Keep Sweet, Pray and Obey: A Review of Netflix's New Docuseries

Netflix recently released a new crime docuseries that chronicles the the lives of former members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints Church (FLDS) Church in Short Creek, Arizona. This extremist and fringe polygamist community is not recognized as part of the LDS, or Mormon, Church and is led by “the Prophet,” Warren Jeffs. Jeffs had (or has?) total and sweeping control of the community - from its religious teachings, to ownership of all the property and businesses of its members. Jeffs was arrested and imprisoned in 2007 with a sentence of 20 years to life for the crimes of rape and accomplice to rape. However, it is possible that he may still be the leader of FLDS communities in Arizona, Texas, and other locations, exercising his authoritative office from within prison.

I wanted to write about the series for Religion for Her because a main focus of the episodes is the abuse of women within this community that was systematized and normalized by means of the group’s religious teachings. The title of the series derives from a motto utilized to indoctrinate the women of the community into its social norms and religious tenets: “Keep Sweet, Pray and Obey.”

The motto epitomized the teachings and religious beliefs of the group: women’s salvation was entirely dependent on obedience to their husbands and to the Prophet. All questions, resistance to decisions made by the men of the community, and controversy were considered “disobedience” that threatened eternal hellfire and damnation. Women were called, above all else, to “keep sweet” and to serve the men of the community with smiles, silence, and compliance, even, and perhaps most especially, in the face of trauma and abuse. Members of the community featured in interviews in the series share that the FLDS taught that the Prophet knew their thoughts, and so, control was maintained through self-surveillance as well as physical surveillance, with cameras installed throughout the compound.

The series is mainly comprised of interviews with former members of the community and video footage taken by families and communities from the 1990s and early 2000s.  The interviews are gritty and I do not recommend the series to anyone who is a sensitive viewer. The episodes chronicle a litany of horrific abuses within the FLDS including rape, underage marriage, trafficking, and more. However, the series and especially its thought-provoking title are a window not only into a fringe community, but oppressive teachings about women and gender roles present within even the most mainstream religious communities.

The real story of the series, in my opinion, is that it draws the reader into a position of righteous anger and indignation over the treatment especially of women within the FLDS community, but with a greater purpose. The series is designed to provoke shock and horror at the community’s oppressive practices and criminal abuse of women. But the FLDS are really just a foil, an easy target, that also subtly invites the viewer to turn the camera lens away from the home movies featuring women in homespun dresses and onto more mainstream communities of faith as a self-reflective exercise.

A subtext of “Keep Sweet, Pray and Obey” is that it offers the viewer an opportunity to examine these same messages and abuses that permeate our own communities of faith, family systems, and workplaces, albeit in more subtle ways. By portraying the extremities and fringes of faith and religion in the US, the series presents viewers with a subtext of commentary that is readily applicable in all sorts of ways to our “ordinary” world.

The series “Keep Sweet, Pray and Obey” highlights in dramatic fashion the many ways in which women are expected to meet oppression, exclusion, and marginalization with sweetness, smiles, compliance, and silence in order to protect the power systems and “prophets” that are the source of their suffering. How many of us have felt the pressure to “keep sweet” instead of speak up? How many of us are told to “keep sweet” when we advocate for change? How many of us have been told, in one way or another, to “keep sweet” in our family systems, faith communities, or workplaces in the face of power imbalances, gender pay gaps, and failure to promote women to formal positions of leadership?