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If this happens with all pageants, I won’t cry. I can’t imagine the Manti and Cumorah pageants ending, so I will be fine with all others being discontinued. I would be fine with ending them as well. The Hill Cumorah Pageant has had a steady decrease in attendance over the past 10-20 years and is a mere shadow of its former self relatively speaking. And almost all the attendees these days are members, as opposed to earlier times where a sizable non-member crowd was there. I wonder if this is another step in distancing ourselves from “Mormon”. Quote:I wonder if this is another step in distancing ourselves from “Mormon”.
As much as I grouse about the name issue, it will be interesting if this intense stance really does move us from our “history” of culture. If so, how far will we go to being a different animal all together?
In the case of the Hill Cumorah Pageant I have a hard time seeing having anything to do with the church’s name. The pageant is very expensive and takes a great deal of time on the part of volunteers to pull off for relatively very small return. But looks like in the case of that pageant, which I would argue is the best known, I’m getting my wish: https://www.deseretnews.com/article/900039117/mormon-church-statement-says-changes-coming-for-local-celebrations-including-pageants.html ” class=”bbcode_url”> https://www.deseretnews.com/article/900039117/mormon-church-statement-says-changes-coming-for-local-celebrations-including-pageants.html Quote:The Hill Cumorah Pageant of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints will cease its 81-year run after its 2020 season.
(FWIW, in my orthodox days we used to drag the kids to this thing every year. In these past few years, my wife has managed to drag me there a couple time. For the sake of peace I imagine I will have to go one more time in the next two years. It is several hours away, but I have the misfortune of having relatives nearby.)
I wonder if the combined cost is a factor? Could the money be better spent somewhere else? I haven’t attended any of the pageants, but I’ll say this – if the main idea behind ending the pageants (according to some articles) is to allow families to spend more time together…why not attend the pageants…as families?
:think: I saw a comment on social media that said something along the lines of, “I miss the old church. The one that offered ward activities…the Green and Gold Ball (before my time), the ward dances, the seasonal activities, etc.”
I feel like we are becoming a fractured version of what was once a strong church community.
I see local churches advertising for weekday Women’s Bible study – or fall festivals – or summer sports camps – or marriage classes, and I look at what we offer…and it ain’t much (outside of the youth program’s monthly dances).
Instead of creating a church community/fellowshipping opportunities, we are being sent to the fringes and told to hunker down with our families.
Obviously we can’t change the trajectory of what The Church is doing, so it appears that if we want to get to know our ward members better, it will be up to us to create those invitations for family “playdates,” which, of course, will naturally leave out a lot of people (think cliques and all).
Anyway – that was a little OT, but the thought process is the same – we aren’t supposed to be hidden away in our families all the time and ending the pageant programs feels like one more way to close ourselves off from the social aspect of The Church.
Again, I am feeling the PR department isn’t trusting us with the real reasons. They haven’t given a good reason here. They did say ‘a focus on families’ but that’s reaching. When you consider the size of active church membership, I don’t see the pageant as THAT much of a drain on resources,particularly since people generally like to part of such an experience. It could be the expense, but if it’s generating baptisms and leads, well, isn’t that the cost of missionary work?
Here is my short list.
1. The pageants are a magnet for anti-Mormons. Perhaps the pageants are doing as much harm as good due to providing a forum for Anti-Mormons?
2. The expense.
3. Liability — was there a lawsuit we don’t know about?
4. Difficulty finding capable volunteers to do key aspects of the planning and execution?
I don’t know…
I like the emphasis on more time for families, and I would also like to see a greater emphasis on creating community at the same time. That is one thing that has always been lacking — a sense of being part of a larger community that cares about you. I personally feel that any love from members is totally conditional on being a fully contributing Mormon. I’ve had to seek community elsewhere.
QuestionAbound wrote:
if the main idea behind ending the pageants (according to some articles) is to allow families to spend more time together…why not attend the pageants…as families?:think:
Here’s the thing. The Church’s STATED reason for the string of recent changes, I strongly believe, is VERY different from the actual reasons. Their stated reasons don’t hold up to much scrutiny, but they are are much for easy for the more faithful members to accept. They are appealing to those members who actually loved and looked forward to the pagents. If the reason wasn’t “revelation and families”, but rather “finances, distancing ourselves from our distasteful history, increasing Church attendance, not recruiting enough members”, etc, a lot of faithful members would be outraged.
All the Church does is for a singular purpose; to increase and retain its membership. The rest is just details.
