she does not share beliefs with.
“Like so many Iowa Christians, Sarah’s faith calls her to love thy neighbor, and she follows Jesus’ example of embodying his grace for everyone,” the spokesperson added.
A source familiar with the campaign disputed that Trone Garriott helped marry the satanist couple, because she was not ordained until 2008.
But Trone Garriott’s own words and actions during the ceremony appeared to acknowledge her active role in the wedding.
“This was going to be my first wedding,” Trone Garriott reflected in her remarks.
The resurfaced video comes as Trone Garriott’s beliefs have been heavily scrutinized in the contest for the swing seat.
In a 2023 speech, she expressed discomfort with public displays of Christianity and defended seeking out non-Christian prayers at the statehouse as a member of the state Senate.
Trone Garriott wrote an op-ed in 2025 calling out Christian lawmakers who protested a Wiccan-led prayer, arguing, “Jesus engaged with pagans.”
Rev. Sarah Trone Garriott, a Lutheran pastor and Iowa state senator, greets congregants at Grace Lutheran Church in Des Moines on March 15, 2026. (Krysta Fauria/AP Photo)
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The National Republican Congressional Committee, House Republicans’ campaign arm, sharply criticized Trone Garriott’s past in a statement to Fox News Digital.
“Her record shows a clear pattern of rhetoric and decisions that contradict her own faith, raising serious questions about her judgment and values,” NRCC spokeswoman Emily Tuttle said. “If she’s willing to blur those lines, Iowans can’t trust her to stand up for them.”
