Remnant Fellowship 20: Popping Popcorn, Waiting for the Bewigged Tiger King....

[SayonaraLara]

2 hours ago, Baxsmom said:

Do you think Elizabeth could be as mean as Gwen? 

Absolute power corrupts absolutely.

She could.

[IsGwen4Real]

In episode 2, it looks like they have clips from a show that had Gwen and Elizabeth in it. Based on the screenshot it may have been on the WE network. Anyone know what this program was and if it’s available to view?

[SayonaraLara]

25 minutes ago, IsGwen4Real said:

In episode 2, it looks like they have clips from a show that had Gwen and Elizabeth in it. Based on the screenshot it may have been on the WE network. Anyone know what this program was and if it’s available to view?

Here are clips from Gwen’s YouTube. Just clips though — it was from an episode titled “Extreme Weight Loss,” and Remnant may have edited out what they didn’t like. As they did with Today Show clips, etc. 

 

 

Edited October 4, 2021 by SayonaraLara

[RFTies]

I just saw someone on Twitter refer to Joe as a hobosexual and I can’t quit laughing 😂 

[throwaway9988]

5 hours ago, treemom said:

So rereading the threads in light of the documentary is interesting.  For those like me, who don’t mind a deep dive.  It appears Delaney’s family told us their story in the first thread.  If not her family, then someone who has a story very similar to it.

 

there is even more context in the posts there and it is even more disturbing.  They start here.  

And later on when a Remnant member showed up here to argue with us, they knew who she was and they were rude to her if I recall correctly (although maybe I dont; it was years ago). 

4 hours ago, Animosus said:

Did anyone notice on S1 E3 of "The Way Down" at 17:19, the attorney asks Gwen, "You think if you lie for God's Sake its OK?" and she says, "I believe that if God calls you to, that you had better protect Jerusalem.  There's so many cases in here (points to bible) where uh people did that very thing to protect Jerusalem.  And so, they were rewarded"   

If that wasn't taken out of context from the producers of the file, that tells us so much about Gwen's mentality.  She basically convinced herself that it was OK to lie to protect HER Jerusalem (Remnant Fellowship) and to protect anything else under her dominion I would guess.

Yes, Gwen Biblically justifies lying to protect the Remnant. Nothing she ever said about Josef Smith, Natasha Pavlovich, or anything else should be trusted, even if Gwen was under oath at the time, I dont think that would matter to her.

[RFfamANON]

This documentary has me re-thinking a lot of positions that I have taken in the past regarding RF and even my relationship with “normal” church. It’s unsettling.  Here are a few of my thoughts:

If the Angers were Gwen’s enforcers it makes total sense that her divorce would trigger them stepping down from leadership. If they have be “holding people accountable” to Gwen’s doctrine of staying in bad marriages for so many years I could totally see them feeling like they should be the enforcer here also. That power struggle easily  could have been a situation where Gwen said “you either get on board with this or get out” or Ted said “if you go forward we are out”. Gwen didn’t care if the Angers were in or out and the Angers thought they had earned her love. And in that IMO is the heart of the whole problem with RF and many “normal” churches. You can’t earn love. Not Gods not anyone’s. 
I have seen this situation play out at least a dozen times in my years of being associated with religious organizations.  None have ever been as heartbreaking or devastating as what Gwen and her cronies caused over the years with RF, but the power struggles are rampant in authoritarian “you must obey” leaderships. There have been many church splits over these types of issues.  

With regard to the passing of the reins. I don’t think Gwen spent much time thinking about this. In a “normal” church this process is outlined in the church’s charter. In a normal business there are policies and succession plans. But my guess is that if the board of elders ever pressed the issue, Gwen brushed it aside. There is no way that a narcissist can  picture themselves not in control. Because they believe they are truly better than literally everyone else, their brain cannot allow them to see a scenario where someone else is in charge. Plus I don’t think Gwen really cared about her flock very much. Gwen cared about Gwen. I have seen  narcissistic personalities use and abuse their kids to get what they want and it is sickening. So while she may have made a good show of caring, I don’t think she cared at all. I don’t think she was capable of caring. And the more power she got the less she was able to care. 
my hope is that there is nobody who can pick up the reins. My hope is that there is so much infighting on that elder board that they implode. But I don’t think any of that will happen overnight.

