History & overview · every faith gets one
A Christian movement linking devotion, obedience and everyday self-control.
Remnant Fellowship is a Christian movement co-founded by Gwen Shamblin and other early members in Brentwood, Tennessee, in 1999. It grew from her Weigh Down program and extends its God-first teaching into ordinary conduct. The church rejects the Trinity, observes a Saturday Sabbath and connects its Brentwood congregation with webcast groups. It is the subject of The Way Down: God, Greed, and the Cult of Gwen Shamblin.
The Way Down presents former-member allegations of abuse, coercion and exploitation. Remnant Fellowship denies the allegations and says it does not condone child abuse. In 2010 the Georgia Supreme Court affirmed the felony-murder and other convictions of Joseph and Sonya Smith following the death of their son Josef. Those convictions were of the parents, who were church members.
Why it is filed this way
A self-identified Christian movement. Placement under Christianity records religious identity without claiming affiliation with another denomination.
The church continues after Shamblin’s death in 2021. Its current leadership page names Elizabeth Kaufmann.
The founding
Shamblin developed Weigh Down in 1986. She and other early members established Remnant Fellowship in 1999 as a church teaching the same approach to placing God first across daily life. The program and the church remain distinct.
Its founding is bound to Gwen Shamblin and other early members — 1999 CE.
What it holds
The divine. The Father is supreme; Jesus is his distinct Son and Lord in the church’s teaching..