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A little boy vanished without a trace in 2011. His grandmother believes he’s being kept on a Mormon commune
(www.independent.co.uk)
This article is really weird. Claims the mom was "raised Mormon, but later converted to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints"
Those are literally the same thing? The first is a nickname for the church based on their extra scriptures (the book of Mormon) and the second is the official name?
I haven't been Mormon (or a "member of the church of Jesus Christ of latter-day Saints", which is a mouthful, and a lot to type, hence the shorter nickname) for a couple years, and have NO love for the org, but this article makes no sense.
Were there trying to say she was raised in one of the extra-fundamentalist polygamist sects and converted to the mainstream branch? That's actually a pretty big deal if true - from what I remember it takes prophetic-tier approval to get into the main branch if you have ties to the polygamists. They REALLY don't like to be associated with the fundamentalists or have IRL polygamy bleed into the mainstream (afterlife polygamy remains fine). Those sects are also really rare, small, and NOT in Illinois, who evicted the original church in no small part due to polygamy.
To be fair, a few prophets back they spent a ludicrous amount of money on the "I'm a Mormon" ad campaign trying to highlight that believers were regular people, show pride in the church, and promote new converts, the main website was set to Mormon.org..... and then the current prophet - who openly hated the use of that name, called it disrespectful to Jesus to use, and got into fights with the old prophet about it during their annual worship conferences - scrapped the use, changed the website name, and has been really anal about members always introducing themselves with the full name of the church, MAYBE call themselves latter-day saints, but NEVER Mormons. It was a hard shift for a lot of members in how they spoke about their church, and members were encouraged to correct others and refuse to allow others to label them as Mormons. So maybe that's what the family is thinking of?
Either way, the journalism in this article really sucks, and probably won't help find him. If he was raised Mormon, after the "she was raised Mormon but then converted to the Church of Jesus Christ of latter-day Saints" line he'd probably immediately stop reading - even as an Exmo it was hard not to, and for someone still in, with the way the church encourages avoidance of "anti-Mormon lies", an inaccurate article that feels unfriendly to the church won't be read at all.
If they're right, the kid's probably halfway through a 2 year mission somewhere anyway right now - he'll be pretty strictly offline, or have his internet access pretty strongly controlled to only preaching and proselytizing materials for the duration. He's not going to see this.