Unfortunatley my family is so deep in I’m fairly certain they will be there till the very last moment when the doors are closed. But even then I’m guessing that there will be splinter groups who flounder and try to make all the magic reappear, but since it was all smoke and mirrors led by a narcissist to begin with they won’t be able to do it make it work like Gwen did. 
 

And to be fair I see similar things happening in “normal” churches where people (usually old white men) get drunk on power, use and abuse people, hypocritically denounce their flock for their “sinful” behavior and then wonder why their attendance is waning and why “people are abandoning the church”. 

If you are in RF (or a “normal” church) and you are still with me here in this stupidly long post please take a moment and ask your God if he is pleased with the way your past and current leaders were/are behaving. My reading of the Bible says that God stands with the oppressed not the oppressor. If you are standing with the oppressor/abuser/manipulator you might want to re-examine your position. 
 

I have more thoughts but I’m going to spare you all those (for now lol)

[TDHuggies]

1 hour ago, RFfamANON said:

If the Angers were Gwen’s enforcers it makes total sense that her divorce would trigger them stepping down from leadership. If they have be “holding people accountable” to Gwen’s doctrine of staying in bad marriages for so many years I could totally see them feeling like they should be the enforcer here also. That power struggle easily  could have been a situation where Gwen said “you either get on board with this or get out” or Ted said “if you go forward we are out”. Gwen didn’t care if the Angers were in or out and the Angers thought they had earned her love. And in that IMO is the heart of the whole problem with RF and many “normal” churches. You can’t earn love. Not Gods not anyone’s. 
I have seen this situation play out at least a dozen times in my years of being associated with religious organizations.  None have ever been as heartbreaking or devastating as what Gwen and her cronies caused over the years with RF, but the power struggles are rampant in authoritarian “you must obey” leaderships. There have been many church splits over these types of issues.  

I have suspected the same thing. I've heard (on here and elsewhere) that it was because of business dealings but I feel the timing suggests more of a convenient excuse. There's just no way that the Angers would NOT have been "offended" by Joe Lara and Gwen's choices in 2018. Ted is a lot of things (not so nice things) but he is no fool

[Animosus]

 

[JermajestyDuggar]

There was a show called “Secret Lives of Women” on the WE network back in the 2000s. I believe Gwen was one of the women featured on one episode. 

[nelliebelle1197]

1 hour ago, Animosus said:

 

Every bite you take kills Jesus all over again.

Perfect.

[Roscoe]

Considering it is now October and spooky season, I wanted to talk about RF's deep animosity towards Halloween.

I know it's probably been discussed before, but Gwen was fanatically opposed to Halloween, viewing it as a celebration of the macabre and satanic that that leading our children into Devil worship. 

The funny thing is, she was not always against Halloween. In fact, she had a huge Halloween party at Ashlawn circa 2005 complete with a haunted hay ride, hidden bowls full of peeled grapes and spaghetti that you'd pretend were eyeballs and intestines, and a fun costume party. I way only a little kid when I attended that party, but it was extremely fun. I also remember the haunted hay ride where Elizabeth Hannah told us the "Ghost of Ashlawn" story, which she claimed to have seen herself. I remember being super scared by that ghost story (in a good way) and often spending Ashlawn events looking for the ghost in window reflections.

