NEWS NEWSCHANNEL 5 INVESTIGATES
In leaked recording, Elizabeth Hannah Shamblin on mother Gwen Shamblin's message: 'You’ll be lifted up if you follow this example, if you followed my mother and follow me as I followed her'
Phil Williams
News Channel 5
February 22, 2024
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WTVF) — She's the reclusive leader of a controversial Brentwood church who reportedly hasn't been seen at services in years.
But in a newly obtained recording, Elizabeth Shamblin Hannah — daughter of the late Christian diet guru Gwen Shamblin Lara — declares her intention to take her mother's following at Remnant Fellowship to the next level.
"I want to make a difference. I want to make history. I want to start a movement around the globe," Hannah said in a New Year's message played during a Remnant service on Jan. 6. That message was leaked by a current insider and provided to NewsChannel 5 Investigates.
"My mother started it, and I want to not only keep it going but to expand it around the globe in such an exponential level that anyone who sees it can pick it up and get it."
Hannah, 42, assumed leadership of the church after her mother was killed in a plane crash in May 2021, along with her husband Joe Lara and five other Remnant leaders. Elizabeth's husband, Brandon Hannah, was among those killed.
Remnant Fellowship, which Shamblin created and declared to the "the one true church," has faced widespread criticism from former members and others as being "a cult."
In the often-rambling message, which continues for 37 minutes, Elizabeth Shamblin Hannah brushes aside such criticisms, saying her goal is to become famous in heaven.
"I want my name to be written in heaven," she said. "I want to be friends with the greats, and I want them to know that every day I woke up that I was not here for myself. I was here to make the movement happen."
Former Remnant member Helen Byrd, who appeared in an HBO Max docuseries about Shamblin and Remnant Fellowship, could barely contain her disgust as we played the recording of Hannah's message for her.
LISTEN: Elizabeth Hannah talks about wanting to be known in heaven
"Are you kidding?" Byrd exclaimed at one point, laughing out loud at another.
NewsChannel 5 Investigates noted, "She sounds a lot like her mother."
"She didn't before," Byrd replied. "She absolutely does, and I think that was probably what was most triggering."
"That she has ideations of spreading this absolute pain across the world, this pain, I think that it's a scary thing," the former Remnant member continued.
As for Hannah's desire to become well-known in heaven, "It's incredible hubris. You know, it's just, wow! Really? And you are part of a movement that has shielded abusers, child abusers."
This comes as her brother, Michael Shamblin, speaks out against the church where he was once a leader, although he's still reluctant to say anything critical of his younger sibling.
"I have so much sympathy for my sister," Michael Shamblin said.
When NewsChannel 5 Investigates first met Elizabeth 20 years ago, she was right at her mother's side — a role she continued to play. Remnant's website now says it operates "under the leadership and direction" of Hannah.
Oddly, her brother and others say she does not attend church services, opting instead to call in or, more recently, to provide recorded messages.
Remnant members widely considered her mother, Gwen Shamblin, to be a prophet.
Elizabeth Shamblin Hannah in image sent out by Remnant Fellowship to members
NewsChannel 5 Investigates asked Michael Shamblin about his sister: "Is she viewed as a prophet now?"
"She's viewed as having the lead," he answered. "I don't know if they call her a prophet, but she would be viewed as having a leading from God."
In the recorded message, Hannah calls upon Remnant members to follow her lead.
"You’ll be lifted up if you follow this example, if you followed my mother and follow me as I followed her."
Helen Byrd's reaction?
"How about following Jesus? That's a good place to start. How about following Jesus?"
It comes two years after an HBO Max docuseries — "The Way Down: God, Greed, and the Cult of Gwen Shamblin" — that portrayed Shamblin as a power-hungry cult leader.
We played Byrd a segment where Hannah references the docuseries.
"Ridiculous, negative and false," Hannah said, as Byrd interjected: "Truth!"
"National media."
"Truth!"
"That is so ridiculously."
"True!"
Hannah compared her mother to Dolly Parton, saying that both women had been mocked for their hair and their looks.
LISTEN: Elizabeth Hannah compares her mother to Dolly Parton
Byrd's reaction: "Oh, come on. Leave Dolly out of it. Just c'mon. Dolly's a good woman. Leave Dolly out of it."
Hannah said she is working on a book about her mother.
"I’m going to make a difference in this country. I’m going to make a difference around the globe, and I’m going to write this book about my mother — and the world will one day see that she’s a misunderstood woman."
Among the misunderstandings, Hannah claimed, was Shamblin's role in the child abuse death of 8-year-old Josef Smith — a case where our NewsChannel 5 investigation discovered that Shamblin had praised the child's parents for locking him up in his bedroom for an entire weekend with just his Bible.
"Her philosophies on childraising were awesome! Incredible! She couldn’t hurt a fly," Hannah said.
Byrd's reaction: "I think that there are a lot of people who would disagree with that. I think Josef Smith would, you know, disagree with it — were he here."
