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"It is just after dusk on a Thursday night in March. Hundreds of smiling parishioners stream into the Federal style building that houses the Remnant Fellowship church in Franklin, Tennessee, 20 miles south of Nashville. With a stage in lieu of an altar, TV cameras, projection screens and theater-style chairs, the 650-seat sanctuary seems more like a television studio than a place of worship. The congregants, too, are camera-ready: Not a single participant appears to be overweight. That is not an accident. The overwhelming majority of members found their way to this church through Weigh Down, one of the most successful Christian weight loss programs in the country.\\n\\nTonight, church members are taking part in a live webcast promoting the Weigh Down plan. Ten minutes before airtime, church leaders direct members to fill in the front rows and show joy and excitement once the cameras start to roll. The video begins with messages scrolling across the screen: \\\"There is hope.\\\" \\\"There is an answer.\\\" \\\"You can lose weight permanently.\\\" Next comes a taped introduction from Gwen Shamblin, the 50-ish founder of the diet and the church. \\\"You have got to change, and you can change,\\\" she says. \\\"The way to change is down this narrow path and this truth.\\\"\\n\\nWhen I first heard Shamblin talk about weight loss several years ago, I found myself nodding in agreement. \\\"If you are dieting, taking pills, counting fat grams, using exchange lists, changing the content of foods, then you believe your basic problem is the food,\\\" she says in a Weigh Down video. \\\"Dieting keeps the person focused on what she or he should and should not eat. This focus on food only increases the magnetic pull of the refrigerator because you fall in love with what you focus on.\\\" Shamblin says the key to weight loss is learning to love God instead of food and eating only when you feel physiological hunger\u2014literally waiting for your stomach to growl.\\n\\nI consider myself more spiritual than religious, taking the parts of Christianity I like and leaving the rest. So while Weigh Down's overtly religious message wasn't for me, its practical approach got results: In 2002, I started an eight-week class through a church near my home in North Carolina and lost 10 pounds in about a month. My hectic schedule caused me to drop out midway through, but I never forgot the basic principles. When Weigh Down began offering a new online class in 2005, I plunked down $125 for the eight-week Exodus Out of Egypt: The Change Series. The name symbolizes the deliverance of God's chosen people from slavery (the bondage to food and dieting) to the promised land (being permanently thin).\\n\\nThis time, I noticed stark differences in the program. Weight loss advice was overshadowed by rhetoric implying that overeaters are courting eternal damnation. In class videos, Shamblin was self-righteous, her tone dictatorial. Gradually, I realized that Weigh Down had become a recruitment tool for the church Shamblin founded in 1999. My online class leader stressed the need to leave the \\\"counterfeit\\\" church and its false teachers. \\\"You've been lied to all your life,\\\" she posted during one session. I stopped short of replying that she didn't know me and had no idea what I had been taught.\\n\\nBut Shamblin's new message is resonating: Approximately 1,200 people have heeded her call to join Remnant Fellowship. Close to 650 of them have left their home and relocated to be nearer to Shamblin's multimillion-dollar estate in Tennessee, some pulling their children out of schools and cutting ties with friends and family. These developments have prompted some religion experts to worry that Remnant has become more cult than church, a place where obedience is measured in the amount of food left on your plate and righteousness in the number of pounds lost.\\n\\n\\\"They are hierarchical, authoritarian and demand unquestioned submission,\\\" says Raphael Martinez, a minister in Cleveland, Tennessee, who runs Spiritwatch Ministries, which tracks religious and social fringe groups. Members are not pressured to give up their money, nor are they armed existence of the Trinity, one of the core tenets of the faith. The controversy prompted her publisher to cancel her third book. Christian bookstores returned *The Weigh Down Diet*, and churches canceled classes. Shamblin says she viewed the rebuff as religious persecution\u2014and confirmation of her calling. \\\"I feel like God has placed me as a go-to person, a kind of a pioneer. There are always going to be attacks on me...they killed Jesus, they killed Peter, they killed Paul. What they've tried to do is kill my reputation.