God and the Odd Fellows

by Christopher Hodapp

Over the last few years, the Independent Order of Odd Fellows fraternal organization has been attempting to grow by reaching out to a younger demographic. Some have been embracing their decidedly offbeat name as a welcoming place for men and women who proudly celebrate themselves as being 'odd', an image the organization didn't really have of itself before. Many IOOF lodges have tried to expand with this strategy, but some apparently fear that local lodge officers are doing so by shunning or ignoring some of the most basic precepts of the IOOF that date back since time immemorial. And the national Grand Lodge for the U.S. has just fired a warning shot across the collective bows of those who have been selectively dodging the rules.

The Odd Fellows' 300+ year history parallels Freemasonry in many respects. Formed in London in the 1730s, they are non-sectarian, but require a belief in a non-specific God or Supreme Being. Their name stems from the medieval period of the craft guilds in England, purportedly for craftsmen who didn't belong to a specific guild of their own (or who had no such guild to join). Like the Masons, they expanded worldwide during England's colonial period. They created their own national grand lodge in America in the 1820s, flourished during the Golden Age of Fraternalism, and their popularity briefly exceeded that of Freemasonry in the early pre-Depression 1900s. Part of that popularity had to do with the perceived snobbishness and expense of joining the Masons, and they unfortunately got branded in many minds as the "poor man's Masons." The core organization, the Odd Fellows, is closely allied with the women's' group known as the Rebekah's, which was created originally as a sort of women's auxiliary group, much like the Order of the Eastern Star's association with the Freemasons. Also like the Masons, when white lodges refused membership to black men in the 1800s, the parallel Grand United Order of Odd Fellows was formed by and for blacks in America, much like Prince Hall Freemasonry did.

In town squares all across the U.S., lodge buildings sporting the 'three chain links' of the IOOF were as commonly seen as the square and compasses of the Masons. In many towns, the Masons and the Odd Fellows even shared lodge buildings. Like the Masons, they have three 'degrees' of membership within the lodge: the Lodge, which teaches Friendship; the Encampment, which teaches Love; and the Patriarchs Militant (similar to Masonry's Knights Templar), which teaches Truth. Their symbolic charts look remarkably like the Freemasons, and are often mistaken for being Masonic. They even wear lodge aprons. And their requirements for membership were historically the same as the Masons: men only, of lawful age of consent, of good character, and recommended by other members. In efforts to attract new members in recent years, they lowered the age requirement to just 16, and began admitting women. In many states these days, women commonly serve as grand lodge officers. But one thing that hasn't changed is that they still require all members to declare a belief in Deity, regardless of their personal conceptions or religious affiliation.

And therein lies the source of the current problem. 

More and more younger people in America have shown a dramatic increase in having no religious beliefs at all, at best claiming to be 'spiritual, not religious' (whatever THAT means), and often without any concept of a supreme deity of any kind. (That trend may be receding after more than a decade - see the note at the bottom of this article.) Consequently, some IOOF lodges have been lax about admitting men (and now women) who openly say they have no real belief in deity, or who dodge the question entirely.

Last week, the Grand Secretary of the Odd Fellows issued a sternly worded warning to all IOOF lodges that the core tenets of Odd Fellowship have not changed, and that all members must declare as part of their petitioning process, in writing, that they have a belief in a deity. More than a few local lodges have been glossing over that requirement, or ignoring it altogether. 

According to the letter, initiates have been told to ignore the requirement (or it's not mentioned it at all), lodges have been failing to display the Holy Bible on altars during meetings, the role of Chaplain has gone unfilled, and required prayers have been ignored or eliminated from their degree ceremonies. (Like the Masons in most jurisdictions these days, multiple books deemed sacred by an Odd Fellows lodge's members may be on the altar at the same time, although the Christian Bible must be there, regardless. )

Apparently, the situation has become widespread enough that the Grand Secretary's office is demanding that the entire letter be read at their next regular meeting, and that the order must be mailed directly to every lodge member within 30 days. (Click images below to enlarge.)

