Over the weekend, Jessi and I stretched out with the dog and the baby and checked out the first three episodes of the new HBO Max docuseries The Way Down: God, Greed, and the Cult of Gwen Shamblin. This post will contain some rambling reactions, and I’d love to hear others’ responses if you’ve watched the series as well. The comments are open!

I had been intrigued by the trailer enough to make the venn diagram at right, but while Joe Exotic’s bizarre antics on Tiger King induced “What did I just see?” laughter, The Way Down is a more chilling portrayal. There’s a lot going on under the surface of this thing. Various prejudices about body image, sex, race, and a slew of other issues bubble to the surface here and there in clips and comments. The series touches on difficult conversations about abuse and mental illness without really having the time to explore them fully, and some of the critiques of the late Gwen Shamblin Lara feel a little more like potshots than legitimate analysis (especially the comments on her appearance). Still, there’s some thought-provoking stuff here, and hopefully good conversation results. Anyway, some thoughts…

My Own Experience
I was a little too young for Weigh Down Workshop, but the program had a small and vocal following at the church where I grew up. When founder Gwen Shamblin Lara denounced the doctrine of the Trinity, my church ceased their involvement in the program. My main exposure to Weigh Down was a few promotional videos here and there and my mom’s playful mocking of the program’s enthusiastic spokesperson. Still, weight has been a big issue for me over the years, so the very existence of a pray-the-pounds-away program pricks at something in me. I will fully own going into this documentary already distrustful and a little resentful of Weigh Down’s very existence. Back in 2010, I also wrote a paper on Shamblin’s rejection of the Trinity as an example of a “modern-day heresy” (because that’s the kind of thing seminarians have to write about), so again, I was already predisposed to some distrust going into this thing.

So, about that Trinity…
Shamblin Lara’s principle objection to the Trinity is that it doesn’t explicitly appear in the Bible, and honestly, she’s not totally wrong there. The history of the Trinity involves a few centuries of theologians piecing together the logic of who and what God is. For example, in the gospel of John, Jesus says, “I and the Father are one,” and “I am in the Father, and the Father is in me.” In Matthew, Jesus commands to baptize “in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.” Depending on how you read John and Genesis, the Persons of the Trinity are all present at creation. And so on. Smarter and deader people than me have written a lot on this topic. Shamblin Lara argues that churches which teach the Trinity are false, and that her congregation is part of a “righteous remnant” spoken of in the Bible (hence the name Remnant Fellowship Church). This stance rubs me the wrong way for a few reasons.

1) The doctrine of the Trinity has stood the test of time. Early Christians did not arrive at it haphazardly, and it has been the consensus view for centuries. Challenging it now (and claiming all these other people are wrong) feels a little arrogant. While tradition certainly isn’t infallible, this is one of those times where the tradition is there for good reason.

2) Her stance perpetuates “bibliolatry” (that is, viewing the Bible as itself a god). The Bible as we have it today has been translated and re-translated and edited and cut-and-pasted for centuries, and serious biblical scholarship has to reckon with this. By rejecting the Trinity because it is not explicitly named in the Bible, Shamblin Lara is elevating a modern, out-of-context reading of the Bible to a holy level. Yes, the Bible is our main source for Christian doctrine, but it has its limits. We have always depended on centuries of interpretation to make sense of it, and the Trinity is a perfect example.

3) For me, the Trinity is one of the most beautiful pieces of Christian doctrine. The notion of God as community speaks to our own inherently relational nature as humans (who are made in the Image of God). The Triune God is all about unity and relationship and love, and thus we aspire to be as well. Discarding the Trinity doesn’t just detract from how we understand God; it takes away from our understanding of who we are as humans.

What Is a Cult?
It’s hard to define this term because it is so very subjective. At its most literal, a cult is a system of religious veneration directed at one particular person or object (the Cult of Isis, for instance). In modern parlance though, a cult usually has nefarious connotations— whether teaching harmful beliefs or manipulating adherents for the leader’s benefit. The modern sense of the word cult always revolves around control, and cults are notoriously difficult to escape once indoctrination has occurred. With its negative implications, the term gets tossed around pretty freely nowadays. Some religious groups even consider any other faith to be a cult! So is Remnant Fellowship a cult? It sure seems to check a lot of the boxes: control of members, strict discipline, difficulty of leaving, a revered leader ascribed prophetic power, defining itself by opposition to existing religions, financial manipulation, etc. So… maybe? Probably?

