Freemasonry — Still Here, but are We Relevant?
Well, I’m back. My first attempt wasn’t my last, in fact I got great feedback from everyone who read my first set of musings on the Craft. If this is your first visit to my page, welcome, you can check out my first piece here where I discuss that although we’re kind of in the shadows, Freemasonry still exists to do good things in this World. As that article stated, and as indicated by you reading this one, yes, we are still here, however not all is exactly well. Our numbers are down from our highest membership numbers, and continue to drop every year. As shown by Masonic scholar Jon Ruark’s research and our very own Masonic Service Association who has been tracking membership numbers nationwide since the 1990’s. In 1959 Freemasonry in the United States was at its peak (estimated) at 4,103,161 members and since then has declined to 1,076,626 members in 2017 (of note 2018’s numbers have not been released by the MSA). If the numbers hold, 2019 could be the year we see membership numbers drop below one million across the entire United States. Freemasonry, specifically our leadership has known about this for some time, and have even attempted to reverse the trend to no avail. There are plenty of recommendations out there on how to deal with this trend, but that is not what I’m aiming to rehash here today. Rather than do that, I’d like to discuss whether or not Freemasonry is still relevant today in and to our society.
While I won’t delve deeply into how we got into this current situation, as there is plenty for you to read out there on that topic, in short it can be traced back to the end of both World Wars; although I would like to explicitly express inadvertently. Please don’t take this as me saying that the Brethren who joined our Lodges after the Wars somehow had some nefarious plan to do so for the sake of ending Freemasonry almost a century later. In short, after both World Wars returning GIs joined our ranks, swelling our numbers, in both cases taking our numbers to heights never seen before. The children of the Greatest Generation, the Baby Boomers, and to a smaller extent Gen-X did not follow their fathers into the Craft. More accurately, the Boomers did join, but not until much later creating a void between generations that became readily apparent as the Greatest Generation began passing away. While we are seeing men of the Boomer and Gen-X generations join, and the millennial generation is expressing great interest, the damage was still done, and we’re losing men faster than we can bring them in.
One thing I’d like to quickly highlight before jumping in, Freemasonry does not have a national organization, each state is its own sovereign “Grand Jurisdiction”. Its something that generally gets lost on the general public when it concerns Masonry, especially when its news that is negative. But I do want to highlight that fact that because something one Grand Lodge does, shouldn’t and doesn’t necessarily reflect another Grand Lodge. Although, when push comes to shove it does still reflect on us all, which is why I believe it necessary for ALL Masons no matter the jurisdiction to speak up in these cases.
Which brings us back to my initial question, is Freemasonry still relevant today? I’d love to claim this as an original thought, however credit where credit is due, my mind in this case was sparked to action by my friends and Brothers at the Masonic Roundtable, who recently did an episode on this topic. With recent articles and blog posts on the topic of what can we do to save Freemasonry, I found this to be an interesting topic to dive further into. One, I don’t think it’s a question that actually gets asked enough, I feel we focus too much on solutions to increase our membership (which often enough are not well thought out), when maybe we need to take a hard look internally to see if we’re really providing something that those who seek to walk through our doors are looking for. Second, we need to recognize that there are generational differences in interest, and what men of each generation are looking to get out of their involvement. If we want to remain a healthy and viable organization, we need to recognize that and work to meet the interests of successive generations, if we do not do so then we will surely become irrelevant quickly and fade away from memory.
I would like to touch upon the hard part first here, because I feel there is a very large area where as Masons, (both individually and at the Grand Lodge level in some cases) we are woefully out of touch with the current generation on issues. What I am going to say is hard to read, especially for those of you reading who aren’t Masons, you might read through this thinking “who the hell are these men”. But I feel its important, too often in online Masonic chat we use the excuse of “we shouldn’t air our dirty laundry” or “we should handle this internally as an organization”. Well, that’s bull shit, those are excuses for Masons who DON’T want to deal with the problem. Those are excuses to punt on doing anything about serious issues that threaten our ability as an organization to bring good men inside our walls. So, we’re going to discuss these issues, and we’re going to whisper good council in our Brother’s ears, and if they listen and change great! If they don’t, well then, we have a much more difficult choice to make.