Fast forward to a few years later and Gwen has a whole sermon about how Halloween is actually evil, ghost stories are evil, and we should be celebrating the martyrs on All-Saints Day instead (with the martyrs including everything from Stephan being stoned to Gwen herself losing her publishing contract with Doubleday). So instead of trick-or-treating in princess and superhero costumes (because that was celebrating death and darkness and evil), we instead read graphic depictions of executions and torture from Foxe's Book of Martyrs complete with illustrations of beheadings, flayings, and mutilations while being told "this could happen to you soon and you must be sure not to renounce God under torture, eight-year-olds!"

Like... for someone who finds Halloween ghouls and goblins and ghost stories to be so Satanic and ugly, Gwen sure loved to tell us how we needed to be prepared for imminent persecution and torture. She also compared her plight directly and equally to the martyrs. Fun stuff.

[TDHuggies]

41 minutes ago, Roscoe said:

The funny thing is, she was not always against Halloween. In fact, she had a huge Halloween party at Ashlawn circa 2005 complete with a haunted hay ride, hidden bowls full of peeled grapes and spaghetti that you'd pretend were eyeballs...

Yes! This is a great example of how Gwen continued to restrict "life". When I started until I left there was a big difference in what we were "allowed" to do. The denouncing of Halloween was a big one for me. Not because I love it so much (well I do) but because it was just ONE more, of the seemingly never-ending, overreaches.  Thank you for bringing this up!

[Pathologic Antagonist]

On 9/30/2021 at 2:58 AM, throwaway9988 said:

I mean, only 5 minutes later Im back to feeling awful on behalf of the parents. It really is a heartbreaking story. 
 

@Pathologic Antagonist You did a great job being really informative and well-organized!

 

Thank you very much. It's encouraging to hear that.  My wife commented that she heard the exhaustion I really was under at that time for both interviews in the raspiness of my voice. I managed to look competent and I really was at my limit getting ready for it and for fighting off jet lag.  God gave me a lot of grace those days.
 

On 9/30/2021 at 2:58 AM, throwaway9988 said:

Im really proud of all the ex-members and family members who have shared their stories on the documentary so far. You all are so brave and I hope that sharing your stories and knowing that you are helping people in the audience avoid RF and other cults can help bring you healing and peace. 

I thought EVERYONE did a fantastic job. The personal cost they all bore to have to tell their stories in the face of what they are now enduring is beyond belief to anyone except fellow cult survivors, such as those on this forum. They are easily the bravest and most courageous of all here. I was honored to have helped most of them join the production and encourage them to stay the course. 

On 9/30/2021 at 2:58 AM, throwaway9988 said:

 

I dont really know who some of the other religion experts are but I feel like some of them are missing the boat a bit regarding Gwen’s views on the Trinity and the implications for Remnant’s theology which follow from Gwen’s views on the Trinity. Although Gwen did deny the Trinity, I dont remember Gwen ever denying that Christ was divine. Gwen just thought Christ is not the same person as God, is therefore capable of having a correspondingly different Will than God’s Will, and is ultimately subordinate to God. This is a critical distinction to make, because Gwen thought that we all needed to model our subordination to God and his authority line on how Christ gave up his Will and submitted to God’s Will for him to be sinless and die. So Gwen’s ideas about the Trinity/Subordination directly resulted in her beliefs about grace, about achieving purity, about obedience and authority, etc. And understanding all of those beliefs is really important to understanding WD and RF.  So I wish these other religious commentators had been a bit more accurate about the whole Trinity thing. However, for the vast majority of people watching the documentary, I’m sure it is the smartest and most effective move to just focus on the so-called heresy of denying the Trinity and leave it at that. No need for everyone else to get lost in the weeds with me lol. 

 There are those here for whom the Trinity is a distracting bit of dogma that took away from the documentary. While I had absolutely no control over this production narrative as an interviewee, a consultant and researcher, I found the discussion informative and actually a bit incomplete for the very reason you cite here.

Lara's rejection of the Trinity doctrine, a Biblical one IMHO, was a reaction against the "counterfeit church" doctrine. She had to come up with a way to explain her new WDW doctrine on the nature of God in such a manner that it would verify and sancitify her teaching on her authority line dogma - AND - prove she had THE Truth on the nature of God that would crap all over the Counterfeit, Her authority line shtick is a foundational pillar to her catechism of coercion. 

