Monday · July 8, 2024

NatCon 4 Washington: Vance, Wilson, Mohler, Hazony, Orr, and Miller Share Programming Days Before Vance Named VP

confirmed Importance 8/10 ~3 min read 4 sources 8 actors

Opening

National Conservatism Conference 4 (NatCon 4), held in Washington DC July 8–10, 2024 and convened by the Edmund Burke Foundation, brought JD Vance and Doug Wilson onto shared programming days before Trump announced Vance as his VP selection on July 15. The conference was the highest-profile documented shared platform between Vance’s political infrastructure and Wilson’s Reformed Christian-nationalist institutional network.

What Happened / Key Facts

Vance delivered the headline address “America is a Nation.” Wilson spoke on “Crisis of Meaning and Morality in the West” alongside Albert Mohler (Southern Baptist Theological Seminary president) and Yoram Hazony (Edmund Burke Foundation founder) on a panel framed around “Archimedes, the Overton Window, and Evangelical Cohesion.” James Orr — Vance’s described “British sherpa” and NatCon’s UK-side chair — also appeared. Stephen Miller spoke on immigration.

American Moment co-founders Saurabh Sharma and Nick Solheim served as co-organizers of NatCon 4 Washington, placing Vance’s staffing-pipeline organization at the operational center of the conference. The conference thus ran through infrastructure in Vance’s direct orbit. NatCon programming is published on the Edmund Burke Foundation’s official website and constitutes a tier-1 primary-source record of speaker presence.

Five days after NatCon 4 concluded, Trump announced Vance as VP (July 15, 2024). The conference was effectively the last major gathering of the coalition before the election mobilization phase.

Why This Event Matters

NatCon 4 is the highest-stakes documented co-presence of Vance and Wilson on record. The timing — days before the VP announcement — means it was Vance’s last major pre-announcement public platform appearance alongside Wilson, Mohler, Hazony, Orr, and Miller. It demonstrates that Vance was operating comfortably in the Reformed-postliberal / Catholic-integralist coalition infrastructure immediately before assuming the vice-presidential candidacy.

The NatCon architecture itself is where the Catholic-integralist lane (Hazony as convener, Orr as UK chair, Vermeule / Deneen orbit) and the Reformed-postliberal lane (Wilson, Mohler) share institutional space. Vance’s presence — and American Moment’s co-organizing role — places him structurally at the convergence of both substrates.

Stephen Wolfe was not a NatCon 4 confirmed speaker, which is consistent with the pattern documented in vance-reformed-evangelical-bridge: the convergence runs through Wilson (the institutional builder), not through Wolfe (the academic).

Broader Context

NatCon has been convening since 2019 as the primary shared platform for the coalition. James Orr’s dual role — Vance’s UK intellectual guide and NatCon UK-side director — makes the Edmund Burke Foundation a direct Vance-Wilson structural bridge. The conference is funded primarily through the Edmund Burke Foundation’s donor network, which overlaps with the Rockbridge / Thiel substrate that funds Vance’s political infrastructure.

Per Mother Jones’s September 2024 “TheoBros” investigation (Kiera Butler), NatCon is one of the primary venues where the Reformed-postliberal theological world and the Vance political world share space, enabling Reformed-CN figures to claim Vance as their tribune even without direct dyadic relationships with Vance himself.

Research Gaps

  • Full NatCon 4 attendee and donor list — not publicly available; Edmund Burke Foundation does not publish funder disclosures
  • Whether Vance and Wilson had private meeting time at NatCon 4 (all documented contact is shared-stage only)
  • Whether American Moment’s co-organizing role involved co-selection of Wilson as speaker

Sources & Citations

[1] Sen. JD Vance — National Conservatism Conference, Washington 2024 — Edmund Burke Foundation / NatCon · Jul 10, 2024 Tier 1
[2] Douglas Wilson — National Conservatism Conference, Washington 2024 — Edmund Burke Foundation / NatCon · Jul 10, 2024 Tier 1
[3] To Understand JD Vance, You Need to Meet the 'TheoBros' — Mother Jones (Kiera Butler) · Sep 1, 2024 Tier 1
[4] Doug Wilson Has Spent Decades Pushing for a Christian Theocracy. In Trump's DC, the New Right Is Listening. — Politico · May 1, 2025 Tier 1
Tiers Tier 1 court records & gov docs · Tier 2 established outlets · Tier 3 regional & specialty press · Tier 4 opinion or single-source. Methodology →
Cite this entry
The Cascade Ledger. “NatCon 4 Washington: Vance, Wilson, Mohler, Hazony, Orr, and Miller Share Programming Days Before Vance Named VP.” The Capture Cascade Timeline, July 8, 2024. https://capturecascade.org/event/2024-07-08--natcon-4-washington-vance-wilson-mohler-hazony-miller/