Whew. Freemasonry No Longer A Threat To Christianity

Golly. That was a close one.

Apparently Christianity Today, a "magazine of evangelical conviction," has decided that Freemasonry is "nearly forgotten." It has looked at our membership figures and decided that 1.8 million U.S. Freemasons are such a small enough number as to now render us flaccid, or at least impotent. "(Masonic m)embership is half what it was 50 years ago. It's hard to believe that Freemasons and similar secret societies were one of the top three social ills targeted by evangelicals of the mid-1800s, along with slavery and alcohol.

A slightly refreshing point of view is that the author, Ted Olsen, seems to be asking what was all the hubub, Bub. "Now Freemasonry is nearly forgotten, and the Christian campaign against "secretism" had little to do with the decline. That makes me wonder how much our social-reform campaigns of the early 21st century resemble those of the mid-18th." Of course, on the other hand, one of the hotlinks in the article is from the appalling, abysmal, anonymous and hysterical Canadian website, Freemasonry Watch (to which I'll forego a link, just because, you know, no sense in feeding the animals). Not exactly the sort of reference I would use if trying to bolster my position as a credible commentator on any subject.

Not to be a provocative churl, but if we're comparing numbers, I wonder what the circulation is of this magazine of evangelical conviction. I'll take a stab and guess it's something on the order of less than 1.8 million.