Gwen Shamblin 5: She is a shit writer!

[NarcissismKills]

Regular food?  Does she mean the chicken nuggets and fries that they serve in the questionable RF cafe on Wednesday evenings?  Candy bars?  Diet Coke?  What utterly cynical lies this woman spouts!  

For someone intentionally to induce anorexia in another person is heinous; to do it on a large scale is flat out criminal.

I wish I could get a copy of the article referenced here:

https://www.elsevier.com/about/press-releases/research-and-journals/hunger-versus-reward-how-do-anorexics-control-their-appetite

The article potentially seems to indicate that once people have become anorexic they are not able to experience hunger normally due to changes in their brains' neural networks.

Given the obvious close connection of nutrition and proper brain function, I rather suspect that people who are conned into starving themselves in order to look a certain way are then left with altered (i.e. impaired) brains.  Assaulting their neurons seems like an ideal way of causing innocent people to be more easily manipulated to support an organisation that exists only to ensure the leadership's lavish lifestyle.

 

[throwaway9988]

Hey everyone, I'm new here.  My parents forced me to be in RF for almost ten years, and I made my escape almost as long ago.  I rarely think about RF anymore (usually only when people ask me if I'm going home for the holidays--Hell no!) but sometimes I will randomly remember and get curious about what has happened since I escaped.

I found this site while trying to google what happened to one of my old acquaintances, and ended up finding that very piece of information in one of the prior Gwen/RF threads.  I was planning just to leave a brief comment, but while waiting for my account to be approved I had time to fully read through all of the prior threads in their entirety, and now I'm actually feeling really happy to have found some more ex-Remnant members to talk about the bad 'ole days with.  So maybe I will stick around for a while, if you're all willing to have me; I do think I possess the requisite levels of snark.

After reading all the prior RF threads, all I can say is: Wow.  I don't even know where to start with all the craziness that has happened in Remnant since I left.  I'm still processing it all and might address it near the end of my post.

I guess now that I finally have the chance to talk about Remnant for the first time in so many years, the first things I want to talk about are some of the numerous daily frustrations that I had as a Remnant member. Even after all this time I still feel frustrated and angry when I think about how awful being a member of this church was. I want to explain how painful it was to be both educated and a critical thinker, and then be forced to participate in Remnant for so many years. I'm not sure I can do the experience justice, but I think attempting to describe it will be therapeutic for me, so thanks in advance for reading. And I think there will be some fascinating tidbits in there for some of you!

Although my parents made my life hell in private, I tried to keep a low profile at public Remnant events, and I felt I was mostly successful in doing so due to being skinny, being a member for so many years, etc.  I learned after escaping from Remnant that in actuality I had frequently been on the verge of being kicked out since apparently everyone could tell I wasn't drinking the Kool-aid:  I never cared to get up on stage and give ridiculous testimonies about God that to any skeptical observer were obviously just coincidence and/or confirmation bias, and my ability to form my face into a joyful and enthusiastic expression left much to be desired.

Anyway, while being forced to masquerade among the Remnant members, I usually tried to refrain from appearing outright disdainful of other members...but the one thing I could never resist rolling my eyes at was how an average of once every week some moron would get up and testify about how they had been in debt before joining Remnant, but how God had "fixed their finances" and not only were they not in debt anymore, but they had extra money in their bank account and they "couldn't figure out where it was coming from."  No shit, Sherlock, someone in Leadership (usually Tedd) slapped your dumbass upside the head and told you to work 2-3 jobs and live in another member's basement for free until your finances were in order. The money wasn't appearing in your bank account out of nowhere, you're still the same dummy who can't manage a budget, but now you're living rent-free and an actual competent adult is making you spend your paychecks responsibly.  There's nothing miraculous happening; you're just incapable of passing a basic highschool home economics class.  (Sidenote: at one point so many Remnant members were living in other members' basements in order to start a new life in TN that the Brentwood city council grew paranoid that Remnant was plotting some sort of coup.  Apparently they were worried that so many basement-dweller Remnant members were being moved in from elsewhere that their votes would actually start to affect city politics or even get a Remnant member elected to the city council, so they made a new ordinance that only one family is allowed to live in each residence in Brentwood.) 

One of my other pet peeves that made every semiweekly worship service an exercise in frustration was when members would testify about how their marriages or family dynamics had improved after joining Remnant.  For anyone who doesn't know, when a Remnant wife disagrees with her husband about something, she is usually told to respectfully bring up the issue one time.  If the husband doesn't change his mind, then the wife is usually told that her husband's decision is God's will and that she needs to pray to God to change what her heart is desiring to match that decision (basically: accept that you didn't get your way and pray until you are happy about not getting your way).  The same goes for children, except children usually don't even get to respectfully disagree once, they are just supposed to say "Yes, ma'am" or "Yes, sir" and acquiesce with a smile on their face.  So again, usually an average of once per week, a couple would get up on stage and talk about how they always used to fight and how now, praise Jesus, they never fight among themselves.  Again, no shit, Sherlock.  Your stupid family still has all the same issues boiling under the surface, only now they are hidden behind a veneer of fake smiles, and it's impossible for an actual argument to occur because if the wife or children disagree they are told they are going against God's will and headed straight to Hell.  But there we all were, every Saturday and Wednesday, watching as a couple got up on stage and praised God for the "miracle" of how well their relationship was going now that the husband always gets his way and the wife is never allowed to think his decisions are bad since it would be heresy to think God's decision is bad.  The facepalm meme hadn't been invented in those days, but if applied retroactively it would have been very appropriate.  Many of the couples gave off a distinctly Hillary-and-Bill / Huma Abedin-and-Anthony Weiner / Donald-and-Melania sort of vibe as they stood up on stage, with the husband doing all the speaking and the longsuffering wife silently standing by his side, and I found that secretly hilarious.

