{"title":"‘Every nation who dwells in the land’: Latter-day Saint Internationalisation, sacralising spaces, and the Hill Cumorah Pageant","authors":"Adam Dunstan","doi":"10.1080/14755610.2021.1906394","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT In 2018, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints announced the end of the Hill Cumorah Pageant, a seemingly minor policy decision which, I argue, reflects major changes in how a faith which has earnestly sought to present itself as mainstream American in the twenty-first century is attempting to reconfigure itself in the twenty-first century. Drawing on ethnographic research, I argue that the Hill Cumorah Pageant (an outdoor production on the hill) utilises discursive and spatial practices which connect a specific version of the Book of Mormon ‘Promised Land’ narrative to the US via a process of spatially anchoring the Book of Mormon landscape and establishing continuity between Nephites and the modern US. In so doing, the narrative establishes a moral geography wherein inhabitancy in the land implicitly places people under covenant to follow God’s laws. In this regard, we can think of the Hill Cumorah as space both sacred and sacralising – as sacralising space which ‘sets apart’ the US in a way which may now seem overly local for an internationalising faith.","PeriodicalId":45190,"journal":{"name":"Culture and Religion","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3000,"publicationDate":"2020-04-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/14755610.2021.1906394","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Culture and Religion","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14755610.2021.1906394","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"0","JCRName":"RELIGION","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
ABSTRACT In 2018, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints announced the end of the Hill Cumorah Pageant, a seemingly minor policy decision which, I argue, reflects major changes in how a faith which has earnestly sought to present itself as mainstream American in the twenty-first century is attempting to reconfigure itself in the twenty-first century. Drawing on ethnographic research, I argue that the Hill Cumorah Pageant (an outdoor production on the hill) utilises discursive and spatial practices which connect a specific version of the Book of Mormon ‘Promised Land’ narrative to the US via a process of spatially anchoring the Book of Mormon landscape and establishing continuity between Nephites and the modern US. In so doing, the narrative establishes a moral geography wherein inhabitancy in the land implicitly places people under covenant to follow God’s laws. In this regard, we can think of the Hill Cumorah as space both sacred and sacralising – as sacralising space which ‘sets apart’ the US in a way which may now seem overly local for an internationalising faith.
2018年,耶稣基督后期圣徒教会(Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints)宣布结束Hill Cumorah Pageant,我认为这是一个看似微不足道的政策决定,但它反映了一个在21世纪认真寻求将自己呈现为美国主流的信仰如何在21世纪重新配置自己的重大变化。根据人种学的研究,我认为Hill Cumorah Pageant(山上的户外演出)利用了话语和空间实践,通过在空间上锚定《摩门经》的景观,并在尼腓人和现代美国之间建立连续性,将《摩门经》的一个特定版本的“应许之地”叙事与美国联系起来。这样,叙事建立了一种道德地理,在这片土地上的居民隐含地将人们置于遵守上帝律法的契约之下。在这方面,我们可以把克莫拉山看作是既神圣又神圣化的空间——作为一个神圣化的空间,它以一种现在看来对国际化信仰来说过于本地化的方式“区分”了美国。