I'm going to the Hill Cumorah pageant this weekend for the first time (follow-up post to come soon). The cast-of-hundreds pageant is going away after next summer, the victim of a 2018 edict that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is phasing out four of its seven major pageants.
The major reason seems to be dwindling attendance at Cumorah and other pageants, which were once a vital missionary tool as well as a source of family fun. The president of the "Mormon Miracle Pageant" in Manti, Utah, which just shuttered production last month after more than fifty years, told the Deseret News that younger audiences have more entertainment options, and therefore aren't that interested.
That's definitely true—Netflix, anyone?—but I also wonder if the attrition doesn't run deeper, stemming from the production's message and not simply its medium. The Hill Cumorah pageant is a pastiche of Book of Mormon stories and the history of Mormonism's beginnings in upstate New York, when a young Joseph Smith asked God which church to join and was eventually led to uncover the plates of the Book of Mormon and found a church of his own.
Read Full Article »