But my mirth was always quashed because every worship service people would start to testify about their "signs" from God.  These testimonies were definitely one of the most facepalm-y aspects of Remnant.  Again, for anyone who doesn't know, one of the big messages that Gwen Shamblin (Lara, lol, I honestly still can't believe this divorce-and-instant-remarriage-to-Tarzan thing is real) harps on from the Christian bible is "blessings for obedience, curses for disobedience."  A cynic might point out that in addition to serving to pass down culture from generation to generation (codifying the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves) and serving to explain natural phenomena to scientifically ignorant peoples, religion has been used throughout history to promote order by the people at the top of the hierarchy to the people at the bottom of the hierarchy.  Well, say what you want about Remnant, but they are not cynics.  They really believe the bible word-for-word and therefore they believe that when they obey the bible God will answer their prayers and affect their daily life in various ways.  They really believe by obeying God and nominally giving God control of their lives that they will gain blessings for themselves either on earth, in heaven, or both. They also love to pretend that they are the only real church because they are the only ones who have a "relationship [with God through answered prayers], not a religion," even though the most cursory of Google searches shows that not only do a huge number of other churches make that same claim, but Remnant wasn't even one of the first churches to make that claim. (Sidenote: Gwen makes similar claims with some of her other jargon, that is to say, she claims she invented the jargon and that other churches using the same lingo "try to copy the alluring lingo of Zion" even though in most of those cases, anyone with a brain and the internet can prove she is co-opting a significant amount of the lingo she takes credit for, not the other way around.)  Anyways, the modus operandi in Remnant is that whenever there is any sort of decision to be made, you pray about it and God answers your prayer with a sign, thus making you feel happy because you don't feel alone in the world anymore and you feel that things are happening in your life for a reason and not just due to chance.

Signs from God are therefore critically important to Remnant members.  None of them actually ask God to provide a sign that is something convincingly supernatural, because of course then they wouldn't get a sign, God wouldn't feel real to them, and they would lose the narrative that the cling to which is that their church is the only real church because God answers their prayers.  For instance, if I were asking God for a sign, I would want a sign that is somewhat convincingly supernatural to prove it is actually a sign from God (by "somewhat" I mean something that can't be replicated by modern scientific knowledge without a lot of effort).  But Remnant members like to make their signs common occurrences like seeing a certain type of animal.  Gwen's "sign," famously, is seeing a red cardinal bird.  Most people on the planet will agree that a mild thought disorder is present in anyone who thinks a supernatural being is communicating with them by making a common bird be visible from their window (when I lived in TN during my Remnant years, hardly a day went by when I didn't see a cardinal).  Sam Harris once said something along the lines of “The president of the United States has claimed, on more than one occasion, to be in dialogue with God. If he said that he was talking to God through his hairdryer, this would precipitate a national emergency. I fail to see how the addition of a hairdryer makes the claim more ridiculous or offensive.”  Gwen and the Remnant are even more delusional.  Essentially, this is the flowchart that every Remnant member goes through multiple times on a daily basis:

• "I want X to happen"→ sees a duck → "Yay, my sign! God is telling me X will happen! I'm going to get up on stage and make throwaway9988 listen to a story about this coincidence!"
• "I want X to happen" → doesn't see a duck → X happens → "Wow! God knew the desire of my heart and blessed me with it for my obedience! I'm going to get up on stage and make throwaway9988 listen to a story about this coincidence!"
• "I want X to happen" → sees 20 ducks the next day, is too stupid to realize that he has been driving past a neighborhood with a central lake where dozens of ducks live every day for the past five years and is only now starting to notice the ducks because of the Baader-Meinhof frequency-illusion phenomenon → "Yay, my sign! God is really going out of his way to show me that he is real and that he will answer my prayers! I'm going to get up on stage and make throwaway9988 listen to a story about this coincidence!"
• "I wanted X to happen, but Y actually happened" → sees a duck → "Yay, my sign! God is telling me his plan will be even better for me than if X had happened! I'm going to get up on stage and make throwaway9988 listen to a story about this coincidence!"
• "I wanted X to happen, but Y actually happened" → doesn't see a duck, because it's the middle of winter, but while flipping through TV channels, sees a movie about kids playing hockey → "Wow! The Mighty Ducks! God is so clever and funny to show me my duck sign like that! I guess he is telling me that his plan will be the best plan for me! I'm going to get up on stage and make throwaway9988 listen to a story about this confirmation bias!"

Gwen and the Remnant pride themselves on "seeing with spiritual eyes" and "recognizing the Holy Spirit."  In practice, what this means is that Remnant members are systematically taught how to interpret common events in real life as acts of God, which serves to strengthen their belief that they have a relationship with God who is apparently answering their prayers and affecting their lives constantly.  As I have demonstrated, there is literally no way for their prayers not to be "answered" since the signs from God which are considered answers to the prayers are all coincidental, and any possible outcome of events can be twisted into being a different interpretation or manifestation of God's will.  Therefore these testimonies about signs were all truly mind-numbing, and unfortunately they comprised a large proportion of Remnant testimonies.  And of course, after each testimony, everyone has to stand up and clap and smile and be joyful and amazed at how powerful God is, and how he only answers the prayers of the Remnant and doesn't answer prayers for other churches, and how clever he is, and how fun it is to have a personal relationship with delusional thought and logical fallacies God through "signs."

