Abandoning Cumorah?

Last updated on: October 29, 2018 at 12:28 pm by Dan Peterson

Abandoning Cumorah? 2018-10-29T12:28:50-06:00 Dan Peterson

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Angelic heralds, as depicted in the annual Hill Cumorah Pageant
(Wikimedia Commons public domain)

Big news out of Church headquarters:

“Church Statement on Local Celebrations, Including Pageants: Conversations underway with local Church and community leaders”

“Church of Jesus Christ re-examining its 7 pageants: Hill Cumorah Pageant to close, Nauvoo Pageant will go on and Manti’s pageant may continue with changes, officials say”

I actually heard that this announcement was in the works at least a couple of weeks ago, and one of the reasons suggested for it was the idea that pageants simply aren’t the best use of Church resources any more. (This 2011 article may perhaps suggest why: “Hill Cumorah Pageant attendance down despite national media attention.”)

I have mixed feelings. I know that a fair number of Latter-day Saints have treasured their involvement in, or even their attendance at, pageants like those in New York and at the Manti Temple. But, when I saw them, those pageants didn’t move me as much as I had hoped they would, and perhaps my reaction is not untypical.

But here’s a response to the news from Salt Lake City that is simply Out There:

Yesterday, I came across a remarkably bizarre comment about the Church’s announcement from a profoundly disaffected member. (Perhaps — I don’t know — he’s now an altogether an ex-member. In spirit, he’s been an ex-member for quite a while.)

He claims that the cessation of the Hill Cumorah pageant (possibly among others) is a sign that the Church is abandoning the Hill Cumorah itself. Not, though, as a rejection of the “Heartland” view of Book of Mormon geography, and not as a nod toward people like myself who favor a Mesoamerican setting for the saga of the Jaredites, Nephites, and Lamanites. (After all we still venerate that glacial drumlin in western New York State as the place where the prophet Moroni sealed up and buried the golden plates and to which Joseph Smith was led by the postmortem Angel Moroni in order to retrieve them.)

No, no. Rather, he declares, it’s the first phase of the roll-out of a New Mormonism, stripped of belief in a historical Book of Mormon, literal Nephites and Lamanites, a literal Moroni, and, even, a literal Jesus. The initial step in his comprehensive change of narrative, he explains, is for the Church to go silent and to stop affirming the old claims. Then, once they’ve effectively been forgotten, it can unveil its new beliefs.

Sorry, but I think his speculation is utterly and entirely daft. Although I’m fully aware that there are some people who would love to see us move in the direction of The Church Formerly Known as RLDS, I see no sign — not the faintest hint of a scintilla of a suggestion — that the official Church and its leaders are even slightly inclined in that direction.

***

Matt Roper recently called my aattention to an item by Jed Woodworth and Matt Grow that I missed when it first appeared. It responds to the claim that the Church has shown favoritism to the Mesoamerican geographical model for the Book of Mormon as opposed “Heartlander” models, something that I have never found remotely plausible. But it is also relevant to this new claim, that the Church is backing away from Cumorah and thus, implicitly, from a view of the Book of Mormon as authentically ancient:

“Saints and Book of Mormon Geography”

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