Remnant Fellowship 22: The Great & Powerful Oz-Lizabeth

[nelliebelle1197]

Will Elizabeth ever emerge from the shadows? Was Gwen really an Oompah Loompa? Is Michael getting divorced? 

 

 

[freefromthin]

1 hour ago, nelliebelle1197 said:

Will Elizabeth ever emerge from the shadows? Was Gwen really an Oompah Loompa? Is Michael getting divorced? 

 

 

I'm definitely keeping my eyes peeled to see whether or not she emerges. Right now they seem pretty content with the call-ins that she does.

[nelliebelle1197]

23 hours ago, freefromthin said:

I'm definitely keeping my eyes peeled to see whether or not she emerges. Right now they seem pretty content with the call-ins that she does.

BUT was Gwen an Oompah Loompa???

[RFsurvivor]

1 minute ago, nelliebelle1197 said:

BUT was Gwen an Oompah Loompa???

I dunno. She was more stark white than orange 😂

[ManyGoats]

Today's mid-week service was not about being grateful or giving thanks but rather a Gwen re-run about how not to eat too much at Thanksgiving and, of course, about how godly it is to lose weight.

Edited November 25, 2021 by ManyGoats

[freefromthin]

34 minutes ago, ManyGoats said:

Today's mid-week service was  was not about being grateful or giving thanks but rather a Gwen re-run about how not to eat too much at Thanksgiving and, of course, about how godly it is to lose weight.

YES! Plus those eating (or not eating) tips she gave were just ridiculous. I mean, I get the point of not wanting to stuff oneself to the point of pain (no judgment for anyone who does this) but she was basically championing eating as LITTLE as possible, even to the point of suggesting that people eat off of butter plates and only put a bite of each thing that they think they might want on said plate, though you COULD go back and get a bit more of an item that you REALLY liked. I remember the self-righteousness that I used to feel when practicing these tips, because the people around me were "overeating" and had not "lost all their weight". Nowadays, I really don't care what or how much an individual eats. I just want everyone to enjoy themselves.

[ManyGoats]

22 minutes ago, freefromthin said:

.....but she was basically championing eating as LITTLE as possible, even to the point of suggesting that people eat off of butter plates and only put a bite of each thing that they think they might want on said plate,

I remember way back when she first started, she said to eat until you were satisfied. I guess that's too self-indulgent. You know, to eat enough.

[mango_fandango]

Her most bizarre thing was that she thought others wouldn’t notice if you weren’t eating. Perhaps that’d work in Remnant where everyone ate like she did, barely consuming anything, but at a normal gathering most people would notice if someone wasn’t eating. 

[formergothardite]

6 hours ago, freefromthin said:

YES! Plus those eating (or not eating) tips she gave were just ridiculous. I mean, I get the point of not wanting to stuff oneself to the point of pain (no judgment for anyone who does this) but she was basically championing eating as LITTLE as possible, even to the point of suggesting that people eat off of butter plates and only put a bite of each thing that they think they might want on said plate, though you COULD go back and get a bit more of an item that you REALLY liked. I remember the self-righteousness that I used to feel when practicing these tips, because the people around me were "overeating" and had not "lost all their weight". Nowadays, I really don't care what or how much an individual eats. I just want everyone to enjoy themselves.

She truly did just give out advice on how to have an eating disorder. In the depths of my eating disorder I remember being so ridiculously proud that I just ate one tiny bite of everything at Thanksgiving. And that I left not feeling full. Despite Gwen’s claims, people do notice when you are at a holiday meal only eating minuscule amounts. 

[ManyGoats]

9 hours ago, mango_fandango said:

but at a normal gathering most people would notice if someone wasn’t eating. 

 

5 hours ago, formergothardite said:

Despite Gwen’s claims, people do notice when you are at a holiday meal only eating minuscule amounts. 

Particularly if you're eating from a butter plate with only a few bites of food on it. 

Edited November 25, 2021 by ManyGoats

[WeirdHarold]

I didn't see anyone post this Dan Gryder link yet.  Hopefully I'm not duplicating it here.

 

Spoiler

 

 

[rabbitholejulie]

3 hours ago, ManyGoats said:

 

Particularly if you're eating from a butter plate with only a few bites of food on it. 

To the hostess, "do you have a butter plate I could eat from?"

[nelliebelle1197]

1 hour ago, WeirdHarold said:

I didn't see anyone post this Dan Gryder link yet.  Hopefully I'm not duplicating it here.