Sexism
I have to acknowledge my own male privilege here: I might not have honed in on this issue without guidance from a friend, and I feel there’s much about the sexism at work in Shamblin Lara’s career which I don’t understand. The trailer for the documentary focuses heavily on Shamblin Lara’s gender and the rarity of a female cult leader. The documentary itself left me with a lot of questions. On the one hand, part of Shamblin Lara’s initial appeal to followers lay in her gender; as a powerful woman in Evangelical circles, she impressed Evangelical women who saw her as a more egalitarian alternative in such a male-dominated space. But then, to hear the testimonies of people who left Remnant, that environment was incredibly oppressive for women. Per the interviews, Shamblin Lara and her entirely-male leadership board stressed strict complementarian gender roles and counseled women to stay with abusive husbands— even going so far as to support the husbands financially during divorce proceedings. It appears Shamblin Lara has been the target of sexism, an overcomer of sexism, and a perpetrator of sexism all at the same time. There’s a lot to unpack here, and so far, it seems like the documentary hasn’t quite had the time to explore this issue. With two more episodes still to be released, I hope they cover this more.

Believe Survivors
Speaking of sexism, this documentary feels at home in the world of #metoo, as it gives its subjects a platform to share their stories. A range of former Remnant members and concerned families speak with candor about the pain they saw and experienced— the ways the church broke families apart, forced them together, or encouraged abuse. I appreciated the protections offered to survivors who chose to remain anonymous, and the documentary carries an overall tone of lifting up and amplifying these people’s voices. Remnant leadership chose not to take part in the documentary, and as such, the stories we hear are almost entirely those of the people who escaped. Accusations of abuse should never be taken lightly or dismissed out of hand; we should believe these voices and praise their courage for speaking out.

The Prosperity Gospel… of Weight Loss?
A popular strain of thought in modern Evangelicalism, the Prosperity Gospel promotes the belief that someone’s “blessedness” is proportional to their physical health and financial wealth.
Multi-millionaire? God must favor you!
Got cancer and lost everything? God must be punishing you!
Want to strike it rich? Pray harder and tithe to us!
Preachers like Joel Osteen, Creflo Dollar, and Paula White-Cain have built empires on this worldview, while many other Christian leaders treat it as heresy. Of course, the Prosperity Gospel requires some skillful manipulation of scripture, especially since there’s an entire book of the Bible dedicated to dismantling it: Job. Remnant Fellowship Church clearly bought into a version of Prosperity Gospel. One of the interviews speaks to how the Remnant leadership team looked for causes when something bad happened to Shamblin Lara and her family; the church staff staged a clandestine Whose-sin-caused-this-misfortune? inquisition rather than mourning the event openly together. Additionally, Shamblin Lara’s lavish lifestyle (including a massive plantation-style mansion near the church) clearly sent the message of economic “blessedness.” But here’s another thought: What if Weigh Down’s heavy emphasis on weight loss through prayer is itself a form of Prosperity Gospel?

In her statements about “false churches,” one of Shamblin Lara’s repeated claims was that a false church would use the Weigh Down material but then gain the weight back— as if their size was an indicator of faith. While the documentary never explicitly makes this leap, it’s implied that the body shaming at Remnant went hand-in-hand with accusations of lack of faith. We often talk about Prosperity Gospel with the shorthand “health and wealth.” It seems like Shamblin Lara adds a third: health, wealth, and weight.

The Prosperity Gospel continues to be wildly popular, but here’s the thing: it inevitably breaks down.
Something bad happens to a good person,
or something good happens to a bad person,
and the Prosperity Gospel falls apart like a house of cards.
The universe just doesn’t work that way.

When I visited Houston, TX, a decade ago to study the impact of Joel Osteen’s Lakewood Church in the surrounding area, I met several pastors who spoke of receiving “Lakewood refugees”— people who devoted years to praying for health-and-wealth before finally giving up on Osteen’s empty promises. The Prosperity Gospel isn’t just dangerous because it’s “faulty theology” or “unbiblical” or whatever; it’s dangerous because it preys on people, gives them false hope for material gain, and benefits a pastor without genuinely helping the people in that pastor’s care. This sounds very much like what happened at Remnant.

Recommendation
This is not a fun documentary, but it is a captivating one. If you are fascinated by cults and the psychological mechanisms that keep abusive leaders in power, The Way Down is worth your time. If you grew up in more oppressive Christian spaces, the documentary features a number of triggers— abuse, shaming, sanctimony, exclusivity, judgment, prejudice, the list goes on. Personally, I found myself cringing and gritting my teeth during several sections since Remnant’s abuses certainly aren’t unique to Remnant, and some of them reminded me of larger patterns I experienced in Evangelicalism. That said, if you’re looking for an in-depth exploration of Gwen Shamblin Lara herself, I found the series a little lacking. There’s a two-minute mention of her upbringing in the Church of Christ, and from there, we get few (if any) glimpses into her psyche. Besides the “power went to her head” theory, it’s hard to tell what really led a controversial diet guru to found a cultic megachurch in one of Tennessee’s most affluent suburbs, and with Shamblin Lara’s death in May of 2021, we may never know the full story.

If you watch The Way Down, let me know! I’d love to talk more about this thing.