Gwen Shamblin

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Gwen Shamblin is an American Christian non-fiction author and leader of the Remnant Fellowship Church. The most distinctive aspect of her writing is its combination of weight loss programs with Christianity. Shamblin is married and has two children. [1]

1 Authorship and Weight Loss Program
2 Biblical Controversy
3 Remnant Fellowship Church
4 Josef Smith Case and Corporal Punishment at Remnant
5 Spirit Watch Libel Suit
6 External links

[edit] Authorship and Weight Loss Program

She is the American author of The Weigh Down Diet (ISBN 0-385-49324-X) which was published in 1997 and sold over 400,000 copies. Since that time she has written Rise Above (ISBN 0-7852-6876-6) and a devotional book called Exodus (ISBN 1-892729-00-8). According to her website, Ms. Shamblin is a registered dietician with experience as a consulting registered dietitian and as an Instructor of Nutrition at Memphis State University. [2]

Shamblin teaches that there are two very different needs in each person; a need for food and an emotional need. According to Ms. Shamblin, people should only eat when they feel real, physical hunger and stop when full, and should use prayer and Bible reading to fill emotional needs. Overeating is equated with gluttony and is a sin. [3]

[edit] Biblical Controversy

Gwen Shamblin's weight loss programs were initally very well received within Christian churches. Some 17,000 churches used her materials to teach her faith based weight loss program in the late 80s and early 90s. Controversy arose when she began to teach that the doctrine of the Trinity was not Biblical. While this veiwpoint of Christianity is accepted by many different denominations, Shamblin's advocacy of a specific religious belief led Thomas Nelson Publishers to cancel the publication of Exodus, her next work. [4] At the same time Shamblin began to advocate specific ideas about Christian theology and began to form her own church, approximately forty Weigh Down employees were encouraged to resign or let go for disagreements related to the change in how Weigh Down principles would be communicated.[5]

[edit] Remnant Fellowship Church

Gwen is a leader in and a founder of the Remnant Fellowship Church which currently has over 120 locations worldwide.[6]

[edit] Josef Smith Case and Corporal Punishment at Remnant

Remnant Fellowship Church was implicated in the beating death of Josef Smith, a child who was severely abused by his parents. The Smiths believed their son was possessed, and their religious beliefs led to a raid on the church. In the raid, recordings of Gwen encouraging corporal punishment were found and subsequently used as evidence against the Smiths. The tapes were also leaked to a local television news outlet in Nashville and broadcast. On the tapes, Mrs. Shamblin can be heard to say:"If they're not scared of a spanking, you haven't spanked them. If you haven't really spanked them, you don't love them. You love yourself."[7]

At the time of the trial, it was reported in many news outlets that a common child discipline tactic of parents in the Remnant Church was to use glue sticks to beat their children - the sticks are flexible, and so would hurt badly but leave no marks, covering evidence of frequent corporal punishment. Mrs. Shamblin acknowledged that this was a common practice among her followers but stated "It was not from here...it came from a member somewhere, someplace else and then it went around."[8]

Josef Smith's parents were sentenced to life plus thirty years for murder in the first degree on March 26, 2007. Remnant Church funded the defense of the parents and continues to elicit donations for them via the internet.[9]

[edit] Spirit Watch Libel Suit

On March 15, 2007, Shamblin and 78 Remnant Fellowship members filed a libel suit against Rafael Martinez and his website Spirit Watch. The parties suing Spirit Watch claim that he is defaming their church by labeling it a cult and spreading falsehoods about their beliefs and practices. Mr. Martinez has stated that all of the information on his website is factual, and that he believes the lawsuit is a play by Remnant Fellowship to silence their critics.[10]

The Spirit Watch website contains personal stories from Remnant Church walkaways that allege bizarre behavior from Shamblin, and compare activities of the Remnant Church to activities of well-known cults. [11]