You may be picking up on a pattern at this point, which is that Remnant members are obsessed with minimizing the cognitive dissonance everyone is feeling by constantly and loudly telling themselves and others testimonies about how God is acting in their lives, and how they are developing a personal relationship with him where he answers their prayers.  Members who pay into this system with their own testimonies are rewarded by being tacitly accepted into higher social circles, where the smiles are brighter, the cognitive dissonance is lower, and the thoughts are dimmer.  Members capable of critical thought were never impressed by these testimonies (because nothing truly supernatural ever happened, of course, just coincidence, confirmation bias, and ridiculous "signs"), and since we didn't pay into this system, we made everyone else feel more cognitive dissonance and we were viewed as problem members. 

Anyway, Jake Gormsen, of course, was in those higher social circles.  I didn't have much interaction with him outside of playing sports with him, but he was a really nice guy.  And unlike a lot of the other inner circle guys, he never participated in the mild bullying of me that a lot of the other Remnant guys did in order to make other guys fall in line or maintain the social hierarchy, so in my opinion he was more Christlike than most of the rest of them.  It really sucks what happened to him; he deserved better.  

I guess with Jake I'm wrapping up my memories for now and moving on to my thoughts on all the things these forums have informed me have happened in Remnant over the many years since I left.  

Matt Hommonay...poor kid.  Remnant fucked up his adolescence just as badly as mine, and it seems like he needs help.  It always pissed me off to see the destroyed lives of the young people who tried to leave Remnant.  Most of them are brainwashed, and the homeschooled ones have poor educations and aren't exactly prepared to succeed in the real world (Matt didn't have a poor education, but many of the others do).  Although some homeschooled kids are known for being way smarter than public school kids, the Remnant homeschool program is not good.  The local highschool, Brentwood high, is actually quite a good school, and many of the Remnant kids go there.  I don't want to give away my identity, but I definitely had a good opportunity to compare my education to the homeschooled kids...and let's just say a lot of them are very, very lucky to get funneled into Remnant-owned contruction or landscaping jobs, or get a job at Weighdown. Anyways, it always pissed me off to see kids be miserable in Remnant and try to leave, but then their parents cut off support for them. (Side note: the "pain" of the real world without the "blessings from obedience to God" is supposed to drive the kids back into the church, at which point their parents start supporting them again; Remnant parents whose kids leave the church have even been known to pray for bad things to happen to their kids in order to drive the kids back to Remnant, because apparently to them the only thing that ultimately matters is telling themselves that their and their kids' souls will have eternal life.) It was fine if the parents were divorced and the kids could just go live with the non-Remnant parent, but the kids who had both parents in Remnant had nowhere to go and bad things often did happen to them.  The worst part is that while these kids' lives were messed up while in Remnant and then even after leaving were still messed up by Remnant, the whole time the Remnant members were gossiping about what was happening to the people who left and talking about how they are getting cursed by God for their disobedience. I remember even sitting at a youth group meeting which happened to be hosted at the Gormsen's house that week, and Gwen showed up and she told us stories about some of the kids we had known who had left and how awful their lives were, and told us we had to stay in Remnant and take things seriously so that we didn't end up like them. As if it wasn't enough that her church ruined their lives, she then uses their ruined lives as psychological warfare to convince other kids not to run away from her church.  And her manipulation of us was considered "love" by the church members because was intended to save our souls from eternity in Hell.  

I don't remember who wrote it, but someone said that members who quit had their names burned off of the parchment in Solomon's Colonnade.  Whoever wrote that, thank you.  It gave me a lot of joy (a feeling I almost never associate with memories of Remnant) to think of my name being burned off just like Sirius Black's.  And also how their plan backfired when eventually so many names ended up burned off that they had to remove the whole parchment 

Erin suddenly changed her name to Elle? Does anyone know why? So weird.