So Gwen's "another Jesus" has to be both inferior and non-divine so as to become a model of submission and total obedience to her WDW and RF slaves. Christ's divinity was unnecessary to atone for sins because the evil is weight that the dieter must be free from according to whatever purely arbitrary standard they determine. The Sinner shows how submissive to God and closely they be like "Jesus" by being free of cellulite and getting a smile of approval from Leadership. This is why Gwen so clumsily stumbled into the rejection of the Trinty so as to gain more traction for her diet in the hearts and minds of her disciples.

She learned really quickly that the nature of God DOES matter to a lot of the very women she so casually dismissed and got the right foot of fellowship OUT of churches at that time. Between her doctrinal error and the practical lifestyle dictates she pressed upon them, they finally drew the line in the sand, That point, I'm afraid could have been explained a lot better. I did provide in the interviews a discussion of this that might have helped but it never got included.  Gina verified the fallout and the reaction, but this point was not addressed. 

My beilef that the Liftonian model of cultic mind control - a major bellwether that determines whether a group is destructively cultic or not - was not touched on at all either. I also tried to raise this point in the interviews and a clear majority of the ex-RF members I've been in touch with since the documentary felt the same way. 

14 hours ago, SayonaraLara said:

Absolute power corrupts absolutely.

She could.

She is. Testimonies about her own dark side are there. I know of them. She's as human as all of them and just as rift with complexity and frailty as her mother and father. 

3 hours ago, TDHuggies said:

I have suspected the same thing. I've heard (on here and elsewhere) that it was because of business dealings but I feel the timing suggests more of a convenient excuse. There's just no way that the Angers would NOT have been "offended" by Joe Lara and Gwen's choices in 2018. Ted is a lot of things (not so nice things) but he is no fool

I am believe there were other reasons but can't get into them here. 

Edited October 4, 2021 by Pathologic Antagonist

[Roscoe]

3 minutes ago, TDHuggies said:

Yes! This is a great example of how Gwen continued to restrict "life". When I started until I left there was a big difference in what we were "allowed" to do. The denouncing of Halloween was a big one for me. Not because I love it so much (well I do) but because it was just ONE more, of the seemingly never-ending, overreaches.  Thank you for bringing this up!

You're absolutely right. Over the years it felt like the grip around our lives was steadily squeezing tighter and tighter. Most of the time it was a subtle, unspoken slide but sometimes it was these big, seemingly arbitrary statements. I think one way it was apparent to me was how the church increasingly promoted homeschooling. It had from the beginning endorsed homeschool, but over the time I was there it went from most of the kids being in public school to 90% being homeschooled (even out of towners).

Over time, the world became smaller and smaller. Gwen wanted RF to not just be the most important institution in our lives, but the only one. I think the slow restricting of all outside joys was part of the overall push to completely alienate us from "the world."

It's humiliating to be in a classroom celebrating Halloween and be told by your parents that you are forbidden to participate because your classmates are sinners. It's deeply fractious to families to tell them you will not be attending a wedding or funeral of a loved one because they are part of the "counterfeit church." 

I feel so bad for the hundreds of Remnant kid homeschoolers who now quite literally have nothing in their lives besides church. They are so sheltered and many of them do not receive an adequate education (despite seeming to skip several grades and graduate high school by 15). So many Remnant "prodigies" don't know basic history, math, or how to write an essay, they just get skipped ahead by their parents and told to focus on the Kingdom. They have fewer opportunities to question and fewer examples in their lives of "happy heathens." It's sad and troubling to me.

[Pathologic Antagonist]

13 hours ago, throwaway9988 said:

And later on when a Remnant member showed up here to argue with us, they knew who she was and they were rude to her if I recall correctly (although maybe I dont; it was years ago). 