\\\" Unless we repent our gluttony and never overeat again, her philosophy seems to say, we are doomed to hell. This graceless message has widened the gap between her and the mainstream Christian community, where salvation is a gift from God\u2014not something you earn by going from a size 14 to a 4.\\n\\nOver the course of my involvement with the Weigh Down Workshop and interaction with church members, I came to recognize the mind-set shared by its devotees. They are, for the most part, weary dieters who see Remnant as their last hope. Most have tried every diet under the sun; some have even undergone weight loss surgery or liposuction with little or no success. Shamblin's strict, no-nonsense message promises results and often delivers.\\n\\nAmy Hartman, a 32-year-old research associate in Indianapolis, says she came to Weigh Down desperate: She had failed at every commercial diet and by the summer of 2005 had 75 pounds to lose. That July, she decided to attend a Weigh Down retreat in Franklin. When she arrived, she immediately felt like an outsider. \\\"I felt like the only fat person there,\\\" she says. \\\"Everyone dressed alike, they were super happy and you couldn't hold a normal conversation with anyone because they only wanted to talk about how great Gwen was. I called my mom and said, 'This is a cult.'\\\" Still, Hartman yearned for what they had: major, long-term weight loss. Convinced she could follow the eating plan and maintain her spiritual independence, she returned home, enrolled in a Weigh Down class and followed it to the letter.\\n\\nLike this magazine, Shamblin stresses moderation and the idea that there should be no good or bad foods. But she goes further, describing a diet filled almost exclusively with tiny bites of french fries, ice cream and barbecued pork; she also objects to using exercise to offset the effects of overeating. \\\"God did not put chocolate or lasagna or real blue cheese dressing on earth to torture us, but rather for our enjoyment,\\\" she writes in *The Weigh Down Diet*. \\\"Good health is more related to *when* you eat and *how much* you eat than *what* you eat, since most meal selections are so similar in chemical and nutrient content.\\\" But dieters following this advice too strictly may neglect nutrition even as they slim down, says Lauren Slayton, R.D., director of Foodtrainers in New York City. \\\"All foods are acceptable, but clearly some foods are nutritionally superior,\\\" she says. \\\"The person living on Fritos is not healthy and won't lose weight as well as someone eating a balanced diet.\\\"\\n\\nThe Weigh Down program also uses guilt and shame to keep dieters in line, Hartman says. \\\"I became very anxious about overeating because it was a sin,\\\" she explains. \\\"I ate no more than 8 to 10 bites at each meal.\\\" Hartman lost nearly 25 pounds in two months. (Most experts recommend dropping 8 pounds or less a month for healthy and sustainable weight loss, though obese people might safely lose a little more.) She heard increasing criticism of the church she was attending at the time. \\\"The weight was coming off easily,\\\" she says. \\\"So I started thinking, If they are right about weight loss, why can't they be right about living a life that is happy and perfect?\\\"\\n\\nAs weeks went by, however, Hartman had questions: Would only those in Remnant go to heaven, as Shamblin's teachings seemed to imply? How could they be so sure that she was being led astray by her own church group and by believing in the Trinity? \\\"Gwen called to talk to me, but she never really answered my questions,\\\" Hartman recalls. \\\"She got really upset, and it became take it or leave it.\\\" Hartman left.\\n\\nTheological debate is an unforgivable sin in Remnant, says Martinez , who runs a Remnant support group that has included several dozen former members and relatives who feel abandoned by current followers. \\\"If someone has questions, they are referred to leadership, who make them feel they are being inappropriate and disrespectful,\\\" Martinez says. Steven Alan Hassan, a mental-health counselor in Somerville, Massachusetts, and author of two books on cults, says Remnant fits his definition of a cult because it attempts to control members' behavior, information, thoughts and emotions. \\\"No legitimate religion tells you that you can't check things out,\\\" Hassan says. \\\"That is the essence of Abrahamic faiths [including Islam, Judaism and Christianity], to question and have free will.\\\" Not true, says Shamblin: \\\"If there were no questions allowed, then why have we had a 1-800 number offering information for years?\\\"\\n\\nMost Remnant members in Franklin live near one another and spend nearly all their free time together. There is a church activity almost every night\u2014Bible study, Weigh Down classes, weddings, dances and a three-hour-long worship service every Saturday evening. According to former members, everyone who marries does so within the church.