Gwen Shamblin: Starving for Salvation

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• 2023
• 1 hr 28 mins
• Drama

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Dramatizes much of the adult life of Gwen Shamblin Lara, specifically from the early 1990s to the early 2020s. A Christian married to pastor David Shamblin, Gwen starts her professional life as a nutritionist, focusing mostly on weight loss through her program, Weigh Down Workshop. Struggling with advising clients about the association of hunger - the emptiness they are feeling - and they filling that emptiness with food, she has a revelation that what is more satisfactory message than one of nutrition is to fill that emptiness spiritually with God. Stemming from that, she begins to have issue with most Christian teaching as it applies to Weigh Down, leading to her starting her own church, Remnant Fellowship. The church has more a holistic "Christian" message as opposed to it being an offshoot of her weight loss program, leading to Gwen, as a leader who strives for fostering the community that is Remnant Fellowship at all cost, turning the church more in to what her detractors would consider a cult. As "cult" leader, she would not accept any diversion of her members from her teachings, yet she was allowed to do so herself if it suited her purpose. Such an example is not allowing her members to divorce, yet she did so herself eventually to marry narcissistic actor/musician, Joe Lara, whose marriage was solely to perpetuate their brand of Christian perfection. She would also not accept any responsibility for anything negative coming out of Remnant Fellowship.