Yes, Gwen Biblically justifies lying to protect the Remnant. Nothing she ever said about Josef Smith, Natasha Pavlovich, or anything else should be trusted, even if Gwen was under oath at the time, I dont think that would matter to her.

It wasn't an attorney, it was Phil Williams, the investigative reporter for Newschannel 5. 

My personal vote for the BEST smoking gun moment of his journalism on all of this. 

There's a not a single thing that comes out of Gwen's mouth that should not be considered without a cowlick's worth of salt. 

Her willingness to obfuscate and bend truth at her beck and call is well known. It's just never called out. When she decided to sue me not once but twice, she learned the costs of telling the truth real quickly when I had to defend myself twice in court.  I called it out. She lost BOTH times.

The ramble of hers that they inserted after their citation of my description of Gwen in episode 3 as a little girl is another perfect illustration. Natasha, God bless you for having shot that deposition in video. Her body language speaks J. Alexandrian LIbraries worth of insight upon her devotion to truth.  And you can quote me, Jason Whatley. Any religious "leader" who sics lawyers to dig to find dirt proves just how devoted to deception they are.

 

Edited October 4, 2021 by Pathologic Antagonist

[luv2laugh]

1 hour ago, Roscoe said:

Considering it is now October and spooky season, I wanted to talk about RF's deep animosity towards Halloween.I know it's probably been discussed before, but Gwen was fanatically opposed to Halloween, viewing it as a celebration of the macabre and satanic that that leading our children into Devil worship. 

For someone so opposed to Halloween, she sure liked to dress the part with her dark lipstick, pale foundation, and huge, funeral-like black dresses. She spent every day looking like the corpse bride.

Edited October 4, 2021 by luv2laugh

[TDHuggies]

10 minutes ago, Roscoe said:

...I feel so bad for the hundreds of Remnant kid homeschoolers who now quite literally have nothing in their lives besides church...

Thank you so much for sharing the perspective of what it's like for the children growing up in this cult. When I first started I noticed the children...always looking so deceptively wonderful...but that's because everyone was afraid to be honest about how they felt about things. Much love and healing to you!

[formergothardite]

I have noticed a big trend in even more mainstream churches in my area claiming Halloween is evil. Growing up my IFB church had Halloween parties. Now it has sermons denouncing it as a holiday of devil worship. A large Southern Baptist church near me quit their Halloween festivities about a decade ago and now doesn't even do fall festivals. I wonder if Gwen was going along with this bigger trend. She has never been super original.

[Xan]

4 minutes ago, formergothardite said:

I have noticed a big trend in even more mainstream churches in my area claiming Halloween is evil. Growing up my IFB church had Halloween parties. Now it has sermons denouncing it as a holiday of devil worship. A large Southern Baptist church near me quit their Halloween festivities about a decade ago and now doesn't even do fall festivals. I wonder if Gwen was going along with this bigger trend. She has never been super original.

I agree.  I think she just realized that she could probably get away with cancelling Halloween and, since a number of Christian churches do it too, it was okay.  That way the churches could have an extra service, get more offering money, and have another way that they're better than the heathens and can control their flock.  If you think about it, the other holidays are safe.  They can't cancel Christmas (Jesus' birthday!) or Easter (Jesus rose!) or the 4th of July (Patriotic!).  The last big one to snatch was Halloween.

[nelliebelle1197]

1 hour ago, Roscoe said:

Considering it is now October and spooky season, I wanted to talk about RF's deep animosity towards Halloween.

I know it's probably been discussed before, but Gwen was fanatically opposed to Halloween, viewing it as a celebration of the macabre and satanic that that leading our children into Devil worship. 

The funny thing is, she was not always against Halloween. In fact, she had a huge Halloween party at Ashlawn circa 2005 complete with a haunted hay ride, hidden bowls full of peeled grapes and spaghetti that you'd pretend were eyeballs and intestines, and a fun costume party. I way only a little kid when I attended that party, but it was extremely fun. I also remember the haunted hay ride where Elizabeth Hannah told us the "Ghost of Ashlawn" story, which she claimed to have seen herself. I remember being super scared by that ghost story (in a good way) and often spending Ashlawn events looking for the ghost in window reflections.

