Freemasons For Dummies: Poll: Recent Interest in Freemasonry By The Public

Wednesday, October 24, 2018

Poll: Recent Interest in Freemasonry By The Public

Please click this post to take a poll about recent public interest in Freemasonry.

2 comments:

Steve HarrisonWed Oct 24, 09:30:00 AM 2018
This doesn't directly relate to Blue Lodges but I think it may be related to an increased interest in fraternalism in general. This past weekend in St. Louis we had a Scottish Rite reunion with sixty candidates, much above the normal class size. I know the increased numbers were due to a lot of hard work by some dedicated people, still the increased interest in general seems to be there. On the other side of the state in a couple weeks, KC and St. Joseph are having a combined reunion and so far have a dozen candidates. That doesn't sound like much, but in the past we've had to cancel reunions due to a lack of candidates. I can't say we've experienced much of an increase in interest in my own Blue Lodge but I'm always looking for reason to be optimistic.
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Bro. Paul RichThu Oct 25, 01:47:00 PM 2018
There is a coterie of interested imaginative Masons, which certainly includes many on this site, but what we forget is how small our numbers really are compared to the many who are not using the internet, don't look at blogs, and of course don't go to lodge. I'll guess that the total of individuals, discounting overlap, who are in Scottish Rite Research Society, Philalethes, are on this site, in European style lodges,customers for new books, isn't more than 50 or 75 thousand if you figure many are represented in many of those categories.
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Legendary brotherhood
With a mythic past
And a visionary future.

Freemasonry is the largest, oldest and best-known gentleman's fraternity in the world. Historically, it is based on the Medieval stonemason guilds who built the great castles and cathedrals of Europe. Mythologically it is founded upon the building of Solomon's Temple in Jerusalem, as told in the Old Testament of the Bible.

Modern Freemasons likewise use the tools, traditions and terminology of those Biblical stonemasons as allegories for building Temples in the hearts of men, using Solomon as our ideal example of wisdom, justice and faith.

At its core, Freemasonry is simply an attempt to make the world a better place, one man at a time. For each man, it can become as simple or as complicated as he himself desires.

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Christopher L. Hodapp is the author of Freemasons For Dummies, the international, best-selling introduction to the Masonic fraternity; and Solomon's Builders: Freemasons, Founding Fathers and the Secrets of Washington D.C..

Prior to joining the Masons and becoming an author, Chris spent 23 years as a commercial filmmaker with Dean Crow Productions in Indianapolis.

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As a Freemason, Chris is a Past Master of Broad Ripple Lodge No. 643 and of Lodge Vitruvian No. 767 under the Grand Lodge F&AM of Indiana; he is a member of Indiana's Schofield Lodge 1818 U.D.; and of Internet Lodge No. 9659 in the Province of East Lancashire of the United Grand Lodge of England. Most recently, he served as the Worshipful Master of the Dwight L. Smith Lodge of Research U.D. in Indiana for 2019-21.

In 2018 he was awarded the Caleb B. Smith Medal of Honor by the Grand Lodge F&AM of Indiana for his "distinguished service to Freemasonry in Indiana and worldwide."

Chris is a 33° Mason in the Ancient Accepted Scottish Rite (NMJ), Indianapolis Valley. He is a Past Sovereign Master of Imhotep Council No. 434 of the Allied Masonic Degrees. He is a founding member of Levant Preceptory, a medieval Knights Templar period recreation degree team in the York Rite, and he is an officer of the Indiana College of the Societas Rosicruciana in Civitatibus Foederatis. He belongs to numerous other Masonic appendant organizations.

As a Masonic author, in 2012 he was named as Friar No. 101 in the Society of Blue Friars. Chris was a Founding Fellow of The Masonic Society, and was the founding Editor in Chief of The Journal of The Masonic Society. He was the editor and a contributor in 2004-5 to "Laudable Pursuit: A 21st Century Response to Dwight Smith" by the Knights of the North, a Masonic leadership think-tank focusing on modern lodge solutions. He has written for Indianapolis Monthly, Heredom, Masonic Magazine, Templar History, the Scottish Rite Journal, the Knight Templar Magazine, the Indiana Freemason , the Phylaxis, and numerous other publications.

His most recent Masonic book, Heritage Endures, was published in January 2018 as part of the 200th anniversary of Indiana's Grand Lodge.

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