\\n\\nThe night after the webcast, more than 200 people gather at the church for its summer camp fund-raiser. Hebronica\u2014the church garage band\u2014plays Christian rock while parishioners perform the Daughters of Jerusalem dance, a combination of square dance and *Soul Train* line. The tune was written by Michael Shamblin; Elizabeth helped create the dance.\\n\\nTrying to have a conversation about anything other than God and Gwen is virtually impossible. The Remnant script is composed of a few well-honed, insipid phrases. \\\"How was your weekend?\\\" I ask one member.\\n\\n\\\"I've never been so blessed in my life,\\\" she responds.\\n\\nAfter the dance concludes, the church sets out a massive buffet that consists almost entirely of desserts. Attendees sample everything but leave the bulk of it behind. It's as if there is a competition to see who can be satisfied with the least amount of food.\\n\\nNot all of Shamblin's associates have been happy with the church's evolution. When she broke ties with mainstream churches in 1999, some Weigh Down employees say they were pressured to leave their churches and worship with her. In October 2000, five people sued the Workshop, saying they were fired or forced out when they refused to join Remnant. (The case was settled a year later; details are confidential.)\\n\\nAt least one Remnant leader says she was demoted for failing to slim down fast enough. Laura Nichols, who began teaching for Weigh Down in 1998, decided after attending a Remnant retreat in 2001 to leave her Southern Baptist congregation and start a Remnant chapter in Houston. \\\"The funny thing was that my husband and I only told my family what we were doing,\\\" she says. \\\"The fact that we kept it a secret from our friends should have been a warning, but we ignored it.\\\"\\n\\nWhen Nichols's weight plateaued at 280 pounds, she says Shamblin chastised her for not losing more and told her to \\\"stop being a billboard to sin.\\\" She had already had a gastric band put in and was eating a saucer of food per meal; now she started eating only nine bites of food a day. She lost 13 pounds in 10 days, bringing her total weight loss to 70 pounds. Church leaders wanted more. \\\"Gwen told me to quit eating, that I had enough fat on my body to live off for many years,\\\" Nichols recalls. (Though she does not recall this specific exchange, Shamblin says she does believe that when you are obese, \\\"the body calls for very little food.\\\")\\n\\nIn January 2002, the couple received an even stronger rebuke in the form of a phone call from Shamblin. \\\"Laura, I'm scared,\\\" she began, according to Nichols. \\\"I was shocked when I saw that you had not lost any more weight since this past summer. Confess your sin of greed for food to the Houston Remnant Fellowship and step down from leadership.\\\" Shamblin's recollection is different: that Nichols and her husband had both agreed she should step down to focus on her own health rather than others. \\\"We are very sorry that she took kind and helpful advice and then confused it,\\\" she says.\\n\\nInstead of stepping down, Nichols left the church. \\\"I was suicidal after that telephone call,\\\" she recalls. \\\"I rocketed between realizing that it was a cult and worrying that I was going to hell.\\\" Since quitting Remnant, Nichols has had her gastric band removed and lost 95 pounds on Weight Watchers.\\n\\nAs Nichols was departing, Remnant was growing. Weigh Down participants around the country were leaving their churches and moving to Franklin, living two or three families in one house until they got settled and sometimes severing ties with non-Remnant friends and family. \\\"That's one of the signs of cultlike groups\u2014isolating people from their families because they raise questions,\\\" says Rick Ross, an expert witness on cult issues in Jersey City, New Jersey, who maintains a large database on controversial groups and movements. For her part, Shamblin says that members are more likely to bring people into the fold than to become estranged from them.\\n\\n\\\"Janice,\\\" 39, (who asked SELF not to publish her real name), says her sister cut ties with her after signing up for Weigh Down shortly after moving to a new home in the Northeast. \\\"She was vulnerable, living in a strange city, and she started trusting Gwen more and more,\\\" Janice says. \\\"Her personality and her lingo changed. She had been lively, energetic and athletic, but she became emotionless, almost flatlined, and stopped exercising.\\\" Janice, who has been in Martinez's support group, has not spoken to her sister in four years. She says the birthday present she sent her nephew was returned with a note: \\\"You are actively involved in a gossip and slander group that is trying to tear down the very message that has changed our lives...we are afraid for your soul.