Fast forward to a few years later and Gwen has a whole sermon about how Halloween is actually evil, ghost stories are evil, and we should be celebrating the martyrs on All-Saints Day instead (with the martyrs including everything from Stephan being stoned to Gwen herself losing her publishing contract with Doubleday). So instead of trick-or-treating in princess and superhero costumes (because that was celebrating death and darkness and evil), we instead read graphic depictions of executions and torture from Foxe's Book of Martyrs complete with illustrations of beheadings, flayings, and mutilations while being told "this could happen to you soon and you must be sure not to renounce God under torture, eight-year-olds!"

Like... for someone who finds Halloween ghouls and goblins and ghost stories to be so Satanic and ugly, Gwen sure loved to tell us how we needed to be prepared for imminent persecution and torture. She also compared her plight directly and equally to the martyrs. Fun stuff.

I think this picture proves you wrong

Spoiler

 

 

 

 

They're creepy and they're kooky/mysterious and spooky/they're all together ookey/The SHAMBLIN FAMILLLEEEE snap snap

Edited October 4, 2021 by nelliebelle1197

[luv2laugh]

2 hours ago, Roscoe said:

Fast forward to a few years later and Gwen has a whole sermon about how Halloween is actually evil, ghost stories are evil, and we should be celebrating the martyrs on All-Saints Day instead (with the martyrs including everything from Stephan being stoned to Gwen herself losing her publishing contract with Doubleday). So instead of trick-or-treating in princess and superhero costumes (because that was celebrating death and darkness and evil), we instead read graphic depictions of executions and torture from Foxe's Book of Martyrs complete with illustrations of beheadings, flayings, and mutilations while being told "this could happen to you soon and you must be sure not to renounce God under torture, eight-year-olds!"

Did anyone in RF explain why they went from having a big Halloween party with ghost stories to denouncing it?  Also, WTF... graphic torture images and stories could cause trauma to children. When I learned about medieval torture methods as a kid, it really affected me.

Edited October 4, 2021 by luv2laugh

[Roscoe]

5 minutes ago, luv2laugh said:

Did anyone in RF explain why they went from having a big Halloween party with ghost stories to denouncing it?  Also, WTF... graphic torture images and stories could cause trauma to children. When I learned about medieval torture methods as a kid, it really affected me.

The explanation I got was the whole All-Saint's Day was "serious and important for our edification as Christians" and Halloween was at best frivolous and at worst, worshipping the Devil. Basically what happened to the martyrs was important and godly and Halloween was a perversion of a holy day. The emphasis was on making every moment "glorifying to God," so holidays that were just about fun could not exist unless there was a heavy coating of RF repentance and holiness to it.

Gwen made a point about how even the word "holiday" was part of Satan's plan to de-religionize God's righteous "Holy Days." Many people I knew didn't even use the word "holiday" but said "Holy Day" instead as a way of centering God/the church. It was part of the slow slide into increasing control.

And yes... all those graphic stories of executions and torture were *kinda* traumatizing to hear as a kid. Not as scary as Hell, of course... But close.

[nelliebelle1197]

1 hour ago, Pathologic Antagonist said:

 

Thank you very much. It's encouraging to hear that.  My wife commented that she heard the exhaustion I really was under at that time for both interviews in the raspiness of my voice. I managed to look competent and I really was at my limit getting ready for it and for fighting off jet lag.  God gave me a lot of grace those days.
 

I thought EVERYONE did a fantastic job. The personal cost they all bore to have to tell their stories in the face of what they are now enduring is beyond belief to anyone except fellow cult survivors, such as those on this forum. They are easily the bravest and most courageous of all here. I was honored to have helped most of them join the production and encourage them to stay the course. 