Finally, Gwen's divorce.  And sudden remarriage to Tarzan.  Wow, wow, wow.  Now this is news that is fascinating on multiple levels. I sat through nearly ten years of Gwen's disorganized ramblings, and she made it very clear that it takes a lot to justify divorce in the Remnant. (Side note: of course, quite a lot of Remnant divorces have happened including couples that met each other and got married within Remnant... they just always get swept under the rug and the member of the couple who remains in Remnant gets urgently remarried and everyone is supposed to pretend nothing happened. They always number each Remnant wedding to show off how many weddings they have performed in order to show off the "fruit" of their message, and they used to have a quick little video that flashed through pictures of all of the prior Remnant weddings leading up to the current one, but unfortunately they kept having to remove the divorced couples from the compilation video so at least during my final year in Remnant they had given up on the compilation video and just stuck with proclaiming the number of the current wedding.) For instance, there was a whole group of women whose husbands were not supportive of Remnant.  These woman were called "Beulah," which means "married," and was intended to mean that because the women had ungodly husbands they were instead supposed to consider themselves married to God.  At least once per year Gwen would read off all their names and we were asked to venerate them due to their "heavy crosses" and asked to pray for them.  For instance, it was okay if a husband never let his wife travel to TN, but if he tried to stop her from joining the Remnant webcasts or talking to Remnant members on the phone, that would be grounds for divorce.  It was a high bar to meet and the vast majority of the time the husbands ended up initiating the divorce in the end. Now let's talk about David Shamblin.  Yeah, he's fat, but he has never been a member; Remnant members are not supposed to judge people outside their church, only those inside their church in order that the church can be pure in God's eyes.  David Shamblin also was widely known throughout Remnant as a nice guy who, although he certainly would have preferred if Gwen had never started her own church, respected the fact that Gwen felt called by God to do so and would defend Gwen and her motives and her church to members of the community who said she was evil or that Remnant secretly worships snakes/Satan or whatever other silly rumors there are.  He was known to live a luxurious life with the money she made.  And since the men are the head of the households and are considered to be the pipeline through which God's authority flows down to the rest of the family, Gwen always made a big deal about how she was under David Shamblin's authority.  For example, every time Gwen wanted to use money for a Remnant project she would always make a big deal at church about how she prayed first and then asked David if she could have the money and he always seemed to say yes, so there was never any problem.  And Gwen would always talk about how she loved her husband and about how being under his authority had made their marriage amazing.  And for over 20 years David Shamblin seemed totally fine with how things were going.  So I am somewhat at a loss wondering what could have changed to allow Gwen to suddenly initiate divorce, and to get away with it in the eyes of her leaders/Michael/Elizabeth.  I'm so curious to know what the official Remnant propaganda line is on this topic that I'm almost considering asking my parents, but now that I'm free of them it really just isn't worth it.  I'm also insanely curious because I have a sneaking suspicion that the reason Gwen seized upon to justify this divorce is probably something that she told a Beulah member to stay married and suffer through, but of course that is all speculation.

By the way, for those speculating that Joe Lara is using Gwen: it's possible, but to me it seems more likely he is just very caught up in the religious movement like everyone else in Remnant, although I'm sure her money/lifestyle is tempting.  But there is no way he will take over Remnant after Gwen; Elizabeth has been being groomed to be the next Gwen for over a decade now. Gwen and the leaders even outright said so back when I was a member, although I certainly admit things can change and that I've been gone a long time.  Of course they didn't use the word "groomed," they said things like they had been praying about what would happen if we didn't have Gwen at some point in the future, and they said Elizabeth had Gwen's relationship with God and gift for speaking God's truth.  But the message was clear.

Sorry for the long post, but I haven't had anyone to talk about these things with for almost a decade!  Thanks for having me here.

 

[formergothardite]

7 hours ago, throwaway9988 said:

So I am somewhat at a loss wondering what could have changed to allow Gwen to suddenly initiate divorce, 

She met Tarzan! I think the justification was that Husband Number 1 wasn't following God so Gwen got to divorce him to get Husband Number 2. And if I remember correctly, Gwen was trying to lie and say that he divorced her until the divorce papers were posted here. She also seemed to lie about the time line of her relationship with Tarzan too. 

The whole signs thing made me laugh because I used to ask for signs from God except I made the mistake of asking for supernatural signs and never got them!  I should have asked for a cardinal! 

Elizabeth I'm sure was groomed for the position, but as unhealthy as she looks and how Gwen has started removing her from all pictures I'm not sure she will actually make it to be able to take over for Gwen. 

Today's devotional still has not mention of God. What sort of daily devotionals leave out God? Oh, the ones that are there to get you to worship Gwen! 

Quote

As you are learning to eat regular foods, start with a small saucer/plate—or put these smaller half-size amounts on a normal plate. In Weigh Down, you must learn to slow down your eating for two reasons:
1. You will be able to taste each bite instead of inhaling it; you can savor the quality instead of quantity.
2. You remain in much better control and can detect fullness better when you eat more slowly.

 

[throwaway9988]

1 hour ago, formergothardite said:

The whole signs thing made me laugh because I used to ask for signs from God except I made the mistake of asking for supernatural signs and never got them!  I should have asked for a cardinal! 

They lie to themselves like crazy with these common "signs" from God.  "Dear God, if the Smiths really didn't cause traumatic injuries all over their son's body and then lock him in a box and neglect him as he died like the autopsy report proves, then please maintain the normal gravity of planet Earth.  Oh, I didn't suddenly start floating off into space? Thank goodness, the Smiths must be innocent!" 

How events in your daily life were interpreted by the other Remnant members was a good indication of which of the social circles you were in.  Let's take a flat tire as an example of a negative happenstance that can coincidentally happen in anyone's life:

• Members who were known to be "struggling" (such as members who were still visibly overweight) who got a flat tire were told they were being cursed for their disobedience to God.  Anything that happened in their life that wasn't overtly lucky or positive was used to bully them into thinking God was cursing them and that they needed to do a better job of not sinning.
• For members of the middle circle, things might swing either way depending on who you were talking to.  If the member was talking about how they got a flat tire to someone who had recently seen them eat a lot of food or something, then the flat tire would be interpreted as a curse for disobedience to God.  However, if that same member was talking to someone who had recently seen them get up on stage and testify how God had changed their life and was blessing them, then the flat tire would be interpreted as God "testing their faith."  (Having your faith tested meant that God allowed something bad to happen to you even though you hadn't been sinning in order to test your faith, similar to the story in the book of Job. ) In fact, someone might be told two different interpretations by two different members within 5 minutes of each other!  Women were particularly vulnerable to the abusive mind-control of these capricious interpretations of God's will, because everyone was judging their bodies like crazy but giving a free pass to the men.  It was extremely common to see men carry an extra 20-30 pounds in their man boobs and love handles for 10 years or more, and everyone in Remnant would give them a free pass (as long as they were playing the testimony game right), and their flat tires would always be interpreted as "testing;" meanwhile, some poor 120 pound woman who was obviously less greedy for food than any of the men would be told the flat tire on her car was a "curse" from God for "holding onto the last five pounds of greed for food" and she would then struggle to get down to 115 pounds.
• Members of the inner circle had the privilege of always being given the benefit of the doubt.  If they got a flat tire, God was always just "testing" them.  No one ever seemed to question whether they might secretly be sinning and the flat tire might actually be a curse for disobedience.    
• One of Gwen's teachings is that if you pass a "test" often enough and easily enough, God doesn't need to test your obedience in that area any more; you have "risen above" that sin, and found the promised land where you always live inside God's boundaries and are always blessed by God.  So if anything negative happened to occur randomly in Gwen's daily life, everyone would interpret it not as a "curse" and not as "testing from God," but rather as "spiritual warfare."  Spiritual warfare was essentially a demon or Satan making something bad happen to you in order to try to tempt you away from your faith in God or ruin God's plans for your day in some other way.  So if Gwen got a flat tire, I expect people would say things like "Wow, Satan really didn't want Gwen to be able to drive to church today; she must have a really powerful message full of truth she is trying to tell us."  Either that, or they would twist the negative event into a good event, such as "I saw a car accident on my drive to church today; I bet God gave Gwen a flat tire to delay her trip by 20 minutes and save her from not being involved in that car accident!"  The thought would never cross anyone's mind that Gwen's flat tire might be God cursing her for being disobedient.  I suppose that's the privilege of being the prophet who tells everyone else what God is thinking.

[Red Hair, Black Dress]

@throwaway9988  Welcome!  Thanks for your posts and insight into RF.

Forgive all my questions. but RF is such a alien world to me

From what you knew 10 years ago and see now, have there been any changes in the RF inner circle, what we call RF Royalty? Particularly has anyone left?

I'm fascinated in a car wreck sort of way by the RF weddings.  It seems that RF Royalty only marries RF Royalty, either by design (arranged marriage) or because Royalty only hangs with Royalty?  Was that true in you time?

i can' figure out why some weddings are by invitation only and some are open to the entire church?  Is there a reason? Does the bride or more likely Gwen decide?  Does the RF Royalty status of the couple matter?

Were there any high profile Royalty divorces in your day?  One of the most out there ones in 2018, was the quicky remarriage of Joe Langsdon's former DIL after the divorce from his son (who seems now to have left/ been banished from RF).  The wedding announcement read as if Joe was her father. (see 2018 Langsdon Collins, "together with their parents X X Langsdon and ...")

You mentioned that RF men were excused the extra 20 or 30 lbs, but women were chastised over an extra five. Other than that, particularly for the inner circle, were other "sins" tolerated/excused/ignored:  adultery, alcoholism, abuse, financial chicanery, etc.?  If everyone is covering up everything with fake smiles and fake stories, there must be some rot underneath.  And someone always knows what the rot is.

Thanks

[Fashion Forward]

On 1/16/2019 at 2:32 PM, quiversR4hunting said:

And what is up with the quote that says "grateful for your mother and for you and Michael sticking it out for this youth group!" Maybe @RFsurvivor or @RFSurvivor_2 or another survivor can explain what was going on in June of 2015 with the youth group. 

Every summer, the youth group has a themed summer camp where anyone in elementary school is a camper and anyone high school age and above are forced by their parents highly encouraged to attend as junior counselors & counselors. The theme that year was "Running for the Crown", essentially encouraging kids to become little princesses and princes for God's Kingdom. There were a lot of sermons about how Gwen believed there was going to be a large group of youth that were going to leave in the next 3 years (or something like that) and that the youth needed to be encouraging one another and staying in the "center of the pack" more than ever before.

Specifically about Elizabeth's activity - I was present when a youth member exclaimed to Elizabeth that she was so excited Elizabeth could be apart of summer camp that year and Elizabeth replied that she was finally done with 10 years' worth of diapers (her eldest was 10 or 11 at the time), so she was able to invest more of her time in the youth group that summer as opposed to previous years. It seems after the kids were back in school in August, she was asked to work on other things though because she was no longer really active with the youth.

[doozeratwork]

Just chiming in to say welcome, @throwaway9988 ! Thank you for your insight on the day-to-day activities of this super weird cult. I am endlessly fascinated by all things RF and I can’t look away!

 

I live in a region where the white-washed, southern rustic aesthetic has absolutely taken over and I’m amazed at how Gwen incorporates it into her bizarre theology. Much like Gwen’s obsession with weddings, the burlap and lace thing just won’t die!

[Fashion Forward]

15 hours ago, throwaway9988 said:

Erin suddenly changed her name to Elle? Does anyone know why? So weird.

To my knowledge, this change was made just to distinguish between Erin Shamblin and Erin Moore. For those who don't know, Erin Shamblin and Erin Moore both work beside Gwen with Weigh Down and I think they just decided to nickname her instead of being confused by the two Erin's. I cannot confirm this to be true as I did not ask Erin/Elle personally but this is what I heard from others.

[Fashion Forward]

50 minutes ago, Red Hair, Black Dress said:

i can' figure out why some weddings are by invitation only and some are open to the entire church?

Money and circumstance.

1. Money: there are 3 options for sizes/prices that couples can choose from. The most expensive option is a full church wedding, which is webcasted online. The other two options are invite-only, however some invite-only include 50-100 people (least expensive) and some invite-only include 200-400 people (middle option).

