Mormon Life - Hill Cumorah Pageant tag

What mainstream Christians could learn from the Mormon faith

Mon, 25 Jul 2011 12:27:00 -0600

source: guardian.co.uk

Mormon Life says: This woman is very complimentary of the way she, as a mainstream Christian, was received at the Hill Cumorah Pageant. A great commentary on the way members there are representing the Church. When my husband and I exited the interstate to Palmyra, New York, the first thing we saw was nature having its way with the earth. There were overgrown bushes and thick forests, but no towns, not even a farm, that human attempt to control chlorophyll.

Then we saw a sign: pageant traffic ahead. Prepare to stop. Police directed us to a field-turned-parking lot with the vehicles of 6,000 pilgrims here for the Hill Cumorah Pageant, a 90-minute extravaganza chronicling the Book of Mormon. It stars a cast of 800 – all Latter Day Saints – a script composed by Orson Scott Card, music by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, and a 40-storey fire-and-water-spewing set.

How could someone like myself, who is fascinated by all things religious, skip such an event? "We are so glad you decided to join us tonight," the parking attendant said as we stepped outside. "Are you Mormon? You look Mormon."

"We're Christian," I said, worried the woman would start proselytising. After all, Mormons are famous for selling their product, and though we were just window shoppers, we were also in the store, after hours, with the doors locked.

Hill Cumorah Pageant attendance down despite national media attention

Thu, 21 Jul 2011 09:54:00 -0600

source: deseretnews.com

As the LDS Church's annual Hill Cumorah Pageant opened two weeks ago, local media outlets were wondering if Pageant attendance would go through the roof in light of the current ongoing "Mormon Moment."

The answer is in: no.

A pageant official said Wednesday that attendance was actually down a little from last year's Pageant — from a seven-performance total of 33,000 patrons last year to about 30,000 this year.

Putting the Mormon faith at center stage

Wed, 20 Jul 2011 12:01:00 -0600

source: newsobserver.com

Mormon Life says: Kind of cool to see how families gather each summer to stage the Hill Cumorah Pageant. Don and Lee Preston, who teach at an international school near Shanghai, were sitting under a gaily striped tent on a recent Saturday in a field near the birthplace of the Mormon prophet Joseph Smith, helping entertain a group of Mormon teenagers.

The Prestons could have gone home to Arizona for their vacation - "but we wanted to do something more meaningful with our summer than eating in restaurants and seeing movies," said Lee, 43.

So they packed up their three teenagers and flew to upstate New York instead. Along with hundreds of other Mormon families, they would spend a couple of weeks here in a glorified summer theater camp, talking about Scripture by day and performing it by night.

Finding what it means to be Mormon in America

Sat, 16 Jul 2011 09:16:00 -0600

source: nationalpost.com

Mormon Life says: What a well-written, fair article featuring the positive aspects of the LDS Church. The 9,000 folding chairs facing the Mormon holy site called Hill Cumorah are filling up quickly two hours before the annual pageant is set to begin just after sundown. This is the opening performance of what will be a week-long run and each night pilgrims who have travelled from all around the world to be here will occupy nearly every seat.

Tonight they have come to sit in this field in a scrubby, slightly woebegone part of upstate New York under oppressive heat to see a reenactment, by a cast of 800, of The Book of Mormon, the foundational story of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Mormons say Joseph Smith, a poorly educated farm boy, found gold plates etched with hieroglyphics on this hill in 1823 after he was directed to the spot by an angel. In 1827, the angel told Smith he was finally deemed worthy to take the plates and translate them into English. Once he was done, the plates were taken back to heaven.

For 90 minutes tonight, the hill will explode with fiery eruptions, cataclysmic battles, warnings from prophets and scenes of Jesus Christ suspended in mid-air that recall what Mormons say was his visit to an ancient tribe of Israel in the Western Hemisphere just after his crucifixion and resurrection 2,000 years ago.

NY Times: Hill Cumorah Pageant offers Mormon spectacle

Wed, 13 Jul 2011 10:37:00 -0600

source: nytimes.com

With its cast of 700, 1,300 costumes, 10-level stage and thrill-a-minute special effects of earthquakes, floods, fireballs, airborne deities and burnings at the stake, the annual Hill Cumorah Pageant, one could argue, has more in common with the spectacle of “Spider-Man” than with the merry snark of “The Book of Mormon.”

But then the pageant — staged here since 1937, on the very hill where, it is said, an angel named Moroni directed Joseph Smith to uncover golden plates 188 years ago — really is the Book of Mormon, a Cecil B. DeMille-style presentation of the holy book rather than the cheerfully profane Broadway version.