While some suspect Elizabeth may still be struggling after the tragic loss of her mother and husband, she insisted she's doing well — thanks to the Remnant message.
"Don’t you want to join me? I’m a lot of fun, by the way. Don’t just believe what you hear. You need to come party with me."
Helen Byrd was appalled.
"They're still spewing this propaganda. They're still sticking to their guns. They know that it's not the greatest place on earth, it's the sickest place on earth."
As for those who may ridicule her, Hannah said that's OK with her.
"Guess what? Every time they’re rude and they lie about me, then more people in heaven hear about it and I get a better standing again in heaven – so they are cracking me up. The more false things they write about me and my mother, the higher up I’m going to go."
LISTEN: Elizabeth Hannah talks about getting higher spot in heaven
Again, Byrd interjected: "Because there's levels to this, right?"
We noted, "You want the top level in heaven."
"Yeah, they're going to epic heaven. Jesus!"
But Elizabeth Hannah said she and her mother will get the last laugh.
"You’ll see that Gwen and I were just two little loving blondes who were born in the South at the wrong time. I mean, nobody wants us, a Southern woman to be a preacher."
NewsChannel 5 Investigates asked Michael Shamblin about suggestions in the HBO Max docuseries that his sister is not well.
He declined to comment.
https://www.newschannel5.com/news/newschannel-5-investigates/i-want-to-make-history-gwen-shamblins-daughter-says-she-is-ready-to-take-mothers-church-to-next-level
Showing posts with label Remnant Fellowship. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Remnant Fellowship. Show all posts
Feb 23, 2024
Feb 20, 2024
'Take the damn filter off.' Former Remnant leader says church needs to admit role in child's death
Phil Williams
News Channel 5
February 19, 2024
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WTVF) — It's time for Remnant Fellowship to come clean about its role in the 2003 child abuse death of a young Remnant boy, says a former leader in the controversial Brentwood, Tennessee, church.
In the final installment of our interview with Michael Shamblin, the son of controversial religious figure Gwen Shamblin told NewsChannel 5 Investigates that Remnant Fellowship needs to acknowledge what he now realizes: that 8-year-old Josef Smith did not have to die.
"I feel my life has been a life of discovery," said Shamblin, who now views Remnant Fellowship as "a cult."
"I didn't know at the time. We were going along with it. But, over time, the more I learned, the more I realized: 'Why is she not showing the autopsy photos? Why the coverup?'"
NewsChannel 5 Investigates aired its first report in February 2004 questioning Remnant's role in Josef's October 2003 death in Atlanta.
His parents, Joseph and Sonya Smith, were charged with his murder, with investigators noting the child had "extensive bruising" over his "entire body." But the Smiths "showed no remorse," detectives wrote in their report. The Smiths felt it was "just a part of discipline" and were "very defensive" about their religion.
The Smiths were Remnant Fellowship members. Remnant paid their legal bills, and it still operates a website called The Smiths are Innocent — 17 years since they were convicted by a jury and sentenced to life in prison.
Michael Shamblin was there in 2004 as we confronted his mother, Remnant founder Gwen Shamblin, and church leader Tedd Anger about the child's death.
"The child ran into a banister. The head swelled up. That child had a seizure. They called 911. The child passed away in a hospital," Gwen Shamblin repeatedly insisted.
NewsChannel 5 Investigates asked Michael Shamblin about that claim.
"Did she really believe that?"
"She was scared," Michael explained. "This had just happened. I think she was doing, coming up with doing whatever she could to protect herself and the church."
Years later, reviewing the evidence, Georgia's Supreme Court would note that "Joseph and Sonya Smith routinely disciplined their son, Josef, by beating him with glue sticks, belts, and heated coat hangers; locking him in confined spaces for extended periods of time; and tying his hands with rope."
Michael Shamblin's view now?
"The courts had all the evidence, and they decided that the Smiths murdered their son, and they're in prison to this day. I now think something did happen to little Josef."
So does Michael view Josef as a victim of Remnant or his mother Gwen Shamblin?
"I believe had they never joined Remnant, little Josef could very possibly be alive today — let's put it that way," he answered.
For Gwen Shamblin, well-behaved children were a sign of holiness. "Children that were lost and out of control are now back under the authority of their loving parents," she would say.
It was holiness that could be achieved with severe corporal punishment. "If they're not scared of a spanking, then you haven't spanked them. If you haven't spanked them, then you don't love them. You love yourself."
Yet, Remnant has still refused to acknowledge what NewsChannel 5's investigation had uncovered.
Back in 2004, we had asked: "Does Remnant advocate repeated spankings of children, over and over and over?"
Gwen Shamblin responded, "Absolutely not."
Michael's response now?
"Look, I was there in the sanctuary when David Martin made that now-infamous line about the showdown spanking."
David Martin was one of Remnant's top leaders.
