The ''Mormon Miracle Pageant'' was a

Latter-day Saint pageant This list of pageants of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints delineates those annual outdoor theatrical performance produced by members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church). It is reminiscent of early Christi ...

held in

Manti, Utah Manti ( ) is a city in and the county seat of Sanpete County, Utah, United States. The population was 3,276 at the 2010 United States Census. Description Manti was the first community in Utah to be settled outside the Wasatch Front and served as ...

, until it was discontinued in 2019. An annual outdoor

theatrical Theatre or theater is a collaborative form of performing art that uses live performers, usually actor, actors or actresses, to present the experience of a real or imagined event before a live audience in a specific place, often a stage. The p ...

performance, it was produced by an amateur cast of over five hundred members of

the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, informally known as the LDS Church or Mormon Church, is a nontrinitarian Christian church that considers itself to be the restoration of the original church founded by Jesus Christ. The ch ...

(LDS Church). The nightly program took place on the south lawn of temple hill at the

Manti Temple Manti or Manty may refer to: Places * Manti, Iowa, a defunct Mormon settlement * Manti, Utah, a city, named for the city of Manti in the Book of Mormon * Manti National Forest, formerly Manti Forest Reserve, in Colorado and Utah * Manti (crater), ...

, usually in June. The two-week pageant would typically draw an average of 15,000 people per night over an eight-night performance. The 2019 pageant was the final full-scale event of its type, as part of a church-wide directive to make church events more focused on home and family and discourage all large-scale productions.

Content

For LDS Church members, the pageant was a faith-promoting family event. The pageant portrayed the relationship and chronology of three separate, but related, faith-promoting accounts. Opening with the experiences of the church's first

president President most commonly refers to: *President (corporate title) * President (education), a leader of a college or university * President (government title) President may also refer to: Automobiles * Nissan President, a 1966–2010 Japanese ...

Joseph Smith Joseph Smith Jr. (December 23, 1805June 27, 1844) was an American religious leader and founder of Mormonism and the Latter Day Saint movement. When he was 24, Smith published the Book of Mormon. By the time of his death, 14 years later, ...

, during his young-adulthood in the burned-over district of New York in the 1820s. Including the recovery and translation of the

Book of Mormon The Book of Mormon is a religious text of the Latter Day Saint movement, which, according to Latter Day Saint theology, contains writings of ancient prophets who lived on the American continent from 600 BC to AD 421 and during an interlude d ...

, the restoration of the "Church of Christ" in 1830 (which was renamed "The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints" in 1838) and its infancy, and the death of Smith in 1844. During the dramatization of the translation of the Book of Mormon an overview of its contents it presented. The wars and contentions of the native

Israelite The Israelites (; , , ) were a group of Semitic-speaking tribes in the ancient Near East who, during the Iron Age, inhabited a part of Canaan. The earliest recorded evidence of a people by the name of Israel appears in the Merneptah Stele o ...

inhabitants of North America are represented, along with their teachings of

Jesus Christ Jesus, likely from he, יֵשׁוּעַ, translit=Yēšūaʿ, label=Hebrew/Aramaic ( AD 30 or 33), also referred to as Jesus Christ or Jesus of Nazareth (among other names and titles), was a first-century Jewish preacher and religious ...

, leading to his post-

resurrection Resurrection or anastasis is the concept of coming back to life after death. In a number of religions, a dying-and-rising god is a deity which dies and is resurrected. Reincarnation is a similar process hypothesized by other religions, whic ...

appearance in the first century A.D. The pageant concludes with the persecution of the

Mormon pioneer The Mormon pioneers were members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church), also known as Latter Day Saints, who migrated beginning in the mid-1840s until the late-1860s across the United States from the Midwest to the S ...

s in the East and their subsequent exodus to

Utah Utah ( , ) is a state in the Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. Utah is a landlocked U.S. state bordered to its east by Colorado, to its northeast by Wyoming, to its north by Idaho, to its south by Arizona, and to it ...

