Doug Wilson Speaks at Vance-Founded American Moment Event in Dirksen Senate Office Building

Opening

In September 2023, Doug Wilson — Moscow, Idaho-based CREC pastor, Canon Press founder, and the most prominent institutional voice of Reformed Christian nationalism — spoke at an American Moment event in the basement of the Dirksen Senate Office Building titled “Theology of American Statecraft: The Christian Case for Immigration Restriction.” American Moment is the conservative staffing pipeline co-founded with a Vance essay as inspiration, with Vance on the board of advisors from inception.

What Happened / Key Facts

The event brought Wilson before a Hill-staffer audience in a Senate office building — institutional legitimation that Wilson himself noted approvingly afterward. Per Politico’s May 2025 reporting, Wilson remarked that “a lot of Hill staffers were very interested in it.” Nick Solheim, American Moment’s COO, had traveled to Moscow, Idaho in October 2021 to record a podcast episode with Wilson, establishing the organizational relationship prior to the Dirksen event. The event’s framing — “The Christian Case for Immigration Restriction” — translates Wilson’s Reformed-postliberal theology directly into policy advocacy language aimed at Senate staff.

Vance was not present on stage but was the named board advisor of the organization that convened Wilson. American Moment’s funding spine runs through Conservative Partnership Institute (Mark Meadows, Jim DeMint) and Donors Trust.

Why This Event Matters

The Dirksen event is the clearest documented instance of American Moment serving as the operational bridge between Vance’s institutional network and Wilson’s Reformed-CN theological infrastructure. It placed Wilson’s immigration-restriction theology in front of the legislative staffers who would eventually populate the Trump-2 executive branch. Per Politico, Wilson described the experience as marking a new level of Reformed-CN penetration in Washington: “This is the first time we’ve had connections with as many people in national government as we do now.”

The event predates NatCon 4 (July 2024) and shows the Vance-Wilson institutional bridge was operational before the election cycle. It also demonstrates that the convergence runs through American Moment’s programming decisions, not through direct Vance-Wilson contact.

Broader Context

American Moment was seeded by a Vance essay, co-founded by Saurabh Sharma and Nick Solheim, and co-organized NatCon 4 Washington 2024. Its pipeline placed Samuel Samson — a Solheim hire — as a senior advisor at State DRL, where he authored a June 2025 “Civilizational Allies” Substack post echoing Christian-nationalist framing. The Dirksen event sits at the upstream end of this pipeline: Wilson theology → Hill staffers → administration placement.

Research Gaps

• Exact date within September 2023 (confirmed month, not confirmed day — entry uses approximate mid-month date)
• Full attendee list or headcount from Dirksen event
• Whether any Dirksen event attendee was subsequently placed in a Vance-adjacent administration role

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