2. Circumstance: if you are getting remarried, you do not have a full church wedding. I don't think they webcast them as they do not want to advertise second marriages. Also most people who get married for a second time don't usually have the money for the most expensive option. Older couples (I say older as in they're not in their twenties) often pick the less expensive option but there have been times where those are webcasted as well. 

And yes, Gwen and the wedding team will counsel towards one option of the three if they feel it will best reflect the church

[throwaway9988]

3 hours ago, Red Hair, Black Dress said:

From what you knew 10 years ago and see now, have there been any changes in the RF inner circle, what we call RF Royalty? Particularly has anyone left?

Well I would like to do a better job of answering your questions, but I have been gone for almost ten years.  I remember how things were then, but I have almost zero knowledge of what has happened since.  I'm also unclear about who exactly is described by the term royalty/inner circle at this point, since it is an inexact term and Remnant members do not feel that they have any such divisions among themselves (I love the terms royalty/inner circle and I think using those terms as shorthand makes perfect sense on this message board, but trying to apply the terms to specific people in real life is a lot trickier since there are a lot of people who could be inner circle or could be middle circle depending on whose opinion you ask). 

The ranks that the Remnant members did recognize were Gwen and her family, Leadership families, Deacon/Elder families, etc.  And there were also a lot of families who have been entrenched in Remnant for many years but do not have official titles or roles.  It took a lot to be raised to a leadership position and the ranks of leadership was rarely added to.  In contrast, being a Deacon/Elder usually meant you had a dependable personality, had been in Remnant long enough for Gwen and the Leadership to have confidence that you had a solid grounding in the message and could give good advice to others, that you weren't going to quit, that you were doing a good job of bringing your family into Remnant, that you were keeping your family in Remnant, that you were growing your own little clan in Remnant, and/or you were a good example out in the world and being a light to others.  Members were made into Deacons/Elders much more frequently so I expect they have changed a lot over the past ten years, and I also expect that they quit Remnant much more often than the official Leadership does.  

One of the biggest schisms among the Leaders when I was a member was when two Leadership families got into a big disagreement with Gwen and quit.  The other Leaders all sided with Gwen in this disagreement.  The two Leadership families who quit were Andy (Andrew) and Kerry Nissen and Greg and Rene Maxwell (Fun fact, they used to be named Greg and Rene Heck but they literally changed their name because they felt that the last name Heck was not representing God well enough).  Anyways, the remaining Leaders got up the next Sabbath and announced to everyone what had happened (without any interesting details) and we all tacitly understood that they were trying to get their message out ahead of any gossip, and that we were not supposed to contact the Nissens or Maxwells to get their side of the story.  So that's really all I know.  Gwen's son Michael quit at one point but came back after a few months, too.  

3 hours ago, Red Hair, Black Dress said:

I'm fascinated in a car wreck sort of way by the RF weddings.  It seems that RF Royalty only marries RF Royalty, either by design (arranged marriage) or because Royalty only hangs with Royalty?  Was that true in you time?

Do all of the skinny, smiling young people getting married on the weddings website count as royalty?  Many of them are the kids from larger families/clans within Remnant, but certainly not all.  There was no rule or intention for young men and women from established Remnant families to only marry into the other established families.  Just by the nature of the Remnant member list, a large percentage of the members are part of an established Remnant family or intermarried clan, and so the odds of one or both members of a Remnant wedding being from one of the established families is pretty high.   So I think you are probably observing a correlation without a true cause-and-effect relationship.

It is true that the inner circle people hang out with each other more often, but I do not hold that against them.  When you are a longtime member of Remnant you see a lot of people come and go.  The other inner circle people are the least likely to quit, so not only are they each other's longest friends, but it makes the most sense to invest additional time and energy into the friendships that are most likely to last (Side note: if an inner circle member had introduced someone to Remnant, they often invited that person everywhere with them in order to introduce them to all the other inner circle people who were supposedly the most pure, best examples of what a Remnant member should be; additionally, sometimes inner circle people were "accountability partners" to mid-to-lower circle people who were struggling, and then that inner circle person would have sort of a pet project of inviting the mid-to-lower circle member to places to give them every opportunity to learn from them and get things right instead of hanging out with other strugglers who might promote an environment of overeating or depression or selfishness or whatever sin the struggler was struggling with).  Additionally, in my first post I talked about how everyone in the Remnant is constantly trying to minimize their cognitive dissonance.  When you are a Remnant member and you are hanging around with someone who isn't quite "Godly" enough but has been around long enough to know better, everyone around feels a bit uncomfortable and uneasy.  And they don't want to feel that, and they don't want to question anything, and it's just easier to hang out with the people who are using all the right lingo and never making any behavioral faux pas or whatever. They even have lingo by which they inaccurately ascribe these feelings: they say that they want where they are to be filled with the Holy Spirit and that the Holy Spirit inside them senses when there is sin and rebellion remaining and makes them feel uncomfortable because God wants his church members to be pure and free from sin and rebellion.

3 hours ago, Red Hair, Black Dress said:

i can' figure out why some weddings are by invitation only and some are open to the entire church?  Is there a reason? Does the bride or more likely Gwen decide?  Does the RF Royalty status of the couple matter?

