Congresswoman Nancy Mace (R-SC) has made national headlines for implying that she passed on having sex with her fiancé on the morning of Wednesday, July 26, so that she could make it to Sen. Tim Scott’s prayer breakfast.
Mace, who is a professing Christian and attends Seacoast Church (based in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina), made her remarks while speaking at the prayer breakfast and subsequently drew criticism from conservatives and church leaders.
“When I woke up this morning at 7:00—I was getting picked up at 7:45—Patrick, my fiancé, tried to pull me by my waist over this morning in bed, and I was like, ‘No, baby, we don’t got time for that this morning,’” said Mace at the beginning of her speech. “‘I got to get to the prayer breakfast, and I got to be on time.’” The crowd laughed as she said it was a “little TMI,” adding, “He can wait…I’ll see him later tonight.”
Here is the full speech (PG-rated jokes and all) from Wednesday’s prayer breakfast. My speech was actually about a very vulnerable time in my life and I shed a few tears telling the story about how the church changed my life.🧵1/4 pic.twitter.com/ECp8QUFphJ
— Rep. Nancy Mace (@RepNancyMace) July 28, 2023
Nancy Mace Shares Faith Testimony
Nancy Mace has represented South Carolina’s 1st congressional district since January 2021. Wednesday, she spoke at the 13th Annual South Carolina Prayer Breakfast, hosted by South Carolina’s Sen. Tim Scott. Scott is a candidate in the 2024 presidential campaign.
The point of Mace’s anecdote about her fiancé was that she arrived at the prayer breakfast early for Scott’s sake, as did other attendees, which was a “true testament to your leadership, to your faith, and your ability to bring people together and unify our country,” Mace told the senator.
Mace noted that Seacoast’s founding pastor, Greg Surratt, was present at the event. Joking that Scott often gives her good advice that she does not take, Mace said that years ago he told her, “You got to go to Seacoast. You have got to go there, you’ve got to go to church.” She was “not a church-going woman at the time, and I’d lost a lot of faith in church and what I thought it stood for.”
People would often ask her about her spiritual “walk,” but she wasn’t on one. “I didn’t have it at the time,” Mace said. It was not until she went through her second divorce that she took Scott’s advice and went to Seacoast, but sat in the back because she did not want to be seen attending church. “I was horrified I was there,” she said. “I was shocked I didn’t spontaneously combust.”
That day, Greg’s son, Josh Surratt, was preaching on Jeremiah 6:16, which is “about standing at a crossroads in life.” It was, said Mace, “the most beautiful sermon I think I’ve ever been in, and I just started crying, I mean I was bawling my eyes out.” Since then, she has hardly missed a Seacoast sermon, either watching online or attending in person.
“Seacoast changed my life,” said Mace, with emotion, “and Seacoast changed the life of my family.” She said she would not be where she is now, with the purpose she has, “had I not had that moment.”