 There are those here for whom the Trinity is a distracting bit of dogma that took away from the documentary. While I had absolutely no control over this production narrative as an interviewee, a consultant and researcher, I found the discussion informative and actually a bit incomplete for the very reason you cite here.

Lara's rejection of the Trinity doctrine, a Biblical one IMHO, was a reaction against the "counterfeit church" doctrine. She had to come up with a way to explain her new WDW doctrine on the nature of God in such a manner that it would verify and sancitify her teaching on her authority line dogma - AND - prove she had THE Truth on the nature of God that would crap all over the Counterfeit, Her authority line shtick is a foundational pillar to her catechism of coercion. 

So Gwen's "another Jesus" has to be both inferior and non-divine so as to become a model of submission and total obedience to her WDW and RF slaves. Christ's divinity was unnecessary to atone for sins because the evil is weight that the dieter must be free from according to whatever purely arbitrary standard they determine. The Sinner shows how submissive to God and closely they be like "Jesus" by being free of cellulite and getting a smile of approval from Leadership. This is why Gwen so clumsily stumbled into the rejection of the Trinty so as to gain more traction for her diet in the hearts and minds of her disciples.

She learned really quickly that the nature of God DOES matter to a lot of the very women she so casually dismissed and got the right foot of fellowship OUT of churches at that time. Between her doctrinal error and the practical lifestyle dictates she pressed upon them, they finally drew the line in the sand, That point, I'm afraid could have been explained a lot better. I did provide in the interviews a discussion of this that might have helped but it never got included.  Gina verified the fallout and the reaction, but this point was not addressed. 

My beilef that the Liftonian model of cultic mind control - a major bellwether that determines whether a group is destructively cultic or not - was not touched on at all either. I also tried to raise this point in the interviews and a clear majority of the ex-RF members I've been in touch with since the documentary felt the same way. 

She is. Testimonies about her own dark side are there. I know of them. She's as human as all of them and just as rift with complexity and frailty as her mother and father. 

I am believe there were other reasons but can't get into them here. 

Can I offer just a suggestion on where I think the doc ... I don't want to say failed but I guess missed a narrative thread? It was sort of lost in all the drama, but I never got a sense of exactly how WD transitioned to RF. I mean, after years of following Gwen, I still don't know. I am sure a lot of viewers who had no clue about the Bewigged Tiger King's path might be confused as well! It would be lovely if the filmmaker could pop in 2-4 minutes on the transition years.

Edited October 4, 2021 by nelliebelle1197

[GreenBeans]

34 minutes ago, nelliebelle1197 said:

They're creepy and they're kooky/mysterious and spooky/they're all together ookey/The SHAMBLIN FAMILLLEEEE snap snap

After seeing that picture, this song played in my head before I even got to that part of your post! 😂

[JermajestyDuggar]

54 minutes ago, formergothardite said:

I have noticed a big trend in even more mainstream churches in my area claiming Halloween is evil. Growing up my IFB church had Halloween parties. Now it has sermons denouncing it as a holiday of devil worship. A large Southern Baptist church near me quit their Halloween festivities about a decade ago and now doesn't even do fall festivals. I wonder if Gwen was going along with this bigger trend. She has never been super original.

I went to a pretty mainstream baptist church growing up. It wasn’t southern Baptist or IFB. I remember listening to a sermon from our long time preacher about how he would never let his kids go trick or treating as the devil, a demon, or witch. Because that represented evil. And he didn’t want his kids playing at being evil. I remember being completely shocked. I had dressed up like some of those things and my parents were fine with it. It was just one of many things I would disagree with when it came to religion. 
 

When it comes to cult leaders, they almost always make pretty big changes at some point. They can do a complete 180 on Halloween or whatever and I think it’s partly because they want to see who will keep following them. You gotta weed out those who aren’t completely in the cult. The ones who are “true believers” will follow. She weeded out a bunch in the beginning who her trinity belief.