When I was a member, there were not many weddings that were invite only.  The ones that fell into this category were mostly the shameful weddings that were not publicly celebrated, e.g. just during my time in college there was more than one couple who had sex outside of wedlock and either confessed or were caught, and then were hurriedly married in private.  They do seem to only be showing the skinny young members' weddings on their wedding website, and I can vouch that many middle aged or less beautiful couples got married publicly within Remnant when I was a member.  Middle-aged people join Remnant all the time and often marry other people who joined in middle age or whose former spouses divorced them, and at least when I was a member these weddings were often public.  I'm not sure if the frequency of private weddings has increased since I left, but it may simply be logistics because I do remember that there were only a certain amount of wedding slots available each year and the number of couples getting married usually exceeded the slots available if I recall correctly, so some people who had to wait a long time might simply be choosing to have private ceremonies?  I'm really not privy to the underlying reasons. 

3 hours ago, Red Hair, Black Dress said:

Were there any high profile Royalty divorces in your day?  One of the most out there ones in 2018, was the quicky remarriage of Joe Langsdon's former DIL after the divorce from his son (who seems now to have left/ been banished from RF). 

Well there was Joe Langsdon's own divorce, for one.  I can think of several others but I don't think they were particularly important to the church members, just the standard situation where one spouse stops drinking the Kool-Aid.  Gwen's divorce and instant remarriage to Tarzan certainly takes the cake.  

3 hours ago, Red Hair, Black Dress said:

You mentioned that RF men were excused the extra 20 or 30 lbs, but women were chastised over an extra five. Other than that, particularly for the inner circle, were other "sins" tolerated/excused/ignored:  adultery, alcoholism, abuse, financial chicanery, etc.?

Gwen's teaching on alcohol was based on a bible verse about wine being given to us by God to "gladden men's hearts" or something like that.  So members were told to enjoy alcohol but not to drink for the purpose of getting drunk, and not to drink to the point of getting drunk.  Of course, people got at least mildly drunk all the time (not to the point of vomiting or slurring, but definitely to the point of not being safe to drive) but since Remnant members aren't the immature people you see in bars getting into fights or being obnoxious when they are drunk, it generally didn't cause any waves.  I do feel certain that if someone was an outlier that they would get "corrected" and be expected to stop that sin; I don't think that an outlier in terms of drunkenness would get completely ignored the way the excess weight of so many of the men, including inner circle men, was ignored.

The people getting DUI mugshots are actually some of the people I least expected it from; there are actually a lot Remnant members who over-indulged in alcohol during social events without making it too obvious (to be fair, not any more people than the number of people who overindulge in alcohol in other churches or outside of religion, but certainly a ton more people than expected from a group of people who consider any overindulgence to be idolatry and something that will get them sent to Hell).  Prior to one of the Desert Oasis events (an event which functions to transition people from Weigh Down to Remnant) when there would be a lot of visitors and "truthseekers" in the church building who had never really been exposed to Remnant before, one of the leaders actually had to tell people something along the lines of "Please don't get sloshed at this event."  As for actual alcoholism/dependency, that was not common at all and I can only think of a few instances where people got up on stage and confessed to falling prey to alcoholism.  

Adultery was not tolerated or excused, but if the person repented of it and asked for forgiveness and didn't do it again, their spouses were told to forgive them and not get divorced.  With that being said, adultery was certainly one of the most common causes for someone leaving Remnant and their spouse getting a hurried divorce+remarriage.  

[RemnantSurvivor]

1 hour ago, throwaway9988 said:

Adultery was not tolerated or excused, but if the person repented of it and asked for forgiveness and didn't do it again, their spouses were told to forgive them and not get divorced.  With that being said, adultery was certainly one of the most common causes for someone leaving Remnant and their spouse getting a hurried divorce+remarriage.  

There are actually several examples that I know of where if the husband was cheating, then the wife was told that it was their fault because they had 5-10 extra pounds on them. Yes. The woman got the blame for their husband cheating on them because they were considered overweight. ?

Also, hi @throwaway9988! Glad to have you here and thank you for sharing your experiences!

[throwaway9988]

38 minutes ago, RemnantSurvivor said:

There are actually several examples that I know of where if the husband was cheating, then the wife was told that it was their fault because they had 5-10 extra pounds on them. Yes. The woman got the blame for their husband cheating on them because they were considered overweight. ?

Also, hi @throwaway9988! Glad to have you here and thank you for sharing your experiences!

Wow, I guess they don't even pay lip service to personal accountability anymore ? And now I'm more curious than ever to find out how Gwen justified her divorce and instant remarriage in the eyes of her children and Leaders, given what Remnant expects other wives to tolerate. 

[Fashion Forward]

40 minutes ago, throwaway9988 said:

Wow, I guess they don't even pay lip service to personal accountability anymore ? And now I'm more curious than ever to find out how Gwen justified her divorce and instant remarriage in the eyes of her children and Leaders, given what Remnant expects other wives to tolerate. 

The leadership asked the entire congregation to read a document titled "Divorce and Remarriage" before they announced Gwen's divorce. They said it is the document they have used/referred to for many years during counselling for people in difficult marriage situations. I have the document saved but I have no clue how to share it here because it's a Word Doc. It's 9 pages long so I won't copy/paste it. There is a whole section about "Liberty and Peace for the Oppressed" which is what I heard over and over again after the divorce announcement.

Any recommendations on how to share the document here?

[throwaway9988]

If I were a Beulah woman watching Gwen conveniently update the guidelines just in time for her own divorce, I would be sooooo mad

[RemnantSurvivor]

1 hour ago, throwaway9988 said:

Wow, I guess they don't even pay lip service to personal accountability anymore ? And now I'm more curious than ever to find out how Gwen justified her divorce and instant remarriage in the eyes of her children and Leaders, given what Remnant expects other wives to tolerate. 