In a recording obtained by NewsChannel 5 Investigates, he had told Remnant: "A year ago, our 2 and half-year-old Avery, we had a real showdown with her. And we had a leg spanking, over and over and over and over and over and over again time one evening."
Gwen Shamblin had applauded his actions: "David Martin had a real showdown. It was a one-night showdown, and that child never forgot it."
When we pressed her on that statement, the Remnant founder shot back.
"Are you asking does this go on very often? Are you kidding? No, it does not. It is so rare, and it is only strong-willed children."
Little Josef was, by all accounts, a child who may have suffered from mental illness.
"Remnant's view of mental illness would be: there is no mental illness," Michael Shamblin explained. "They would just say you must be doing something wrong before God."
NewsChannel 5 Investigates had also asked Gwen Shamblin about the use of glue sticks to spank children. "It was not from here," she said, adding: "It came from a member somewhere, someplace else and then it went around."
"I never actually saw a child being whipped with a glue stick," Michael told us. "But knowing what I know now, looking back, I know that somewhere some leaders did talk about using glue sticks."
In addition, we had asked Shamblin and Tedd Anger, "Does Remnant advocate locking children up for lengthy periods of time?"
"We don't advocate locking them up for any period of time," Anger claimed.
Michael's response?
"From what I have learned since then, I absolutely think people have taken away everything except Remnant materials and put people in a room, things like that."
NewsChannel 5 Investigates had also obtained a recording back in 2004 from inside Remnant. In that recording, Sonya Smith described what she had done to her young child at Anger's suggestion.
"I did exactly what Tedd told me to do: take everything out of his room," Sonya said. "We got everything out of there and locked him in there from that Friday until Monday and only left him in his room with his Bible."
Gwen Shamblin was euphoric: "That's a miracle. You've got a child that's going from bizarre down to in control. So I praise God!"
When we confronted her, Shamblin denied that the tape was even real.
"That tape has been made or tampered or whatever. I totally deny that that has ever been said by anyone."
Michael Shamblin said he often thinks about NewsChannel 5's question for his mother: "Do you think it's possible that you have inadvertently encouraged child abuse?"
She denied it.
"I agree with that now — I always agreed with it," Michael Shamblin said.
"I always felt like what you were saying — and she would not let you talk and she would interrupt you. But you were saying, 'Could somebody take these teachings to an extreme? Is that possible?' That's all you were asking."
Three years after Gwen Shamblin's death, Remnant members still speak of her as a prophetic figure — and the Smiths are viewed as martyrs for the faith.
"Nowadays, when they call in, the people at Remnant, they go crazy clapping, every time Joseph or Sonya calls in."
Michael said the church is overdue for a reckoning over what happened to an innocent Remnant child. He compared it to someone seeking treatment for an addiction.
"The first step in most of these situations is acknowledgment."
"Admitting you have a problem?" we asked.
"Yes! And I would stay, let's start, Remnant, let's start with acknowledgment of: there have been imperfect situations in this church — lots of them. We have to come to grips with that. They have to."
"Gwen was fallible. She wasn't God or she wasn't some divine. She was human and made a lot of mistakes. People have been hurt in various ways from Gwen, from this whole thing. Joseph and Sonya's life changed drastically. Little Josef is dead."
Remnant Fellowship has still not responded to NewsChannel 5's inquiries, although church leaders have been telling members to "focus on the fruit."
That means to look at all the weight they've lost and other positive changes in their lives — proof, they're saying, that Remnant is "from God."
Of course, Michael Shamblin says if you really want to see the fruit, you need to look at what happened to little Josef and all the shattered lives of those who have left
"Take the damn filter off. Get real. Let's get real for once and quit pretending to be the perfect place, then we can talk."
https://www.newschannel5.com/news/newschannel-5-investigates/take-the-damn-filter-off-former-remnant-leader-says-church-needs-to-admit-role-in-childs-death
Jul 12, 2023
I Narrowly Escaped Being Recruited By A Cult. Then I Realized I Was Already In One.
Rachel Stowe
Huffington Post
July 10, 2023
While visiting an exhibit at the Frist Art Museum in Tennessee, I recognized the familiar face of an old schoolmate.
“Oh, hey E,” I greeted her. She made eye contact but turned away without any other reaction.
Then, on the other side of the room, I saw her: the famous weight-loss magnate turned cult leader, guiding a flock of women and girls through the exhibit. They were dressed in their uniform whites, and sported identical, enormous coifs that their leader was famous for. Hers, of course, was the largest, reaching the highest toward heaven.
I knew Gwen Shamblin, her family and many of her followers from my childhood community. I was raised in the Church of Christ in Nashville, the Buckle on the Bible Belt. The Shamblin family attended our church before Gwen founded a congregation dedicated to thinness and beauty called Remnant Fellowship Church, whose members said they pulled out of “mainstream” church culture to pursue the truth.
I was in her swimming pool with my youth group the time I got slut-shamed by a minister for wearing a two-piece to a church event. Other girls wore two-pieces, but with my curvy figure, it was more noticeably shameful. Even the T-shirt I wore over mine was obviously not sufficient. We almost never did “mixed bathing,” or males and females swimming together, to avoid lust — the deadliest sin in the American South.
