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I Watched the Peacemaker Summit So You Don't Have To

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If you're like most people, you didn't even know this was happening; and, like a good sneeze, it was gone by the time you realized it.

(Be warned: there's a lot of YouTube and Instagram posts linked in this article.)

Who is The Holy Rebellion?

If you're not familiar with The Holy Rebellion, they're a pair of LDS business investors and influencers from Utah - Travis Lish and Christian Williams. In an interview with Greg Matsen of The Cwic Show online podcast, the boys at The Holy Rebellion describe how they came up with their Instagram handle (and I'll highlight some interesting statements):

So we, starting at from that point - this was probably four, five, six years ago even - but we just kind of started meeting...and over time, it became clear that the only thing - our biggest mutual interest was the gospel of Jesus Christ...and we were talking about Paul and how Paul was just unashamed...and we concluded that if we want to be like Paul, we have to find the tallest rooftop we can find and shout from the top of it, and we figured that that was social media. [2:48]

The Holy Rebellion arrived on Instagram in late 2024, then joining YouTube and TikTok in 2025, with currently 55,000+ followers across all three accounts and hundreds of thousands of views. Their stated mission is to rebel against "contention," "the worldly," and "anything that pushes against Jesus Christ." Their content initially consisted of interfaith dialogue, but upon discovering that "nobody cared," they shifted to LDS apologetics (Matsen interview, 4:38).

Peacemakers Summoned

In December 2025, The Holy Rebellion announced that they would be holding a "Peacemaker Summit" that coming February. The event was to feature multiple prominent LDS content creators and apologists over the course of the day, with keynote speakers and an "Ask Me Anything" portion in the second half of the conference.

The first aspect that raised eyebrows was the price of the venue. Tickets for general admission varied in price from $15-30, while booth spaces were reserved at $200 each; but a now-defunct category also existed for a separate "evening session" valued at $500 per ticket. At the time of writing, the only evidence I can still find for this tier is from a response to the situation by The Tomsters. Christian and Travis has since claimed that the pricing was an "mix-up" between this and a "different event."

The second concern arose over their stated goal of the conference to work toward "a billion views per month" (Matsen interview, 7:43, 10:51, 12:14, 42:29). The Holy Rebellion boys claims that the LDS church has "abdicated our presence online" (or, as Matsen put it, "drowning in anti-Mormon content) (Matsen interview, 5:36), and the summit would seek to empower creators and audience alike to participate more in LDS apologetic content, citing an increase in the past year from multiple "new voices" (Matsen interview, 6:04). This lofty goal came with the equally vague hashtag #makeitabillion, which bears strange echoes to the similar apologetic hashtag that debuted in light of the SEC probe into LDS finances in 2023, #makeitatrillion.

The Show Must Go On

By February, the Peacemaker Summit was ready to launch, although with a slightly different roster of appearances than initially announced, a result of scheduling difficulties and whispered concerns over the vagueness or pricing of the event. The "Ask Me Anything" (or AMA) portion of the event included a questionnaire for attendees to submit questions in advance, and e-tickets were distributed for free to anyone who wanted to attend virtually. A small pause for silence, and then the live feed finally began...

...covered in Part 2!
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