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Scottish Rite Freemasonry - Welcome to the Supreme Council, 33°, Ancient & Accepted Scottish Rite, Southern Jurisdiction, USA
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 Back to July-August 2007 Issue
Freemasonry Is?
written by John Belton, P.M.
 For a half-century, fewer men have become Masons each year, and those that do join remain members for ever-shorter times. The full impact of these trends has created an increasing awareness of the need to do something. Thus if one listens in the corridors there are whispers about bringing back Orators into lodges, about Spirituality as one vital aspect of Freemasonry, and agonizing about how we address the increasing problem of getting new Masons to learn the ritual by rote (or even of recycled Masters struggling to relearn!).
And of course there is the resistance to changing the form of the Free-masonry we all grew up with and cries that the landmarks are being infringed upon, if not trampled underfoot! However one’s consideration of and attitude to change are clearly related to what he perceives Freemasonry to be.
So let’s trot out the definition of Freemasonry and see how these changes fit in. Well actually there is no written definition that is in circulation, and all one can do is go out and ask individual brothers what they think Masonry is. One will hear frequently that it is a charitable organization or that it makes good men better. Not very helpful!
However if you ask what goes on at a lodge meeting almost all will say that the degree work is something special—so clearly ritual is something that has to be included in any definition. The words themselves have no value, except in the context of a lodge meeting. They are the means by which men are initiated. The words can and do vary, often greatly, but the intent and the experience that Masonic ritual produces facilitates the experience. The effort needs to be focused on the candidate and not, as happens so often, upon the facility with which the words were recalled from memory by those speaking them. After all, as we admit a candidate into the lodge he hears that he comes to be “admitted to the mysteries and privileges of Freemasonry,” but he never gets any help to discover just what the mysteries are.
Without exception every Mason will tell you of the pleasure to be had after the lodge meeting of the social board—of sharing a meal and of the conversation enjoyed over the table. So social is something else to be included in any definition.
I want to include two other elements. The first of them is that Freemasonry has an intellectual component. I can see the eyebrows rising at that choice of word but let’s not forget how often we trot out the phrase “you are to converse with well informed brethren who will always be as ready to give as you will be ready to receive instruction.” Curiously most lodges do very little to help brethren—new or old—along the road of learning more about Masonry, and as a result the knowledge of the majority of Masons about the Craft is lamentable.
The second of those two additional elements is to find some way of capturing the experience of the degrees we confer upon men, and that we, by being present and participating in the work, share with the candidate. The initiation experience is probably as old as man, but it really does mark out Freemasonry as having something special to offer us. Maybe in the past it was not felt too manly to mention such touchy-feely things as spirituality or indeed that we can all be moved by the work we do in lodge. I would argue that it is precisely those feelings that cause us to come back month after month and to spend many many hours to make any candidate’s experience as memorable as possible.
In contemplating why Masonry should have survived for four centuries we have to conclude that it has something special to offer men. It is the mystery that is Masonry which marks us out. What was it 350 years ago that caused Ashmole and Moray to become Masons? They must have felt there was some mystery that they wished to participate in. I, too, wished to experience that mystery, but enlightenment took years, and I have to thank some of my friends and brothers for sharing that voyage with me. Frankly the emphasis of my Masonic experience in lodge did little to assist in that process. I am sure there are many who came expecting to find something more than dogmatic ritualists and consequently left feeling disappointed.
Thus any definition of Freemasonry has to include the elements of Ritual, Social, Intellectual, and Spirituality. It does not need to be prescriptive in style or tone, for we are all individuals and will each strike a different balance between the four essential elements according to our own desires and needs. Across the lodge and its mix of members there should be a balance from which all of us can share and draw benefit.
So for me Freemasonry is most easily explained as a diagram.
If we are to find some way out of the fifty years of membership decline, then we need to consider how we “package” Freemasonry. Clearly how we have done it for the second half of the twentieth century no longer finds favor with our potential candidates as it used to. Just as previous generations have done, we too need to “reinvent” ourselves. We need to look at Freemasonry in other countries where it is thriving and to take useful lessons from that examination; we need to look at what our new Masons find less pleasing and react positively.
Of course it is possible to change our fraternity. If not, then we would still have only two degrees (the Master Mason Degree was not introduced until about 1725) and go to lodge in frock coats and wigs—and we do not. If the inclusion of the elements of Intellectual and Spirituality seem innovations to the reader, it is worth pointing out that where Freemasonry is currently prospering those two elements have always been accorded due importance—in thinking of the future we must give due consideration to taking that on board and to broaden our own practices.
The final question is: Do we have the will to measure up to the challenges of the twenty-first century? On that the jury is still out!
 John Belton is a retired Marketing Consultant and English Mason, and a founder and Past Master of Internet Lodge No. 9659, UGLE. He is a regular contributor to Masonic publications and his concern on falling numbers has resulted in papers being published in Heredom, “Masonic Membership Myths Debunked,” and in Ars Quatuor Coronatorum of Quatuor Coronati Lodge No. 2076 in London. He has moved on from the numerical aspects of decline to a consideration of what might be done to redress the ongoing decline including Masonic education and the role of spirituality in Freemasonry. The Scottish Rite Journal (ISSN 1076-8572) is published bimonthly by the Supreme Council, 33°, Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry of the Southern Jurisdiction, United States of America, 1733 Sixteenth St., NW, Washington, DC 20009-3103. |
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