My reaction? Meh. I don’t have much interest in pageants and of those the Church sponsors, the only one I’ve seen (a couple of times) is the Martin Harris pageant in Clarkston, Utah. It’s performed near Martin Harris’ grave (just outside the town). The Martin Harris pageant is interesting (really it’s more play than pageant in my opinion) but I won’t miss it. As for the others, never been to them. (Totally tangential: The closest I came to any of the other pageants was as follows: my wife and I were flying from Chicago to SLC and happened to sit next to a young woman who introduced herself to me excitedly and told me she was just returning from participating in the Nauvoo pageant. She was obviously full of the missionary spirit as she asked me what I knew about Nauvoo and the LDS Church. The look on her face when I told her that we were already members of the Church can only be described as abject disappointment. She didn’t speak to us for the remainder of the flight.)
I think there are multiple reasons, all of which are valid. I think it is interesting to examine what each of us sees as the primary or “real” reason and what that says about our current position and outlook relative to the Church in the moment.
I don’t expect the Church to disclose every reason for every move they make, as long as the reason they give is true and will be satisfying to the most members. I imagine every one of us doesn’t want to be held to a “disclose every reason for everything we do” standard, so I don’t hold anyone else to it. I do think families is one of the reasons, and I am fine with that explanation. I would be interested in the other reasons, but I think we collectively can identify most of them.
In the end, frankly, I like the change – so I’m not going to turn it into a negative over partial disclosure of motives. It is a positive. That is the most important thing to me.
It was almost an afterthought, but I realized a bonus is that our stake will now not be asked to fill parking and security assignments! Bonus! Less to do (or try to cajole people into doing). I have mixed feelings. I’d be the last person to want to attend a pageant but at the same time this feels like a loss. I hear people reminisce about the good old days of road shows, baseball leagues, etc. They usually reminisce about those things while lamenting that they feel that with each passing year the church experience gets stripped down a little more until there’s nothing left but rote meetings that all have an ulterior motive or gospel purpose.
At the same time I know how things with church programs can get. It’s less people that are passionate about pageants supporting pageants and more people supporting pageants because they’ve received an assignment to support a pageant or they feel obligated to do so. Things shift from, “Goody, it’s pageant time again.” to, “The stake president has asked each ward to provide a minimum of 36 volunteers to help with pageant.” It can become a burden.
What was the stated reason for discontinuing pageants, to let people be with their families? I’ll be honest, that one does make my head spin. I hope the very next action item on the ‘let people have more family time’ to do list is allowing missionaries to have
muchmore contact with their families. A couple of hours per year away from family fulfilling an assignment at a pageant. Four 30 minute phone calls over a two year period and absolutely no visits. It’s incongruous. No more Hill Cumorah Pageant. Who knows, maybe this is the tiniest step towards allowing members space to not take the BoM as being literal history.
The local news story: https://www.democratandchronicle.com/story/news/2018/10/27/hill-cumorah-pageant-end-2020/1794341002/ ” class=”bbcode_url”> https://www.democratandchronicle.com/story/news/2018/10/27/hill-cumorah-pageant-end-2020/1794341002/ Quote:“Mindful of a growing, world-wide church, Church leadership made the decision after an extensive review of all pageants,” Amanda Lonsberry, Hill Cumorah Pageant public affairs director, wrote in a release Saturday. “Leaders said they took under consideration how to reduce the burden of church member time commitments, cost, security, impact to church sites and more in their decision.”
Quote:“We certainly will miss seeing the pageant, it’s been a tradition for a long long time,” Palmyra Town Supervisor Kenneth Miller said Sunday, but downplayed the potential economic hit as the site draws an estimated 100,000 visitors a year. “They will still be a very strong presence because of the temple that’s here, and the Smith farm.
“The impact (that the pageant had) on the area, it kind of was a quick hit, a lot of activity in two weeks, but then it died back down.”
We went to the “City of Joseph” musical in Nauvoo for years with our kids, ward, and relatives. It was a great family time and we loved it. It strengthened everyone’s testimony at the time as it was a feel good musical. Yes, there were always anit-Mormon groups handing out their tracts and I would always read them. We had civil talks with them and they were nice in Nauvoo. Not so nice when we went to the Palmyra pageant. They had big signs saying “Mormons’ were sex crazed which I thought was funny at the time. The businesses in Nauvoo often told me the city would go under if it weren’t for the pageant so I do see tourism industry hurting business in pageant cities. I read a post somewhere lately that talked about why they thought the lds church was going away from the word ‘Mormon” and eliminating the pageants. It gave 4 points. One was that the church did not want to be associated with the word Mormon anymore because it wanted to become known as a mainstream Christian religion like the community of Christ (RLDS church did). Two, it wants the book of Mormon to become known just as ‘inspired’ writings. The lds church knows that it is becoming more obvious that that the book of Mormon is not a historical or culture book like it has claimed all these years. The Bible has lots of archaeological support but BofM almost none.Plus, it is become more obvious that JS plagiarized a lot of the book. I just could not remember what point 3 and 4 was of this post I saw. Just not sure of the true motives for the changes. Finding everyones’ comments interesting.
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