‘The Way Down’ Pastor Takes Credit for HBO Max Woes: ‘This Is a Big Win’
variety.comKate Aurthur editor The Aug. 6 address before the assembly at Remnant Fellowship — delivered to an in-person gathering in Brentwood, TN, and via webcast to anyone who might want to watch — began typically enough, with congregants watching an old video sermon from Gwen Shamblin Lara, the church’s late founder who died in a plane crash on May 29, 2021.
What happened after the video portion ended, though, was unusual. In a portion of the sermon, obtained by Variety, Elizabeth Hannah, Lara’s daughter and a leader at Remnant, called in, as she sometimes does.
But instead of her usual teachings for Saturday service, Hannah delivered a homily of schadenfreude aimed directly at HBO Max, the enemy of Remnant and the Shamblin family.
Hannah’s grudge against HBO Max has a specific and pointed history. On Sept. 30 of last year, the streamer dropped the first three episodes of Marina Zenovich’s investigative docuseries “The Way Down: God, Greed, and the Cult of Gwen Shamblin,” which detailed its subject’s rise from being a diet guru with her Weigh Down Workshop (launched in 1986) to her founding of Remnant Fellowship in 1999.
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