A three-day conference billed as “Holy Wars: Just War, the Crusades, and the Christian Life” is underway at The Factory at Franklin despite a petition with thousands of signatures demanding it be cancelled and organized protests timed to its most controversial speaker. The Fight, Laugh, Feast podcast network is hosting the event, which runs Thursday through Saturday and includes sessions from Pastor Doug Wilson and other speakers that opponents describe as Christian nationalists.
The conference, as reported by WSMV, drew a Change.org petition that, per the petition, claims speakers have advocated revoking women's right to vote, defending slavery, and imprisoning homosexual people. Those claims track closely with Wilson's own public record: according to Williamson Source, the Moscow, Idaho pastor has publicly advocated replacing individual voting rights with household-based voting under male heads of household, defended antebellum slavery as biblically permissible, and called for the criminalization of homosexuality. The same petition drive, Williamson Source reported, surpassed 1,400 signatures within four days of its September 24 launch and called for boycotting The Factory as a whole on October 3 if the conference continued.
Doug Wilson's Session Sparks Friday Morning Protest
Pastor Doug Wilson is scheduled to speak at the same time organizer Catie Fein has called for demonstrators to gather, with Fein asking people to show up outside the conference at 8 a.m. Friday, per WSMV's reporting. A separate, non-violent sidewalk demonstration is planned for 2 p.m. Saturday along Highway 31 and Liberty Pike outside the venue, according to a Reddit post describing coordination between local organizers and regional Middle Tennessee activist groups. Franklin Police will monitor the conference, and the venue says it plans extra security and police presence throughout the event.
The Factory at Franklin itself has pushed back on the idea that hosting the conference amounts to endorsement. The venue said it does not endorse or promote the conference's views or those of its speakers, and that it rents space for legal uses regardless of an organization's religion, political philosophy, or beliefs, WSMV reported. Management has said the client holds a contractual right to use the venue under an agreement signed before Factory leaders learned what the conference would actually cover — and the venue says it is now reevaluating its booking policies and plans to improve the information given to businesses before they sign event contracts.
A Lunch Booking Made Through a Gmail Account
That contractual bind played out most visibly at Saffire, a restaurant inside The Factory that found itself booked for two private business luncheons for roughly 50 people without realizing who was behind them. As Nashville Scene reported, the luncheons were booked through an ordinary Gmail account with no mention of Fight Laugh Feast, and after consulting lawyers, Saffire determined it could not cancel the signed contract. The restaurant instead committed all lunch proceeds to World Central Kitchen. The conference's organizers subsequently backed out of the Saffire contract themselves, and the restaurant is now working with The Factory to build a better screening process for future bookings.
Fight Laugh Feast CEO Gabriel Rench responded to the backlash in an emailed statement, saying he views the conflict over the conference as a clash of worldviews, according to WSMV's reporting. Rench co-founded the network, which operates as a Calvinist media and podcast platform based in Moscow, Idaho and is affiliated with the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches and tied closely to Moscow's Christ Church, as detailed by The Guardian. Rench himself gained national attention in September 2020 when he was arrested during an unmasked outdoor “psalm sing” protest against Moscow's pandemic restrictions, a case that ended in a 2023 federal civil rights settlement in which the city paid $300,000 after judges found officers lacked legal grounds for the arrests, according to The Think Institute.
Franklin's Recent History With Far-Right Backlash
This isn't the network's first stop in Middle Tennessee — Fight Laugh Feast held a similar conference called “The Politics of Sex” in Nashville in October 2021, also featuring Wilson alongside other neo-Calvinist speakers, per Baptist News Global. But Franklin's reaction to this year's event is shaped by a more recent local memory. In October 2023, incumbent Mayor Ken Moore defeated alderman Gabrielle Hanson in a landslide after Hanson refused to denounce support from members of the white nationalist group Tennessee Active Club, the Associated Press reported at the time; Hanson later resigned from the board of aldermen before a formal censure vote could take place.
That history helps explain why a conference happening inside a converted 1929 stove factory — now a 310,000-square-foot retail and entertainment complex that Holladay Properties bought for $56 million in 2021 — has become such a flashpoint for the community. For now, the event is proceeding as scheduled through Saturday, with protests planned at both ends of the weekend and The Factory's tenants left navigating the fallout of a contract none of them chose to sign.