With that, Millennial's are without a doubt, the most socially conscious generation to date; diversity and social equity being extremely important issues to them. I’m going to be crystal clear here, like the country, we have a problem in Masonry with bigotry, racism and homophobia. I think its been present in the fraternity since it came to the Continent. I’m sure we told ourselves racism and bigotry were a thing of the past after passage of the Civil Rights act, but in reality it laid dormant, still in our Lodges and Grand Lodges and has really only come to light via the advent of social media. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen a local Brother, or someone in a Masonic group I’m in post objectionable and utterly inappropriate memes for anyone, let alone a Mason. For the longest time I ignored those posts from Brethren who posted it, I shouldn’t have, but I did. I don’t know if it was nerves, or fear of confronting them but I let it pass. It wasn’t until I read a blog post that really resonated with me that I decided that if I’m expected to hold myself to a high standard, I need to hold my Brethren to that same high standard. So, the next time I saw a Brother making what I thought was a poor choice I spoke up. I reached out privately, told this Brother that I thought maybe he’d like to rethink his post and left it at that. I got a nice response back, thanking me for taking the time to reach out and give my input…unfortunately in the end this Brother went back to their posting habits. I spoke my peace to him, and I made leadership in his Lodge aware of it too. More concerning however, is some of our Grand Lodges and their stances on these issues. In the United States we actually have two Grand Lodges per state, the mainstream (bad term I know, but it’s the best we have) Grand Lodge and the Prince Hall Grand Lodge. This is obviously a carry over from the post Slavery and segregation era (although Prince Hall lodges have existed since the Colonial era), and to this day you will find Masonry “segregated” still between the two Grand Lodges of each State. From time to time you’ll here talk of we should finally set segregation behind us, and merge, however in my opinion that is much easier said than done. In the case of my home State, Virginia each of our respective Grand Lodges has over 200 years of history and tradition. How do you combine 400 years of combined history and tradition in a way that fully pleases everyone? Two separate Grand Lodges certainly isn’t ideal, but we actually make it work quite well here. What’s troubling though, is there are still seven Grand Jurisdictions in this Country who have yet to at a minimum, recognize their fellow Prince Hall Grand Lodge in the State. Seven. In 2019. The excuse you’ll hear from these Jurisdictions ranges from “well traditionally it’s the YOUNGER Grand Lodge which initiates recognition requests” to “we can’t recognize a Clandestine organization” (the issue of Clandestine Masonry is best left to another article). Additionally, you’ll occasionally hear stories from one of these Jurisdictions that an African-American gentleman was steered towards a Prince Hall Lodge after approaching a “Mainstream” Lodge. There’s no written rule (for good reason obviously) in any of these Grand Lodges…but the message is plain as day. Several years ago, in one of these Jurisdictions an African-American man DID join a “Mainstream” Lodge, the Grand Master attempted to get rid of him but thankfully the Brethren of his Lodge and others stood up for him and he went on to become Master of his Lodge and still is an exemplary Mason to this day. Freemasonry claims to be a progressive science, but as you can see in some cases we’re still stuck in the past, FAR in the past. For many of us already members, this isn’t good enough and there are efforts under way to change this. In my state I have heard talk of legislation of universal recognition of all regular Prince Hall Grand Lodges (currently we recognize four). But that’s not good enough if we want to be or remain relevant. Any Grand Lodge not yet currently recognizing at minimum their in-State counterpart should have pressure put on them to recognize. Tradition is a good thing, I’m not arguing against that, in this case though doing the right thing should trump tradition. Racism has no place in the Craft, and while Millennials are joining our ranks now, if they see no movement on these issues in the future, I have no doubts they’ll stop joining and leave our ranks. The time for sitting on the sidelines and saying “it’s not yet time” is long past due, if we want to keep this fraternity alive, we ALL must demand a change.
