The Way Down: God, Greed and the Cult of Gwen Shamblin

I think I'm going to start doing my hair just like the exquisite and elegant Gwen Shamblin.

Her hair. Her anorexia. Her plastic Ken doll con artist husband. Her fake Christianity. Her grifting scam that is The Remnant Fellowship .This documentary has everything- and I mean everything!

I am so sad that there are only going to be three episodes available and we will have to wait until next year to get the rest because I am obsessed with this and I am not ashamed to admit it.

These people are lunatics and I need more!

Interesting documentary. I wish the structure was more in order as it was a bit all over the place, but there was a lot of information and I enjoyed it. It makes me so sad that people get sucked into cults like this. I feel so sorry for all of the children, especially Joseph.

I wish we got to hear how the people who left the Church were able to do it and what happened afterward.

I wonder if God brought the plane down...awkward!

Looking forward to the new episodes next year.

I really enjoyed this and look forward to 2 more episodes (presumably next year?) I'd like to hear a little more about what becomes of some of the key players. Especially Gwen's daughter - if that girl isn't suffering with Anorexia, I'm not sure who is.

I'm a little surprised that the story was unfamiliar to me as I find the topic very interesting. Between the cult storyline and the charlatan religious leader storyline, it was right up my alley.

How individuals can let themselves be taken it by such incredibly obvious hypocrisy is truly beyond me. But I guess they must be looking for something missing in their lives if they're willing to let anyone or anything influence them to this degree. And that's how a cult gets you - it provides what is missing. It fills a void that nothing else has been able to fill.

Of course it's the children either born into it or brought into it by their parents who get my deepest sympathy. Or someone like Delaney who was influenced at a young age and at a particularly vulnerable time in her life. My heart breaks for her parents.

What really fascinated me, however, was reading a couple of the reviews here. There are people who watch the series and then defend this despicable, greedy, evil, charlatan and her co-leaders? It's not a cult and Gwen actually helped people? Really? And how could anyone criticize parents fighting to keep their high school daughter from joining this cult filled with crazies and zealots?

Of course, everyone is entitled to their own opinion. And it probably shouldn't surprise me as it's a big part of the reason this country is in the horrendously frightening position it's in today.

As Episode 1 of "The Way Down" (2021-22 release; 5 episodes of about 50 min each) opens, it is "May 29, 2021" and a private plan seems to have crashed shortly after takeoff in suburban Nashville, with all 7 people aboard presumed dead. We then go to "Two Years Earlier", where we see a woman giving a deposition in a law suit. Turns out the woman is Gwen Shamblin, a leader (THE leader?) of the Remnants Fellowship Church, a bizarro mix of weight loss evangelical teachings. Yea, you read that right. We then go back to "1992", and are introduced to Gwen's upbringing. At this point we are 10 min into Episode 1.

Couple of comments: this is the latest documentary from director Marina Zenovich ("LANCE", "Robin WIlliams: Come Inside My Mind"). Here she looks at the truly strange thing that is the Remnants Fellowship Church. It is strange because it somehow connects conservative Christian faith to a weight-loss program. It also stands out because the de facto founder and leader is a woman, which is unheard of in evangelical circles. There a bunch of other stuff going on which I will let you explore on your own as you watch this. It all makes for fascinating viewing, frankly from the get-go, and I got completely sucked into and enjoying it. I mean, you can't make this stuff up! I don't know why the series is listed here as "The Way Down: God, Greed and the Cult of Gwen Shamblin", as in the series itself, it's simple billed as "The Way Down". (As a complete aside: the docu-series reveals that at the time of the plane crash, the group was flying to... a Trump MAGA event in Florida. Of course! As the polls consistently show, 75-80% of supposed peaceful, church-going, Jesus-loving, family-friendly Christian conservatives love above all a bullying, serial-lying, narcissistic, racist, Bible-ignorant, anti-democratic dictator-wannabe insurrectionist who would love nothing more than to become "the American Putin". Christian conservatives and the Big Loser. Truly a match made in heaven!)

"The Way Down" premiered on HBO in 2021 with 3 episodes and then 2 more episodes came earlier this year. I'm just now catching up on it on HBO Max, which suggested it to me based on my viewing habits. Great suggestion! If you like documentaries and/or are interested in how one woman built and business empire turned into a church movement, I'd readily suggest you check this out, and draw your own conclusion.

I'll break this review into two pieces: technique and content.

Technique: This is a serviceable three-episode docu-series mixing the usual talking-head interviews and footage with the occasional reenactment. Since watching, I've learned that production began before the death of the main subject. Perhaps that accounts for some of the odd narrative, the way the timeline jumps around. And how the main storylines -- the couple who lost their daughter to the cult, the woman who had a child with one of the cult leaders, and the parents who beat their son to death -- feel disproportionately intermingled.

Content: It was interesting to see some of these escaped members (not to mention the "cult interventionist" who is among the prominent interviewees) practicing their Christian faith. Natasha, who was falsely called a child abuser by her cult-leader baby daddy, can be seen genuflecting in various scenes, even after she left Remnant. The cult interventionist is wearing a cross on the outside of his shirt, presumably to make sure the camera picks it up. Even some of these reviewers on here opine that the Remnant church isn't wrong for being a Christian church, but because it's a "false church."

There seem to be a lot of false churches these days, and the list of religious charlatans grows longer every year. Christians always have some excuse - "well, it's not MY church. That's not MY way of believing." And while Remnant claims the church only follows bible-based teachings, a reviewer here takes umbrage, arguing that Remnant is NOT Bible-based.

And here we have the problem. Worse than the abuses of one church itself is the very essence of modern Christianity in the United States. Any religion that sets people up to fall for things like the "prosperity gospel," and to short change their critical thinking skills for a set of authoritarian principles, is just no good. Period. This is what makes people susceptible to not only terrors like Gwen Shamblin, but Donald J. Trump.

The problem is, religion is interwoven with culture. As the interviewed Southern author notes, the social culture of the south is all the same - there's nobody better than Jesus, and the Bible is literally true. This is a culture that doesn't merely include some religious beliefs, but is utterly entangled with them. This means that if a person wants to practice a religion other than the one infused with their culture, they risk losing everything. Family, friends, and a community they may have known their whole lives. The religion then acts as a social adhesive, and nobody can be free.

They're all trapped in a cult -- and not just one run by a crazy lady with big hair.