I had listened to tapes from Weigh Down, Gwen’s Christian weight-loss program. She called the weight struggle a gift from God, and instructed her adoring listeners on how to control their eating. I longed to be thin and beautiful, much like the girls who were leaving my church to attend hers. I was never invited.
I went to a church-affiliated school attended by the young Shamblins, as well as E and many other future members of the Remnant. They were all pretty, middle school royalty, and they became Remnant royalty, with some marrying into Gwen’s family or joining the church leadership.
The Remnant community became increasingly more controversial as the years went on. Its members kept to themselves, but were often a hot topic of conversation among us “mainstream” Christians. To those on the outside, Gwen’s “church” looked like a cult.
When HBO released “The Way Down: God, Greed, and the Cult of Gwen Shamblin,” a 2021 docuseries that explored allegations of physical and psychological abuse by Gwen and her church, I felt relieved that being homely and curvy back then quite possibly saved me from being recruited.
In my youth, I remained loyal to my church, going to a Christian university and taking mission trips to Russia and the South Pacific. But after graduation, I fell in love with an atheist and lived abroad for 10 years. This distance removed the pressure to attend church and gave me space to reflect on my beliefs. By the time we moved back to Nashville when I was 30, I had started to change my mind. Though I never officially departed the church, I had quiet-quit.
Then I went to a dinner party.
I was sitting on a friend’s deck, across from Bob, a year after returning to Nashville. My friend was raving about Bob’s psychiatry practice, and I saw my chance at free therapy. Bob asked about my background. I explained my childhood, my school and, of course, my church. We got into how I knew Gwen and her followers, and how I’d bought into the Weigh Down movement, trying to be Kate Moss skinny like most girls raised in the 90’s.
“I’m lucky I dodged that cult bullet!” I laughed.
He shrugged. “Well, except that the Church of Christ is a cult.”
No, the Remnant is a cult.
Bob added: “Didn’t you also go to a church-affiliated school? Cults want to completely overtake your social life to ensure you are only around other members.”
My mind started to race. The first tactic of cults is to isolate you while you are inundated with their ideology. My church community pressured me to attend Christian college so my education would be aligned with Christianity. And to find a Christian husband, of course. Oh, man. Yeah.
My first exposure to the outside was in ninth grade. I had begged my parents to switch me to public school. I felt I was missing something. I’d never danced (except alone in my room) since dancing was treated in the church like having sex with your clothes on. Instead, my school had banquets, like in the Bible. I’d known the same people since birth.
The culture shock in my first year of public school was mind-blowing. I’d never met anyone who didn’t do their homework, much less people who went to make-out parties … or worse. It took me six months to make a friend.
Therapist Bob was making some fair points about the isolation factor of my alleged cult. But I was still not convinced.
He pointed out another trait of cults. “If you try to leave, you can, but not without psychological terrorism and ostracism.”
Aw, jeez. My mind flashed to a few months prior when I was on one of my visits to see relatives, which in my family include nonnegotiable trips to their church. With no desire to go to Sunday school, I offered to take my 2-year-old niece to the nursery. After 10 minutes, the teacher set a toy telephone in front of each toddler. She motioned to a wall of labeled hooks where parents would hang diaper bags, and she pointed to the bare ones. To the tune of “Frère Jacques,” they dedicated a song verse to each absent kid while holding the plastic phones to their little ears.
Hello absent child Billy, hello absent child Billy.
Where are you? Where are you?
Oh, how we miss you, oh, how we miss you.
Come back to church soon, come back to church soon.
Bob kept going: “Cults create a whole way of life motivated by fear and guilt and shame. Cults make you feel like you need them to have value.” Shit. I was shaking. But Bob didn’t stop! He said the church grooms you to hate yourself. To believe that you’re wrong as you are, that you’re selfish and dirty.
Therapist Bob needed to shut up now. I’d never felt so exposed in my life.
A few months later, even though I’d distanced myself from the church, I was pressured into co-leading a mission trip to Australia with university students. I’d gone there when I was still in school, and convinced myself it would be cool to see my friends from that time again.
There was a moment on the trip when a lightning bolt of truth hit me between the eyes. At Sunday morning church, we’d divided into “prayer groups.” Within each circle, everyone was called on individually to share any current struggles. The leader was scribbling notes to supposedly “pray about” afterward.
She zeroed in on one young woman in our circle: “What about that friend you talked about last week? Has God answered that prayer? You need to tell her and her boyfriend to stop.”
It quickly became an interrogation, and the young woman was visibly uncomfortable. I was too, though many others were nodding in agreement, putting pressure on her to put pressure on her friend … about her sex life?!
Therapist Bob was right. Cults thrive on shame, fear, control. What else would you call this?
