Illinois Attacks on Masonic Halls Part of Growing Anti-Masonic Vandalism

by Christopher Hodapp

Police in Springfield, Illinois are asking the public for leads and information in connection with recent multiple attacks on Illinois Masonic properties. (Click the image above to enlarge.) The Grand Lodge of Illinois office, the Springfield Masonic Center and the Ansar Shriners all had their glass entry doors smashed last week, and similar damage occurred at the Masonic temple in Decatur, Illinois last year.

Police are seeking a person of interest in the attacks who was seen on security camera footage from the Shrine. A member at the temple identified the suspect as Howard Lovelady, who is possibly from Decatur, Illinois. The suspect is a black male, short to medium length hair, with a a goatee/beard. He was driving a 2000's silver or gray Pontiac Grand Prix. 

There seems to have been an increase in deliberate vandalism against Masonic sites as of late. 

• In January, an arsonist set fire to the Grand Lodge of Ireland's headquarters in Dublin, heavily damaging its library. 
• In March 2021, three Masonic halls in Vancouver, Canada were attacked and burned by an arsonist who proudly boasted of his actions online, bragging that he had "just cleaned three Satanic club houses, and nobody could stop me." 
• In June of 20 at the height of "anti-statue" mania, the long-controversial statue of Scottish Rite sage Albert Pike in Washington, DC was defaced, and finally toppled by a mob (albeit for being a Confederate general, not for his Masonic connections). And numerous statues of a Shriner carrying a crippled child in front of many Shrine temples across the country were defaced or destroyed outright.
• Scores of downtown Masonic halls throughout the country sustained damage during the summer of 2020 during marches and riots. While these were generally more crimes of opportunity than deliberate anti-Masonic attacks, there were numerous instances of specific anti-Masonic messages scrawled onto buildings: Washington's House of the Temple; Philadelphia's Grand Lodge building; Boston's Grand Lodge of Massachusetts' headquarters; Denver's downtown Masonic Center; Prince Hall temples in North Carolina and elsewhere.
• Last May, French authorities arrested six would-be 'neo-Nazi' terrorists who had been plotting to blow up a local Masonic hall.

Meanwhile, a notorious, headline-seeking preacher in Tennessee named Pastor Gary Locke regularly urges his audiences to "destroy everything Masonic," and has unfortunately gotten increased airplay online in the last few weeks. Most recently, Locke held a highly publicized book burning event in Florida, consigning Harry Potter and Twilight books to the flames (along with, by the way, Fahrenheit 451, with absolutely no sense of irony whatsoever). Declaring Freemasonry to be Satanic ("Paging Mister Taxil. Mister Leo Taxil, please pick up a white courtesy phone."), his anti-Masonic rant from that event has been endlessly forwarded around Tweetbook, Snaptwit and Facespace.  Any attempt to block his more incendiary anti-Masonic diatribes from social media simply becomes more fodder to be shoveled by Locke to his followers as "proof" that us cloven-hooved Satanic Masons have superpowers that must be vanquished. 

Unfortunately, too many Masons online have failed to remember the very first charge given to the new Entered Apprentice in most jurisdictions:

"In your outward demeanor, be particularly careful to avoid censure or reproach. Let no interest, favor or prejudice, bias your integrity, or influence you to be guilty of a dishonorable action. . . [N]either are you to suffer your zeal for the institution to lead you into argument with those who, through ignorance, may ridicule it."

Anti-social media brings out the very worst in everyone it seems, and there are entirely too many Masons who are hurling insults and decidedly un-Masonic language at Locke and his followers. That type of public language and online behavior is exactly why grand lodges around the world have been adopting codes of online conduct for their members.