 

  Hide contents

 

 

Likely because so many of us don't trust Dan Gryder.

[Tatar-tot]

I am really unclear on what is going on with Remnant.  Why hasn’t someone one stood up to lead the parish? For Remnant to qualify as a church there is a whole bunch of hoops that would have been jumped through including having some sort of governing board.  This Elizabeth call in hour is idiotic.  If these people really believed all Gwen preached then why aren’t they planning services, reading the Bible, and having a team rotate through to give a sermon.  There is something else going on here as nothing makes sense.  

[WeirdHarold]

4 minutes ago, Tatar-tot said:

For Remnant to qualify as a church there is a whole bunch of hoops that would have been jumped through including having some sort of governing board.

Do you have some experience setting up churches and maintaining their churchiness to the IRS?

I think there are many groups that qualify and there are many would look odd to the mainstream.

[treemom]

It is extremely easy to be a church in the US and doesn’t require a governing board.

[formergothardite]

John Oliver once started a church to show how ridiculously easy it was and how there is virtually no oversight. 

[treemom]

1 hour ago, Tatar-tot said:

https://www.irs.gov/charities-non-profits/churches-religious-organizations
 

I’m not a mod, and when I was I probably wasn’t a good one.  But I think you aren’t supposed to just post a link.

 

And you should provide some analysis, that isn’t at all implying that there are hoops to jump through.  It’s one of the easiest things to actually set up in the US.  And you don’t have to have a governing board.  If you did, do you think Scientology would be around?  Or even smaller abusive religions like Mark Driscoll’s “family business” church.

[DietCherryCoke76]

2 hours ago, Tatar-tot said:

I am really unclear on what is going on with Remnant.  Why hasn’t someone one stood up to lead the parish? For Remnant to qualify as a church there is a whole bunch of hoops that would have been jumped through including having some sort of governing board.  This Elizabeth call in hour is idiotic.  If these people really believed all Gwen preached then why aren’t they planning services, reading the Bible, and having a team rotate through to give a sermon.  There is something else going on here as nothing makes sense.  

No laws are being broken by Remnent not having someone take over as the top leader.   Liz has all the time she wants.  Her reason now is avoiding the media which will work until the docuseries is complete.

[Pathologic Antagonist]

Work on Episodes 4 and 5 are in high gear.  I had hoped the production company would be able to stay with their original release date of early in January 2021 but that doesn't appear possible at this point. I am along the last to be interviewed and look forward to answering what questions put to me that I can about the whole corrupt and crumbling band of cultists that Remnant Fellowship has degenerated into.

Elizabeth's "leadership" has been a predictable misfire and the seething controversy over her brother's extracurricular activities is becoming an inferno raging behind the PR imagery that RF produces. The 4 color high gloss is browning due to the heat and if ever there was a potential for fatal cognitive dissonance within this group, it now has arrived and a foundational tension is going to make something happen there soon.

The kids are raiding the candy ship they got from their mom and the slaves in the boiler room are shoveling coal like all good slaves do but nobody's at the wheel. Pretty soon, these slaves are going to find several different post-Gwen leadership crises confront them. 

Stay tuned. God's far from done with any of them and if he wants to use investigative documentaries as part of his terrible swift sword, so be it.  

[treemom]

I gotta say the slaves in the boiler room analogy is a little cringey for me.  For a couple of reasons, one, I think the imagery of slaves and ships is just too strong for this.  The middle passage was effectively genocide and I think we should take the same great care we do when we compare things to the Holocaust when we discuss it.
 

And then secondly, we talk about this a lot here, not just about Remnant.  Where we think the accountability for the abuse and the terror is.   Usually we are talking about women in highly patriarchal households who also inflict varying levels of abuse and harm on their children, the children of others, other women, etc.   You can be a victim and an abuser at the same time.  Where do Michael and Elizabeth fit here?  Do you truly think Gwen encouraged them to be their own people?
 

Is Michael raiding the candy ship because he has the ability to leave the church with his mother’s death and is doing so?  Or is it because he is taking the inheritance with him (we assume, likely validly).

There are more victims than perpetrators at Remnant and certainly most of those victims are not in the same position of the kids, but I still am going to reserve some amount of compassion for Michael and Elizabeth in my heart.  They may have contributed to the spiritual abuse, but they are certainly victims as well.

Edited November 26, 2021 by treemom

[Mrs Ms]

If being widowed with four children and loosing your mother causes you to look the best you have in YEARS, clearly you were not living a good life before they died! 