These kinds of “prayer requests” were done in every single Sunday school class I ever attended. They were printed in our church bulletin. They were done in small groups, in the chapel, and in front of the entire congregation. I had done them my whole life. Suddenly I could see that the purpose was manipulation and control, disguised as offering prayer. Though Gwen Shamblin never recruited me, Bob was right when he’d looked me dead in the eye that night at the dinner party and said, “Rachel, you were raised in a cult.”
I was miserable for the rest of the Australia trip. I fought with my host family, I fought with the other leader, and the students all hated me. I knew that this was it: the last time I would ever be involved with the church. I finally learned that quiet quitting wasn’t enough. I had to break up with my church outright.
Now, years after that realization, I’m still deprogramming myself. But I’m grateful to have gotten out. I’ve seen what can happen when you don’t. Perhaps E recognized me that day at the Frist, but the years of consuming mental poison had transformed her. Her eyes were empty.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/gwen-shamblin-remnant-cult_n_64a82462e4b03d308d949c5d
Oct 3, 2021
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"In May of this year, film-makers Marina Zenovich and Nile Cappello had nearly wrapped on a documentary series about Remnant Fellowship, an insular, eerily cheery church in Brentwood, Tennessee, which preached weight loss as a spiritual assignment. For more than three years Cappello and her team had researched Remnant, which had faced accusations of being a cult that promoted child abuse, and its charismatic leader, Gwen Shamblin Lara, a stick-thin woman with an inflated blonde beehive who gained fame for a theological diet program to pray one's way to thinness.
Cappello, an investigative journalist and executive producer, and Zenovich, a director who has made films on such figures as Roman Polanski, Robin Williams and Lance Armstrong, had spoken to numerous former members of Remnant Fellowship, explored allegations of harassment and emotional abuse, outlined the trail of toxicity behind the Weigh Down Workshop's teachings of fat as a manifestation of sin, and accepted that Shamblin, 66, would probably never agree to an interview. "They don't want to go on record," Zenovich told the Guardian. "They want to continue doing what they're doing, which is controlling people. So we tried – we sent letters to a lot of leaders – but no one responded."
Earlier this month, in response to allegations made in the film, Remnant issued a formal statement, presented at the end of the series, in which the church "categorically denies the absurd defamatory statements and accusations made in this documentary" and assures "children are happy and healthy, being raised with the most love, care, support and protection imaginable".
Then, on 29 May, Shamblin and her husband, former Tarzan actor Joe Lara, as well as five other leaders within Remnant Fellowship, died in a plane crash outside Smyrna, Tennessee. The crash now opens The Way Down, a multi-part series on HBO Max, with the first three episodes – on Shamblin's rise to popularity among evangelical churches, her increasingly controversial teachings and allegations of child abuse – premiering this week. Two more episodes on the crash, its investigation and the transition of power to Shamblin's two children, will land in spring 2022."
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Oct 1, 2021
'This is a cult': inside the shocking story of a religious weight-loss group
Adrian Horton
The Guardian
September 29, 2021
In May of this year, film-makers Marina Zenovich and Nile Cappello had nearly wrapped on a documentary series about Remnant Fellowship, an insular, eerily cheery church in Brentwood, Tennessee, which preached weight loss as a spiritual assignment. For more than three years Cappello and her team had researched Remnant, which had faced accusations of being a cult that promoted child abuse, and its charismatic leader, Gwen Shamblin Lara, a stick-thin woman with an inflated blonde beehive who gained fame for a theological diet program to pray one’s way to thinness.
Cappello, an investigative journalist and executive producer, and Zenovich, a director who has made films on such figures as Roman Polanski, Robin Williams and Lance Armstrong, had spoken to numerous former members of Remnant Fellowship, explored allegations of harassment and emotional abuse, outlined the trail of toxicity behind the Weigh Down Workshop’s teachings of fat as a manifestation of sin, and accepted that Shamblin, 66, would probably never agree to an interview. “They don’t want to go on record,” Zenovich told the Guardian. “They want to continue doing what they’re doing, which is controlling people. So we tried – we sent letters to a lot of leaders – but no one responded.”
Earlier this month, in response to allegations made in the film, Remnant issued a formal statement, presented at the end of the series, in which the church “categorically denies the absurd defamatory statements and accusations made in this documentary” and assures “children are happy and healthy, being raised with the most love, care, support and protection imaginable”.
Then, on 29 May, Shamblin and her husband, former Tarzan actor Joe Lara, as well as five other leaders within Remnant Fellowship, died in a plane crash outside Smyrna, Tennessee. The crash now opens The Way Down, a multi-part series on HBO Max, with the first three episodes – on Shamblin’s rise to popularity among evangelical churches, her increasingly controversial teachings and allegations of child abuse – premiering this week. Two more episodes on the crash, its investigation and the transition of power to Shamblin’s two children, will land in spring 2022.