\\\" Janice's parents have now joined Remnant, sold their home and moved to Franklin. \\\"I feel abandoned, angry and hopeless,\\\" she says. \\\"I've lost my only sister, and now I'm losing my parents.\\\"\\n\\nFormer member Teri Phillips says she, too, surrendered her will to Shamblin's, until she began to fear for her health and her children's well-being. She had joined Weigh Down in 1995 and participated off and on. In 2002, needing to lose 40 pounds, she enrolled in the Weigh Down Advanced class, driving 45 minutes each way from her home in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. In one fire-and-brimstone lesson after another, Shamblin preached that God would turn his back on her if she fell short. \\\"That hit me hard,\\\" she says. \\\"In the old classes, I didn't always wait for my stomach to growl and sometimes ate beyond full. I now feared that God was going to kill me if I overate.\\\" Six months later, she was 47 pounds thinner and a believer. \\\"My husband and I weren't happy in our church because we felt the people were unchanged and the leaders wouldn't confront sin,\\\" she says. \\\"We jumped right into Remnant. Everybody was happy and loving and praising God with so much joy.\\\"\\n\\nThe couple sought Shamblin's counsel for things large and small\u2014whether to unload the family business, whether to sell their house, how to decorate to make it more sellable. She even asked whether she should put her mother in an assisted-living facility. \\\"She said I should because my mother was not Godly,\\\" claims Phillips, an account Shamblin adamantly denies.\\n\\nPhillips had been taking antidepressants for years but stopped because Remnant teachings deemed them a sin. A few months later, Phillips says, she was so depressed she could barely get out of bed and resumed taking the medication secretly. When church officials found out, \\\"I felt like a guilty child,\\\" she says. She says two of them watched as she flushed the pills down the toilet.\\n\\nPhillips also worried about the church's ideas on punishing children. She says she was urged to spank her 4-year-old girl's bare bottom for nearly an hour for acting out in church, and a church leader severely paddled her 10-year-old son. In July 2003, Phillips made the decision to leave for good. \\\"I was convinced I was going to hell, but I didn't have a choice if I was to take care of my family,\\\" she says. The decision to leave was confirmed in her mind later that year when church members Joseph and Sonya Smith were arrested for allegedly beating their 8-year-old son to death. They pleaded not guilty and will be tried in February.\\n\\nShamblin calls claims of corporal punishment \\\"totally exaggerated. We are pro-discipline for children, always in a loving manner.\\\" But she was drawn into the Smith investigation when a former church member leaked a tape of a February 2003 conference call in which Sonya Smith discusses disciplining the boy by locking him in his room. \\\"We got everything out of there and locked him in there from that Friday until Monday and only left him in his room with his Bible,\\\" Smith says on the tape, according to press accounts.\\n\\n\\\"That's a miracle,\\\" Shamblin responds. \\\"You've got a child that's going from bizarre to in-control. So praise God!\\\"\\n\\nA few months after my first visit to Franklin, I return to attend Saturday-night worship service. Many churchgoers remember me and greet me warmly. A welcome to new arrivals scrolls across the giant screen.\\n\\nShamblin's sermon is titled Unrestricted Freedom, Relationship, River of People and Reward. Speaking from the Book of Romans, she describes how Satan and the modern-day church have twisted the scriptures and how God is defending Remnant against its enemies. She preaches for an hour, and none of it makes a bit of sense to me.\\n\\n\\\"Go all the way without sin,\\\" she concludes, lifting her fist triumphantly. The congregation springs to its feet.\\n\\n\\\"What did you think?\\\" a member asks me. \\\"Wasn't that sermon powerful?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Interesting,\\\" is all I can manage. It's as if we went to the same theater and saw two different movies.\\n\\nAmy Hartman, however, says she can understand that devotion, the privileged feeling of belonging among the thin and faithful. Since abandoning the church, she is exercising three times a week and has dropped 10 pounds but is still overweight. Sometimes, despite her negative experience, she is tempted to give the diet another try. \\\"There were overwhelming clues something was wrong, but part of me still wants to believe,\\\" she says. \\\"It was an alluring illusion.\\\"  \\n  \\nPhoto Credit: Bill Diodato"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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