Oh I’m sure they still “preach” personal accountability but it seems that the rules are different based on your circumstances. I agree though, I’d love to have been a fly on the way during that announcement. And yeah, I’d be mad as well if I had been told to suck it up and then Gwen changed the rules to allow herself to divorce and remarry like she did.

[formergothardite]

Gwen tries to mention God today but her devotional ends up being just an advertisement for her book. I'm fairly sure she just copied a paragraph from one of her books for this and forgot to edit out the part where it says "this book". Come on Gwen, I put more effort into writing about your shitty devotionals than you do writing the actual devotionals! All the claims of doing all things for God look like lies if you can't even  put a tiny amount of effort into writing a daily devotional for Him. 

Quote

f you really want to get out of the slavery of overeating and binge-eating… then change what you focus on and what you listen to. If you redirect your focus, you will modify your desires forever! The transfer from being enslaved to food over to worshiping the Lord is life-changing and amazing! The blessings are countless! It is awesome to use food only for energy—not indulgence—eating only between hunger and fullness. The number of times, amounts, and portions of food you eat per day will be less, so you will feel better and have much more energy to get other needed things done. You will have hope again! Instead of eating, run to your Creator, your Heavenly Father, to fill and fulfill your mind, time, and life. He can do so much better than a binge of food. This book will help you transfer this desire to eat over to a relationship with God. This will open up a whole new and blessed life. Temptations and spiritual warfare are real—so just stay focused and determined and these times will pass. The clouds will go away and the sunshine will come back out. This is just a part of the test from the Heavens to see if you adore the Creator more than created things. This is life—and the results are wonderful. Hang in there and the results will be better health, a happier outlook, and a more fruitful and blessed life, full of love and joy!

Spending my days waiting to be hungry doesn't sound like a lot of fun. 

[Botkinetti]

Surely Gwen is bored out her skull ( starts about 6 inches under her hair ) with writing these devotionals. At this point she must just want to write.

Be hungry.Love and adore me. Think about Jesus. 

[formergothardite]

All of her books seem to be some variation of her repetitive devotionals and she keeps writing them! Why do people keep buying her books? Are the RF folks really buying enough copies to keep her writing? 

[ajknowsthings]

New to this thread (re commenting) but I have read through most of the posts and am absolutely obsessed.  Question re the tip-off on the Josef Smith case.  Did anyone else catch that Monica Homonnay previously worked for the FBI?  I believe I read a while ago that it was federal, not local law enforcement that executed the raid.  Is it plausible that she had former contacts from the bureau and was able to tip off Remnant?  Just throwing crazy theories out there...

 

https://casetext.com/case/homonnay-v-homonnay-no-fa-03-0401627-s-may?find=defendant

[formergothardite]

Tarzan was there for all of Gwen's Monday live video. I didn't watch it but from scrolling through he seems to do a lot of talking. 

[SJWaterford]

19 minutes ago, ajknowsthings said:

New to this thread (re commenting) but I have read through most of the posts and am absolutely obsessed.  Question re the tip-off on the Josef Smith case.  Did anyone else catch that Monica Homonnay previously worked for the FBI?  I believe I read a while ago that it was federal, not local law enforcement that executed the raid.  Is it plausible that she had former contacts from the bureau and was able to tip off Remnant?  Just throwing crazy theories out there...

 

https://casetext.com/case/homonnay-v-homonnay-no-fa-03-0401627-s-may?find=defendant

Didn't catch that she worked for FBI, but rumor has it may have something to do with the man that is Gwen's security. He is ex-Franklin police officer.

[SJWaterford]

8 minutes ago, formergothardite said:

Tarzan was there for all of Gwen's Monday live video. I didn't watch it but from scrolling through he seems to do a lot of talking. 

It was very short. 5 min because she's at the beach it looks like. They were eating out and it was just blah, blah, blah we are eating at Pompano Joe's. Talking about what they were going to order. Talking about all of the kids they had with them. It was just basically a video showing off her vaca and her beach house and reminding people that she would see them next week. Joe looks so uncomfortable. ?

[ajknowsthings]

41 minutes ago, SJWaterford said:

Didn't catch that she worked for FBI, but rumor has it may have something to do with the man that is Gwen's security. He is ex-Franklin police officer.

Interesting.  I had that thought as well but assumed if it was in Brentwood it would be designated to "their station."  Are the police records of evidence collected during that raid made public like the divorce records?

[RemnantSurvivor]

1 hour ago, ajknowsthings said:

Interesting.  I had that thought as well but assumed if it was in Brentwood it would be designated to "their station."  Are the police records of evidence collected during that raid made public like the divorce records?

So it was franklin police dept that did the raid. The reason it was done by FPD was because weigh down offices were located in franklin. I honestly don’t recall if Monica Hommonay or the ex-officer were members at the time of the raid but I don’t believe they were. 

[SJWaterford]

43 minutes ago, RemnantSurvivor said:

So it was franklin police dept that did the raid. The reason it was done by FPD was because weigh down offices were located in franklin. I honestly don’t recall if Monica Hommonay or the ex-officer were members at the time of the raid but I don’t believe they were. 

And that's why I said rumor.....the raid tip off rumor has been floating around for a long time. Even in the community outside of the church, it's a rumor. The name itself came from someone else not long ago. But if they weren't even members then, then obviously something doesn't add up with that.