For years, Shamblin projected a glowing, bubbly, lavish facade: a self-made Christian businesswoman devoted to helping others, particularly women, finally achieve their weight loss goals by getting closer to God, with a plantation-style mansion outside Nashville. Her Weigh Down Workshop, which she started in 1986, preached essentially a theological version of intuitive eating: eat only when your stomach is growling, pray through cravings. Her explicit linkage of diet culture with holiness – “how to stop bowing down to the refrigerator and how to bow back down to him,” as she said in an early interview – made her a popular figure among churches; by the early 2000s, Shamblin, who trained as a dietician, had sold millions of books and appeared on Larry King Live, The Tyra Banks Show and in a New Yorker profile (Slim For Him, 2001).
The infusion of 90s and early 2000s diet culture – books and daytime TV specials and restrictive plans and “eat what you want but lose weight!” slogans – with spirituality, from someone who claims to be talking directly to God, was “a hugely powerful message” to those who grew up Christian, Cappello told the Guardian. But over the course of 20 years, Remnant became about much more than losing weight. As The Way Down illustrates over three increasingly ominous episodes, Shamblin exerted more and more power over members’ finances, marriages, custody arrangements, parenting, social media postures and eventually, all contact with the outside world. Testimonies from ex-members and those threatened with the loss of family members to the insular group, which believes it is the only path to heaven, demonstrate how Remnant was actually “about power and controlling people’s lives, controlling their weight, controlling their marriages, controlling their finances”, said Zenovich.
“People talk a lot about her makeup and her hair, and of course there’s a funny aspect to it, but that is a mask, that is a facade in itself,” Cappello told the Guardian. “It is a perfect representation of her doctrine and the way that she approaches the world, and the way that she has her members portray an image of perfection and happiness and joy to the outside world when they’re suffering internally.”
In 1999, Shamblin broke with the Church of Christ, the conservative branch of evangelicalism in which she grew up (and which forbade female leaders) and launched Remnant Fellowship, based around her diet teachings, which saw weight loss as a pure reflection of spiritual commitment and intent, gain as failure and sin.
Cappello described a months-long process of getting to know former members and those affected by the church and its toxic teachings. Some, she said, suspected she might be a Remnant member undercover, or a private eye hired to collect dirt on people for custody cases. “That fear is real,” said Cappello, especially given the church’s litigiousness (numerous former members in the series recall threats from Remnant that the church would take away their children if they left the group). “That’s not paranoia – that’s totally justified.”
Subjects include Natasha Pavlovich, an ex-girlfriend of Lara’s fighting against Remnant’s robust legal team for custody of her 10-year-old daughter. Glen and Cary Wingerd, whose teenage daughter Delaney joined Remnant after being recruited by a high school boyfriend, describe a trail of shady deception: burner phones, dropped conversations, increasing isolation from their child.
The first-person testimonies by former members soften what can seem, at first glance, an unfathomable leap. “It becomes very easy for the viewer to distance themselves by saying, ‘I would never do that, I would never fall for that, I would never join a church like that,’” said Cappello. But the Weigh Down Workshops promised something many women were desperately craving: a framework for weight loss that felt meaningful, infused with the righteousness and familiarity of religion; a community and common purpose beyond the home. A message of control delivered by another woman, thin and perpetually bubbly; an extreme and euphoric manifestation of the diet mantra “nothing tastes as good as skinny feels”. Remnant Fellowship offered support, the security of rules and black-and-white thinking – plus free babysitters and in-house homeschool, legal services.
Ultimately, it was the same seduction of society writ large: worth anointed through the pursuit of thinness and deference to men, although delivered by a woman harnessing such desire for her own power. “The shame that you have just being a woman in this day and age, compounded with the religious aspect, is really incredibly powerful,” said Cappello.
Beyond many accounts of disordered eating and mental health struggles by former members, the third episode details a horrific case of child abuse that initially brought the church under scrutiny. In 2003, two Atlanta-based members of Remnant Fellowship, Joseph and Sonya Smith, were sentenced to life in prison plus 30 years for beating their eight-year-old son, Josef, to death as punishment. Investigators found the boy was repeatedly abused; a former babysitter featured in the series alleges that she was ordered to beat the boy at church and heard, along with several others, the abuse within the building. Other former members recall Shamblin instructing members how to beat their children with glue sticks and other instruments, as obedience was of the utmost importance to God and, by extension, Remnant leadership. Channel 5 in Nashville obtained a recording in which Shamblin praised Sonya Smith for locking up Josef with nothing by a Bible for three days.
Shamblin denied ever condoning abuse; local authorities investigated whether Shamblin and Remnant’s teaching contributed to Josef’s death, and reached no conclusion. The church defended the Smiths as wrongly accused and continued to support them. “The way the church has spun it is not reflected in reality, it’s not based on facts,” said Cappello.