[formergothardite]

2 hours ago, treemom said:

I gotta say the slaves in the boiler room analogy is a little cringey for me.

Yeah, it seems very inappropriate for this situation. Yes, leaving a cult is hard, but these people are not slaves. It is offensive to compare them to people who literally had zero abilities to escape their situations and were being raped, tortured and murdered. 
 

Michael and Elizabeth were Gwen’s first victims and probably suffered the longest under her reign. They never got to experience parents who truly loved them. They were pawns to be controlled since they were children. That doesn’t mean they aren’t responsible for the choices they made as adults, they are. But if they take the money and use it to find freedom, then great. If Elizabeth literally just dials it in because she has zero desire to lead, also great. Way better it go this rout than the church get all the money and Elizabeth come out as a strong leader. 

I hope everyone, including Gwen’s children can find peace. 

 

[nelliebelle1197]

8 hours ago, Pathologic Antagonist said:

Work on Episodes 4 and 5 are in high gear.  I had hoped the production company would be able to stay with their original release date of early in January 2021 but that doesn't appear possible at this point. I am along the last to be interviewed and look forward to answering what questions put to me that I can about the whole corrupt and crumbling band of cultists that Remnant Fellowship has degenerated into.

Elizabeth's "leadership" has been a predictable misfire and the seething controversy over her brother's extracurricular activities is becoming an inferno raging behind the PR imagery that RF produces. The 4 color high gloss is browning due to the heat and if ever there was a potential for fatal cognitive dissonance within this group, it now has arrived and a foundational tension is going to make something happen there soon.

The kids are raiding the candy ship they got from their mom and the slaves in the boiler room are shoveling coal like all good slaves do but nobody's at the wheel. Pretty soon, these slaves are going to find several different post-Gwen leadership crises confront them. 

Stay tuned. God's far from done with any of them and if he wants to use investigative documentaries as part of his terrible swift sword, so be it.  

Hmmm. I think I identified you as someone else in the doc. My detective skills are slipping!

[freefromthin]

3 hours ago, formergothardite said:

Yeah, it seems very inappropriate for this situation. Yes, leaving a cult is hard, but these people are not slaves. It is offensive to compare them to people who literally had zero abilities to escape their situations and were being raped, tortured and murdered. 
 

Michael and Elizabeth were Gwen’s first victims and probably suffered the longest under her reign. They never got to experience parents who truly loved them. They were pawns to be controlled since they were children. That doesn’t mean they aren’t responsible for the choices they made as adults, they are. But if they take the money and use it to find freedom, then great. If Elizabeth literally just dials it in because she has zero desire to lead, also great. Way better it go this rout than the church get all the money and Elizabeth come out as a strong leader. 

I hope everyone, including Gwen’s children can find peace. 

 

I totally agree with this. I'd love to see Remnant dismantled, but I KNOW that such an event will be DEVASTATING to MOST of the members. A lot of them will find themselves going through a LOT of mental and spiritual angst as they either try and assimilate back in to mainstream Christianity, find a new spiritual path OR leave religion/spirituality altogether. As someone who left a very controlling group, my heart goes out to them in that regard.

As for Elizabeth's leadership...I TRULY think that she is the Remnant's last hope. If she does not step up, I have NO IDEA how they will go on. They seem to look to her as a pseudo-Gwen or some such thing. She definitely possesses some of her mother's speech patterns and she seems VERY intent on going forward with her mother's teachings...at least for now. She could probably get away with playing her mother's videos and then getting up and giving a little speech IF she could get herself to get up in front of the assembly. Her call-ins are nothing short of a rallying call with the seeming intent of keeping the Remnant members hanging on. She's basically been reassuring them that she is keeping things going in the background, and for now...they seem content with that.

In regards to Michael and Elizabeth being victims...I agree with this. Gwen has actually stated that she used to deny Elizabeth food when she felt like there was a possibility that she wasn't hungry. Elizabeth has also publicly stated that she has been groomed by her mother to take over the leadership position at Remnant. Who knows when that started. During the early interviews, any time Michael was featured, he looked quite despondent. He was a musical artist, but he seemed to feel like he was required to use that talent in support of Remnant. Such a sad life for both of them...to have their VERY EXISTENCE revolve around a religious group and have no true freedom of self-expression. Then on top of that to be CONSTANTLY judged by their body size and eating habits...sheesh! I hope they both break free and get the mental and emotional support that they both likely need.