The Mormon Miracle Pageant was a Latter-day Saint Pageant held in Manti, Utah until it was discontinued in 2019. An annual outdoor theatricalperformance, it was produced by an amateur cast of over five hundred members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The nightly program took place on the south lawn of temple hill at the Manti Temple 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 LDS events more focused on home and family.
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 from an LDS perspective. Opening with the experiences of the church's first president, Joseph Smith, 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 restoration of the "Church of Christ" in 1830 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 inhabitants of North America are represented, along with their teachings of Jesus Christ, leading to his post-resurrection appearance in the first century A.D. The pageant concludes with the persecution of the Mormon pioneers in the East and their subsequent exodus to Utah, led by the church's second president, Brigham Young, and the group of pioneers sent to central Utah, where the Manti Utah Temple stands. The performance begins shortly after sunset, during the early summer. People often start arriving several hours before the performance. In addition to restaurants in the town, there are special food stands for the event. Light security is 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 Vernon Kunz. Helen and Morgan Dyreng of Manti directed the production. Although simple and unpolished in comparison to the current pageant, 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, 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 are usually several evangelicalChristian church groups, who attempt to proselytize the largely LDS attendees prior to the nightly event. These evangelists typically hand out anti-Mormon literature and engage pageant-goers in religious discussion as they approach the site. Some evangelists carry picket signs and wear "overtly anti-Mormon t-shirts." In addition, some local "fundamentalist Mormon" groups have been known to carry picket signs in the approach area, criticizing the position of the LDS Church on polygamy and abortion; 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.
