Gwen Shamblin Lara, her husband, Joe, and five other church leaders are presumed dead. Investigators had changed from a rescue mission to a recovery mission Sunday morning.
The Remnant Fellowship, founded in 1999, reportedly has more than 1,500 members in 150 congregations around the world. Gwen Lara had said being overweight was a sign of greed and gluttony. She said children were to obey parents, wives were to obey husbands and members were to obey church leaders.
Lara had been a lightning rod for news coverage over the years after she founded the church based on what she called “faith-based” weight loss. The Remnant Fellowship website lists food ahead of drugs, depression, self focus, money, anger, selfishness, envy and jealousy as the idols that need to be “laid down.”
Lara called her movement the “Weigh Down Workshop” and packed her church full of radiant and thin people, according to a Tennessean profile from 2011. She wrote a book called “The Weigh Down Diet,” which sold more than a million copies. Thousands of churches around the U.S. and the world started using her book and videos as guides.
She was interviewed by Larry King and featured in an article by New Yorker magazine.
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