The word “cult” is fraught, contested, and has driven fascination with series such as LuLaRich, the Amazon series on the multi-level marketing company LuLaRoe, peddled as a sort of prosperity gospel by two members of the Church of Latter-Day Saints (formerly known as Mormons); or HBO’s The Vow, about the Nxivm cult that also wielded a sincere impulse for self-improvement to dark, destructive ends. The Way Down’s subtitle is “God, Greed, and the cult of Gwen Shamblin” because “after working on this for a year-plus, it’s very clear to me that this is a cult”, said Zenovich.
“It’s not up to me to make that determination,” said Cappello. “I look at the criteria that’s used to determine what is a cult. And if you look at that criteria” – isolation from the outside world, cutting off contact with family members, belief in their singular path to heaven, characterizing ex-members as heretics, the control and abuse – “Gwen and Remnant Fellowship fit every one”.
The Way Down makes the case for the group’s extremity, yet the show goes on: a day after the plane’s crash, Elizabeth Shamblin Hannah, whose husband was onboard, promised to uphold Remnant’s mission and “continue the dream that Gwen Shamblin Lara had of helping people find a relationship with God”. The final moments of the series find her, clad in a long black dress, on her mother’s stage. Wraith-like, hands in the air, she leads her followers “into the Promised land, together” – or, at least,
further scrutiny in later episodes.
The Way Down: God, Greed and the Cult of Gwen Shamblin starts on HBO Max on 30 September and in the UK at a later date
https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2021/sep/29/gwen-shamblin-docuseries-the-way-down-remnant-fellowship?fbclid=IwAR2nA0HjRYF_sw6bBnxP9s-W7RUDGGpwegJkFwla3K2ExHe1poL3MQH6Lfw
September 29, 2021
In May of this year, film-makers Marina Zenovich and Nile Cappello had nearly wrapped on a documentary series about Remnant Fellowship, an insular, eerily cheery church in Brentwood, Tennessee, which preached weight loss as a spiritual assignment. For more than three years Cappello and her team had researched Remnant, which had faced accusations of being a cult that promoted child abuse, and its charismatic leader, Gwen Shamblin Lara, a stick-thin woman with an inflated blonde beehive who gained fame for a theological diet program to pray one’s way to thinness.
Cappello, an investigative journalist and executive producer, and Zenovich, a director who has made films on such figures as Roman Polanski, Robin Williams and Lance Armstrong, had spoken to numerous former members of Remnant Fellowship, explored allegations of harassment and emotional abuse, outlined the trail of toxicity behind the Weigh Down Workshop’s teachings of fat as a manifestation of sin, and accepted that Shamblin, 66, would probably never agree to an interview. “They don’t want to go on record,” Zenovich told the Guardian. “They want to continue doing what they’re doing, which is controlling people. So we tried – we sent letters to a lot of leaders – but no one responded.”
Earlier this month, in response to allegations made in the film, Remnant issued a formal statement, presented at the end of the series, in which the church “categorically denies the absurd defamatory statements and accusations made in this documentary” and assures “children are happy and healthy, being raised with the most love, care, support and protection imaginable”.
Then, on 29 May, Shamblin and her husband, former Tarzan actor Joe Lara, as well as five other leaders within Remnant Fellowship, died in a plane crash outside Smyrna, Tennessee. The crash now opens The Way Down, a multi-part series on HBO Max, with the first three episodes – on Shamblin’s rise to popularity among evangelical churches, her increasingly controversial teachings and allegations of child abuse – premiering this week. Two more episodes on the crash, its investigation and the transition of power to Shamblin’s two children, will land in spring 2022.
For years, Shamblin projected a glowing, bubbly, lavish facade: a self-made Christian businesswoman devoted to helping others, particularly women, finally achieve their weight loss goals by getting closer to God, with a plantation-style mansion outside Nashville. Her Weigh Down Workshop, which she started in 1986, preached essentially a theological version of intuitive eating: eat only when your stomach is growling, pray through cravings. Her explicit linkage of diet culture with holiness – “how to stop bowing down to the refrigerator and how to bow back down to him,” as she said in an early interview – made her a popular figure among churches; by the early 2000s, Shamblin, who trained as a dietician, had sold millions of books and appeared on Larry King Live, The Tyra Banks Show and in a New Yorker profile (Slim For Him, 2001).
The infusion of 90s and early 2000s diet culture – books and daytime TV specials and restrictive plans and “eat what you want but lose weight!” slogans – with spirituality, from someone who claims to be talking directly to God, was “a hugely powerful message” to those who grew up Christian, Cappello told the Guardian. But over the course of 20 years, Remnant became about much more than losing weight. As The Way Down illustrates over three increasingly ominous episodes, Shamblin exerted more and more power over members’ finances, marriages, custody arrangements, parenting, social media postures and eventually, all contact with the outside world. Testimonies from ex-members and those threatened with the loss of family members to the insular group, which believes it is the only path to heaven, demonstrate how Remnant was actually “about power and controlling people’s lives, controlling their weight, controlling their marriages, controlling their finances”, said Zenovich.
