A press release a couple weeks ago announced that all LDS pageants are cancelled for this year, but will resume in future years. It lists the pageants that have not been discontinued:
The Mesa AZ Easter pageant,
The Nauvoo pageant, presumably about the Mormon migration west.
The British pageant, presumably about the Mormon migration from Britain to Utah.

So the only pageants that have been discontinued are the Hill Cumorah pageant, and the Manti pageant, both of which had Book of Mormon themes.

I’m telling you, LDS Inc is planning to eventually dump the BoM because it is undeniably fiction and irredeemably racist. They are doing it slowly and quietly, so as to not startle the sheep, but it is pretty clear the BoM is headed for the Memory Hole.

Mormon Church? How dare you call us that!

What!!!!

But... but...


I only exist BECAUSE of the book of many mormons!!

Smitten by God with a dark skin and now this. What’s next, the magic hat stops putting Lamanites in the House of Manasseh?

Harris, as you know, was one of the three witnesses, who went apostate, became a geographic and spiritual wanderer, and eventually came back to BY and repented, or something. BY gave him a cottage in northern Cache Valley, where he lived out his remaining days, and is now burried.

It was Harris, I believe, who later claimed he did not physically see the golden plates, but with "spiritual eyes," so his testimony is the most suspect of all.

Thus, it makes good COB sense to drop the Harris pageant which was titled, I believe, "The Man Who Saw."

https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/church/events/clarkston-pageant-tells-story-of-martin-harris?lang=eng

The Harris grave. I'm amused by the euphemistic, "Although absent from the LDS Church for a time, (Harris) returned to full fellowship and was baptized before dying in Clarkston.:

https://ensignpeakfoundation.org/martin-harris-gravesite/

Are we SURE (documentation, please) that Harris was baptizes BEFORE (or After) he died?

just wondering out loud here.


it could / might have even been a proxy baptism for a very sick even unconscious Harris...

Not a general authority. Not a major authority. Neither a sergeant authority. Even a private authority. If I were a corporal authority, would that mean I'm into BDSM? :+(

I gather he renounced the JS and/or the church, and came back. No idea as to when he was baptized. If his baptism was after his apostasy, it could be because the doctrine of temple rites and eternal progression had been developed, and he was covering his eternal bases, so to speak. Or was he destitute, and public repentense got him a modest late-in-life sustenance from BY? I'm sure research has been done on this. Perhaps somebody on RfM can help?

Getting serious, I had personal business in the region, so I made a trip to Clarkston to check it out for curiosity's sake. It's a granite obelisk, about 10 feet high, with a BoM in a glass case left at the base. I resisted the temptation to leave some anti-Mormon literature there.

Cache Valley is lovely. It's a great place to sight-see, but I wouldn't want to live there, even though I'd have at leas one friend there, maybe more?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Harris_(Latter_Day_Saints)
"In 1870, at 87, Harris moved to the Utah Territory and, shortly afterward, was rebaptized into The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church).
He died on July 10, 1875, in Clarkston, Utah Territory, and was buried there"

https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/person/martin-harris
"Rebaptized into Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 1870."

I wasn't much into pageants or dance festivals or all the other stuff they did, but we knew one of the guys who was in the first production of Martin Harris. That was in 1983 I believe that it started. It was SOOO LONG and they shortened it after that. We had "cement" benches to sit on. It was boring as hell.

I've said it before. The guy we knew who was in it has been the state pen for at least 20 years for child molestation of scouts. He was up for parole (just looked this up recently to reply to Elder Berry) for the second time and was not give parole as another victim had come forward, and they determined that it had not been reported officially to police, so the statute of limitations was not up, so he never got out. His sentence was 5 to life when he was first convicted. You can all look him up if you would like. Jay T o o m b s. I found a very interesting article about him when I was looking things up recently. Very eye opening about his brother and father trying to excuse his behavior.

Anyway, Martin Harris pageant was BOORRINNNG.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/31/2021 02:45PM by cl2.

The Southpark episode about Martin Harris was much more entertaining!

Spot on, BoJ.

Eventually Mormons won't give a crap about problems with their history anyway, even if they do hear about it.

Ironic, my family and friends who are still in the church won’t listen to me criticize the book, but their church is gonna dump it on the down low and they’re all going to go along with it.

How long until they drop the BOM entirely? I heard that in the 1920s and 1930s the BOM was massively downplayed in the Church's sales pitch. Are they going to do what the Community of Christ did? Or is that premature?

I think the PoGP is doctrinally much worse than the BoM, but few members give a rat’s posterior about the PoGP.

It will take some delicate maneuvering for TSCC to steer clear from the BoM. If they move too quickly, they’ll alienate the stalwart older members who are the primary source of tithing. Plus, you have to assume that hey noticed what happened to the Community of Christ.

I think they’ll continue to slowly de-emphasize “the most correct book on the face of the earth.” We’ll hear more about the spiritual “truth,” and fewer claims of literal truth. The next generation of church leaders won’t see it as being important.

I would sleep sooooo much better if Nephi killing Laban didn't really happen; that it was just a dream, fraught with symbolism.

They thought they were holding a gold nugget. Turns out they’re holding a different kind of nugget. Now the trick is to put it down and wash their hands without anyone noticing.

It sounds like the BoM is being downgraded -- to what degree remains to be seen. I also wonder if this trend will outlast Rusty.

Can Russell Milhaus Nelson 'rusty-ize' the holy mormon episcopal church of the getting close to the last days, Brighamite schism?

How many of the old folk have to die off for the remaining old folk to lose their influence?

I have had TBM friends speculate that after Nelson is gone, the church will have to back off some on it's "don't call us Mormons" kick.

There is still no acceptable substitute for "Mormonism", nor for "Mormon" (the one-word description of someone who is a member of the Mormon Church). People will never accept replacing a two or three syllable descriptor with an eleven to fourteen syllable phrase. Languages simply don't develop that way.*

So far there are no two or three syllable candidates as replacements, nor do I see any on the horizon.

* - one instance where a more wordy phrase has replaced a simple single word that means the same thing has been the use of "educate yourself" to replace "learn", as in "you need to educate yourself about ..." versus "you need to learn about..."

Five syllables versus one. Same exact meaning, but "educate yourself" sounds more pretentious and condescending, which I suppose is exactly the point.

Yes, I appreciate the irony that "pretentious and condescending" also sounds pretentious and condescending. That's what makes us the delightful creatures we are. Other animals would just tear a hole in the couch.