More Eyes on the Grand Lodge of Texas

by Christopher Hodapp

After the shameful episode that happened on the floor of the annual meeting of the Grand Lodge of Texas in January, many had hoped that cooler heads would prevail and that brethren on both sides of the idealogical and generational divide in that jurisdiction would find some rapprochement. 

Aw, who am I kidding?

I posted a story in January about charges being made against Texas' newly elected Junior Grand Warden Jim Rumsey in order to prevent his installation just moments before the ceremony was to take place. That clumsy attempt was blocked by an immediate floor vote of the assembled brethren of the Grand Lodge of Texas, and it all played out on a live YouTube feed accessible to the public.

Not long after I posted that story on the blog, I received a phone call from a woman who wouldn't identify herself, but said she was the "concerned wife" of a Texas Mason, calling without her husband's knowledge, and she angrily assured me that I got the story all wrong. "You heard all the whooping that went on when that vote was taken," she said with disgust. "The frat boy crap of Billings and his crowd has got to stop!" Meanwhile, over the course of the call, her husband ("who doesn't know I'm calling you") was angrily shouting out more talking points to her in the background.

Well, the annual meeting incident wasn't the last of the battle, merely the opening volley. Since then, there has been more action to remove Rumsey from the fraternity and to punish certain Masons and their lodges. He was suspended in late January, pending a hearing this month. Charters have been pulled, other Masons have been suspended. This month, PGM Billings has now been charged for un-Masonic conduct.

Texas Past Grand Master Brad Billings

The following message was posted by Texas Past Grand Master Brad Billings on Friday:

My Brothers all,

I, like many of you, have heard rumors floating around for the past several weeks. Last night I received alleged charges against me that “Grand Master, G. Clay Smith, received and accepted.” These charges relate to my conduct as Grand Master. To be completely honest, I have anticipated these charges from the moment I stood in defiance of a small group of Past Grand Masters and in defense of Rumsey and our Masonic law.

On July 5th, the Grand Master sent all Texas Masons a letter proclaiming that “It is time for all dissensions throughout the Masons of Texas to come to an immediate end.” That statement was signed by the Grand Master and all the Grand Trustees. It is now clear that the Grand Master’s statement was nothing more than mere words on a piece of paper. 

There seems to be a small group of Past Grand Masters who are upset with the excitement the 2022 team brought to Freemasonry. They want to go back to what they know and control.  That small group responded with secret charges against R:.W:. Rumsey. And it appears these charges are stemming from the same source.

I will defend myself against the Charges. But it seems pretty clear that I am being railroaded just like R:.W:. Rumsey. Luckily, Masonry taught me to have a deep and abiding faith on Divine Providence and I know it is all for our good (somehow).  

God bless you and all Texas Freemasons.

Nothing like making a demand to cease all dissention. That usually goes about as swimmingly as ordering your angry wife to "calm down." Somebody please let me know if THAT'S ever worked.

A comment posted in the same thread by another contributor provided another wrinkle to this story. It seems that RW Billings is openly running for the position of Grand Secretary of Texas, which will be voted on in January 2024:

"RW Billings is standing for Grand Secretary at the coming Communication. Under article 512, he cannot be elected if he is under disciplinary charges. If the charges are not resolved by the date of said election, GM Smith must follow Grand Lodge law and exclude his candidacy. All the GM has to do is not resolve the issue by the date of election and RW Billings cannot stand for the position."

So, rather than risk his election to that influential position at the next Grand Lodge, someone or group of someones wants to choke off that possibility by getting him suspended or expelled. 

From a distance all of this looks like the scene in A Clockwork Orange when Alex is suddenly set upon and beaten up by a group of angry, elderly men exacting their revenge against him for his past transgressions. "It were Old Age having a go at Youth..." 

It's not really a perfect analogy, because the fictional Alex really was a "poisonous young swine who nearly done in" the old tramp, whereas RW Billings merely spent his year in the Grand East encouraging the enthusiasm of young Freemasons, and sought new ways to attract and keep new members in the fraternity. But the photo itself is useful.

Generational conflicts have been the way of the world ever since Adam and Eve started having kids. I have a personal theory that it is the sworn duty of every teenager since the dawn of time to make their parents cry. For every reformed prodigal son who's been welcomed back home with loving arms and a fatted calf dinner, there are a thousand others who came home with nose rings, tattoos, and a pregnant girlfriend, got disowned and locked out of the house, written out of the will, and crossed out of frontispiece of the family Bible. Following my theory to its most logical progression, every new generation has to push harder and farther from their parents' generation to make them cry because their parents and grandparents had already pushed their own behavior beyond their current society's limits. And as time creeps along inexorably from day to day, your own generation becomes seen as "the problem that won't pass away" by the next one behind you. And it can happen faster and sooner than you think.

Starting in about 1970, the Masonic magazine editorials began their new cycle of lecturing their older members "Don't fear change!" "We must change or die!" "Remember the fate of the dinosaurs! "Don't be Masonry's mossback turtles!" When I joined a lodge in 1998, it was the World War II "Greatest Generation" guys who stubbornly refused to join the Choir Invisible fast enough to suit the Baby Boomers who were impatient to make changes. And the fights between them often became downright cruel.

Now, the Baby Boomers are the current aged refuseniks who "wrecked everything in Freemasonry" and won't crawl into the nearest tar pit. "Those Vietnam hippies refused to join lodges because they hated the Establishment!" goes the usual refrain. (Never mind that the reduced number of Boomers who DID join Freemasonry kept the damn thing alive when the numbers began to plunge in 1959, instead of going the way of the Odd Fellows, the Pythians, the Woodmen, the Foresters, and so many others.)

None of this is new, or even recent. You'll find grand masters in the 1840s complaining about the older generation being the cause of post-Morgan anti-Masonry because they met in ground-floor lodge rooms where the cowans were able to easily eavesdrop on all of Masonry's secrets outside of the open windows. In the 1870s, upstart Masons were bitching about those creaky old Civil War veterans who let too many unqualified men join their "chaotic" military lodges, and then chartered "too many new lodges, too quickly." A well-regarded Masonic author in the 1870s was sickened by what he saw as hordes of unqualified men joining the fraternity. In a publisher's editorial in the Masonic Advocate Magazine, he wrote, "We have reptiles in our organization, and society in general has suffered at the hands of this lowest class of the brute Creation.”

By the 1880s Masonic leaders were carping that lodge halls needed to be multi-story buildings with plenty of rentable rooms below to create income and ward off economic disaster. When thousands of lodges borrowed money to build such massive new halls (along with a huge nationwide building boom), the "Long Depression" that began in 1887 and the Panic of 1893 wiped out everybody's finances smack in the middle of the Golden Age of Fraternalism. Generational fights over alcohol prohibition started in Masonic lodges decades before the 18th Amendment enforced it nationwide, before it wound up causing the biggest expansion of organized crime in pre-WWII America.

So every older generation winds up hating the younger one. And the other side of the coin is that 60 can't explain to 40 that 20 needs to take things a little easy and stop worrying so much. But we all need to remember that our fraternity is supposed to make all of us curb our unbridled enthusiasms and find consensus among our Brethren - from the newest Entered Apprentices, all the way up to grand masters. And the first lesson we all need to take to heart is that the trowel was never intended to be used to stab anyone in the back, and the gavel isn't supposed to be used to whack anyone in the head.