“People talk a lot about her makeup and her hair, and of course there’s a funny aspect to it, but that is a mask, that is a facade in itself,” Cappello told the Guardian. “It is a perfect representation of her doctrine and the way that she approaches the world, and the way that she has her members portray an image of perfection and happiness and joy to the outside world when they’re suffering internally.”
In 1999, Shamblin broke with the Church of Christ, the conservative branch of evangelicalism in which she grew up (and which forbade female leaders) and launched Remnant Fellowship, based around her diet teachings, which saw weight loss as a pure reflection of spiritual commitment and intent, gain as failure and sin.
Cappello described a months-long process of getting to know former members and those affected by the church and its toxic teachings. Some, she said, suspected she might be a Remnant member undercover, or a private eye hired to collect dirt on people for custody cases. “That fear is real,” said Cappello, especially given the church’s litigiousness (numerous former members in the series recall threats from Remnant that the church would take away their children if they left the group). “That’s not paranoia – that’s totally justified.”
Subjects include Natasha Pavlovich, an ex-girlfriend of Lara’s fighting against Remnant’s robust legal team for custody of her 10-year-old daughter. Glen and Cary Wingerd, whose teenage daughter Delaney joined Remnant after being recruited by a high school boyfriend, describe a trail of shady deception: burner phones, dropped conversations, increasing isolation from their child.
The first-person testimonies by former members soften what can seem, at first glance, an unfathomable leap. “It becomes very easy for the viewer to distance themselves by saying, ‘I would never do that, I would never fall for that, I would never join a church like that,’” said Cappello. But the Weigh Down Workshops promised something many women were desperately craving: a framework for weight loss that felt meaningful, infused with the righteousness and familiarity of religion; a community and common purpose beyond the home. A message of control delivered by another woman, thin and perpetually bubbly; an extreme and euphoric manifestation of the diet mantra “nothing tastes as good as skinny feels”. Remnant Fellowship offered support, the security of rules and black-and-white thinking – plus free babysitters and in-house homeschool, legal services.
Ultimately, it was the same seduction of society writ large: worth anointed through the pursuit of thinness and deference to men, although delivered by a woman harnessing such desire for her own power. “The shame that you have just being a woman in this day and age, compounded with the religious aspect, is really incredibly powerful,” said Cappello.
Beyond many accounts of disordered eating and mental health struggles by former members, the third episode details a horrific case of child abuse that initially brought the church under scrutiny. In 2003, two Atlanta-based members of Remnant Fellowship, Joseph and Sonya Smith, were sentenced to life in prison plus 30 years for beating their eight-year-old son, Josef, to death as punishment. Investigators found the boy was repeatedly abused; a former babysitter featured in the series alleges that she was ordered to beat the boy at church and heard, along with several others, the abuse within the building. Other former members recall Shamblin instructing members how to beat their children with glue sticks and other instruments, as obedience was of the utmost importance to God and, by extension, Remnant leadership. Channel 5 in Nashville obtained a recording in which Shamblin praised Sonya Smith for locking up Josef with nothing by a Bible for three days.
Shamblin denied ever condoning abuse; local authorities investigated whether Shamblin and Remnant’s teaching contributed to Josef’s death, and reached no conclusion. The church defended the Smiths as wrongly accused and continued to support them. “The way the church has spun it is not reflected in reality, it’s not based on facts,” said Cappello.
The word “cult” is fraught, contested, and has driven fascination with series such as LuLaRich, the Amazon series on the multi-level marketing company LuLaRoe, peddled as a sort of prosperity gospel by two members of the Church of Latter-Day Saints (formerly known as Mormons); or HBO’s The Vow, about the Nxivm cult that also wielded a sincere impulse for self-improvement to dark, destructive ends. The Way Down’s subtitle is “God, Greed, and the cult of Gwen Shamblin” because “after working on this for a year-plus, it’s very clear to me that this is a cult”, said Zenovich.
“It’s not up to me to make that determination,” said Cappello. “I look at the criteria that’s used to determine what is a cult. And if you look at that criteria” – isolation from the outside world, cutting off contact with family members, belief in their singular path to heaven, characterizing ex-members as heretics, the control and abuse – “Gwen and Remnant Fellowship fit every one”.
The Way Down makes the case for the group’s extremity, yet the show goes on: a day after the plane’s crash, Elizabeth Shamblin Hannah, whose husband was onboard, promised to uphold Remnant’s mission and “continue the dream that Gwen Shamblin Lara had of helping people find a relationship with God”. The final moments of the series find her, clad in a long black dress, on her mother’s stage. Wraith-like, hands in the air, she leads her followers “into the Promised land, together” – or, at least,
further scrutiny in later episodes.
The Way Down: God, Greed and the Cult of Gwen Shamblin starts on HBO Max on 30 September and in the UK at a later date
https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2021/sep/29/gwen-shamblin-docuseries-the-way-down-remnant-fellowship?fbclid=IwAR2nA0HjRYF_sw6bBnxP9s-W7RUDGGpwegJkFwla3K2ExHe1poL3MQH6Lfw
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