If racism in the Craft is still an issue, as it is in society in 2019, I’m sure you can guess what is just as equally controversial as well… homosexuality. Whereas the above-mentioned Grand Lodges have no verbiage that expressly prohibits men of African decent of joining a Lodge, we have two Grand Jurisdictions that do expressly forbid membership if you are a gay man. It’s the same tired excuse, “the Bible says so”. Well, the Bible tells us we can’t wear clothing of different fabric, eat pigs, shellfish, etc. Furthermore, this is a fraternity that welcomes men regardless of their religious background based only on the belief of a greater being than them. Just because YOUR religion says homosexuality is immoral to you doesn’t mean it is to another Mason. The Presbyterian and Episcopalian Churches both consider homosexuality to not be a sin anymore, and this is just two of several sects that do so. Selective interpretation of the Bible is one thing, but putting your religion over another man’s is incompatible with the teachings Freemasonry. In one of these Jurisdictions, an esteemed Brother, Past Master of his Lodge and member of numerous Invitational Bodies was brought up on Masonic charges to be expelled from the Craft. In his case, his sexual orientation had long been known to his fellow Brethren; his “offense”? He had the “gall” to marry his partner and post photographs on Facebook. I know right? The nerve of this gentleman to flaunt his sexuality on Facebook and show the world how happy he was! It’s more than troubling that a Grand Jurisdiction thought it necessary to insert itself into this Worshipful Brother’s life after one of the happiest days of his life. Thankfully in these two cases, other Jurisdictions haven’t remained quiet. Both have been de-recognized by other Masonic grand jurisdictions, and while it hasn’t dissuaded either from changing their minds its good to see other Grand Jurisdictions take a stand, and hopefully others will follow suit putting additional pressure on. The other positive is Brethren in this States who are embarrassed by these actions, while their voices may be the minority at present, its encouraging to know there are Brethren there willing to fight for what is right. Finally, and in a bit of karmic revenge I guess, the Grand Master who introduced this legislation in one of these jurisdictions recently announced his resignation from all of Freemasonry due to “a lack of compatibility with his religious teachings”. I’m sorry, but not sorry. Take your hatred elsewhere, we’ll do much better without you.
Back to the topic at hand though, is Freemasonry relevant in today’s society? I’m obviously biased, but I do think we are relevant. I think the teachings of Brotherly love, relief, truth and morality are timeless and will always have a place in society. That said, if we don’t stay in touch with the things current, and future generations hold near and dear then I’m afraid we will quickly become irrelevant. Freemasonry was a European outgrowth of the Age of Enlightenment, and while Europe was a Christian continent by and large at the time, Freemasonry was progressive enough that they recognized any man who believed in a power greater than him was qualified enough for our teachings. But we’ve drifted from those roots, we cling to tradition too much at times, and its starting to choke us to death slowly. Again, tradition isn’t a bad thing, but like anything, tradition should be evaluated frequently to see how it holds up currently. We need to REALLY evaluate ourselves, and our Brothers through our social media interactions. We need to be more willing to correct our Brethren, and help them understand in this cases why what they’re doing goes against the teachings of Freemasonry. This isn’t to say that counseling a Brother is only limited to cases of racism and bigotry, or postings that can be taken that way (I’ve certainly posted stupid stuff on my social media in the past), but we can no longer sit quietly when our Brethren do share this stuff. Some Brethren will take to counsel and do something about it, some won’t. It’s at that point that we have decisions to make about what happens next. Just like our Country, this Craft is coming upon a fork in the road. Our relevance in society depends on which path we decide to travel.
This article in no way represents any official Grand Lodge position or opinion. The writings here are mine, and mine only.