, led by the church's second president,

Brigham Young Brigham Young (; June 1, 1801August 29, 1877) was an American religious leader and politician. He was the second president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church), from 1847 until his death in 1877. During his time as ch ...

, and the group of pioneers sent to central Utah (now

Sanpete Valley Sanpete County ( ) is a county in the U.S. state of Utah. As of the 2010 United States Census, the population was 27,822. Its county seat is Manti, and its largest city is Ephraim. The county was created in 1850. History The Sanpete Valley ma ...

), where the Manti Utah Temple stands. The performance began shortly after sunset, during the early summer (usually late June), with people often arriving several hours before the performance. In addition to restaurants in the town, there were special food stands for the event. Light security was provided at the performance site and the surrounding streets to ensure general order and to direct traffic.

History

The pageant was first produced by the Manti Utah Stake in 1967 under the leadership of

stake president A stake is an administrative unit composed of multiple congregations in certain denominations of the Latter Day Saint movement. The name "stake" derives from the Book of Isaiah: "enlarge the place of thy tent; stretch forth the curtains of thine ha ...

Vernon Kunz. Helen and Morgan Dyreng of Manti directed the production. Although simple and unpolished in comparison to the pageant in later years, the performance was accompanied by a 25-piece orchestra. The original music directors were McLoyd Erickson, Harry A. Dean, and Evan Bean. Among the orchestra members was

Richard Nibley Fred Richard Nibley (April 29, 1913 – September 22, 1979) was an American violinist, composer, and educator. He is often cited as an expert on the influence of music on behavior. Richard spent many years as a professor at Snow College in Ephraim ...

(brother of

Hugh Nibley Hugh Winder Nibley (March 27, 1910 – February 24, 2005) was an American scholar and an apologist of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) who was a professor at Brigham Young University (BYU) for nearly 50 years. He was a ...

), who had trained most of the rest of the musical group. The original script was based on the 1950 book ''The Mormon Miracle'' written by Grace Leora Johnson.

Pageant evangelists and protesters

There were usually several

evangelical Evangelicalism (), also called evangelical Christianity or evangelical Protestantism, is a worldwide interdenominational movement within Protestant Christianity that affirms the centrality of being " born again", in which an individual expe ...

Christian church groups, who would attempt to

proselytize Proselytism () is the policy of attempting to convert people's religious or political beliefs. Proselytism is illegal in some countries. Some draw distinctions between ''evangelism'' or '' Da‘wah'' and proselytism regarding proselytism as invol ...

the largely Latter-day Saint attendees prior to the nightly event. These evangelists would typically hand out anti-Mormon (or pro- Evangelicalism) literature and engage pageant-goers in religious discussion as they would approach the site.Bean, Kent R. (2005). ''Policing the Borders of Identity at the'' Mormon Miracle Pageant. Doctoral Dissertation. Bowling Green State Universit

/ref> Some evangelists would carry picket signs and wear "overtly anti-Mormon t-shirts." In addition, some local " Mormon fundamentalism, fundamentalist Mormon" groups were known to carry picket signs in the approach area, criticizing the LDS Church's position on

polygamy Crimes Polygamy (from Late Greek (') "state of marriage to many spouses") is the practice of marriage, marrying multiple spouses. When a man is married to more than one wife at the same time, sociologists call this polygyny. When a woman is ...

and

abortion Abortion is the termination of a pregnancy by removal or expulsion of an embryo or fetus. An abortion that occurs without intervention is known as a miscarriage or "spontaneous abortion"; these occur in approximately 30% to 40% of pre ...

; the LDS Church abandoned the practice of polygamy in the 19th century, and believes that abortion should be allowed only in rare cases, such as rape or incest."Abortion"
''Church Handbook''. Retrieved on 24 March 2020.

Content

History

Pageant evangelists and protesters

See also

Notes

Further reading

External links