Mormon Pageant Unites Hundreds

Aug. 8, 2007 — -- What would motivate a father of four to put on a 60-pound costume, complete with makeup, a wig, jewelry and a headdress, and perform outdoors, often in the rain, every night of his precious summer vacation? Faith.

John Stars traveled from Utah to upstate New York to play the bad guy, King Noah, in the annual "Hill Cumorah Pageant," which tells the story of the Mormon scriptures.

"We really believe this happened," said Stars, "that these are true things that took place, that prophets actually talked to God, that we have a prophet on the earth today. It's not just a neat story. These things really happened."

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Stars is one of 680 Mormons -- none of them professional actors -- who pay their own way to come from all over the country and the world to spend two weeks acting out scenes of battle, at-sea adventures and religious visions.

The story, which the actors lip-sync against a prerecorded soundtrack, is about ancient Israelites who, on God's orders, flee the Holy Land 600 years before Christ.

They then travel to the Americas, where they eventually split into two warring groups.

According to the scriptures, after Jesus is resurrected, he comes to the Americas bringing peace. Following a period of harmony, however, war returns. Before these ancient people are essentially killed off, their history is recorded on golden plates and buried in a hillside.

Hundreds of years later, in 1820, a 14-year-old boy named Joseph Smith is visited by God and Jesus. He is later guided to the hillside, where he unearths those golden plates, which he translates into the Book of Mormon.

And it is on the Hill Cumorah where this pageant takes place.

For millions of Mormons, this otherwise unremarkable patch of rural America is a holy place, comparable to Jerusalem, Rome or Mecca.

Sarah Stankiewicz, a graduate student, came from Indiana to play a harvest dancer.

"I know for a lot of members, it is almost like a pilgrimage of sorts," said Stankiewicz. "A lot of members like to visit the major church historical sites in their lifetime and bring their children. … I would almost compare it to a pilgrimage of sorts. It's a spiritual journey."