There have been calls within Freemasonry for more than two centuries to eliminate our fraternity's requirement of a declaration of faith, as the Continental Masons of the Grand Orient de France did in 1877 – and there's no denying that the Grand Orient has long been the largest (and continuously growing) Masonic jurisdiction in that country. But as has been the case there, the elimination of such a vital landmark of the fraternity was followed by the loss of others, such as overt political involvement and the eventual admission of women into their lodges. And it must be remembered that France has had a contentious and tumultuous history regarding religion ever since their revolution in 1789, and even before. French society is not directly analogous to American society when it comes to widespread attitudes regarding religion and secularism. We can't simply transplant their brand of Masonry to our own without dramatically changing the core of what has made American Freemasonry so successful in the past.

Despite all of the many changes to their fundamental membership requirements over the last few years, Odd Fellowship in America continues to dwindle. In my own hometown of Indianapolis, with well over 1 million people in the metropolitan area (plus burgeoning populations in other nearby communities) there is a single lodge hall location on the city's far west side that remains open, and it's part of their statewide Grand Lodge office building. If their newsletter numbers are to be trusted, the tiny number of new members taken in nationwide last year are shocking. 

It doesn't appear that their many changes have borne fruit.

So is there a cautionary example for Freemasonry to avoid this sort of change, or to embrace it as we watch our own numbers continue to decrease (albeit at a far, FAR slower rate than the IOOF's)? 

• Should we remain true to our most basic foundations, or make alterations to appeal to men (and maybe women) who give us the go-by now? 
• If such changes were to eventually be made, how can we honestly believe that Masonic membership would suddenly become desirable to our critics? 
• Would the detractors of our own fraternity rush out to join a local Masonic lodge if we permitted women to join, dropped our faith requirement, and openly took on partisan political stands of one viewpoint or another? 
• Or would they simply shrug and say, "Well, it's about time you dinosaurs crawled into the 21st century, but I'm really not much of a joiner..." ?

It’s worth keeping an eye on what transpires with the Odd Fellows in the next few years as they grapple with these very challenges.

*NOTE: People with no definable religious beliefs have, in recent years, been referred to by researchers as the "nones." In Pew Research Center’s 2023 polling, 28% of U.S. adults were religiously unaffiliated, describing themselves as atheists, agnostics or simply “nothing in particular” when asked about their religion. That was lower than surveys done in 2022 and 2021, and identical to the statistics in 2020 and 2019. After more than a decade of dramatic growth in "nones" (from just 16% in 2007), religious leaders are cautiously optimistic that faith may be making a slow comeback in this country.

Pew describes the "nones" this way:

• Most “nones” believe in God or another higher power. But very few go to religious services regularly.
• Most say religion does some harm, but many also think it does some good. They are not uniformly anti-religious.
• Most “nones” reject the idea that science can explain everything. But they express more positive views of science than religiously affiliated Americans do.

Attempting to woo less than a third of the adult population in this country by removing the declaration of faith requirement may be a dwindling goal for the Odd Fellows. For an all-male fraternity like the Masons, that number shrinks to just about 15% of adults as a raw statistic, and that doesn't take into account the vast numbers of "I'm-not-a-joiner" folks who wouldn't give any such club a second glance. 

Call me a a bitter old curmudgeon who smells like fetid four day-old Brussels sprouts if you like, but altering your organization that dramatically to chase such a small number of possibly potential members seems like a fool's errand to this insouciant whelp...

Freemason and Odd Fellows Exhibit at Historic Arkansas Museum in Little Rock

by Christopher Hodapp

A new exhibition on Freemasonry and the Odd Fellows opened this evening at the Historic Arkansas Museum in Little Rock: "Mystery and Benevolence: Masonic and Odd Fellows Folk Art from the Kendra and Allan Daniel Gift to the American Folk Art Museum."

The exhibit is on loan from the American Folk Art Museum in New York.

From the exhibit's description:

Mystical, evocative, and sometimes simply strange, the art of fraternal practice is rich in symbols that are oddly familiar yet strikingly uncommon. Through arcane and alluring artifacts, Mystery and Benevolence brings to light the histories of the Freemasons and the Independent Order of the Odd Fellows, two fraternal secret societies with deep roots in American history. The over eighty carvings, textiles, sculptures, and adornments that constitute this exhibition were used from the late eighteenth through mid-twentieth centuries, and retain their clandestine allure to this day.

The Historic Arkansas Museum is located at 1100 North Street, Little Rock, Arkansas. Hours are Tuesday – Saturday 9:00 AM - 5:00 PM; Sunday 1:00 PM - 5:00 PM. For admission and more information, visit their website at www.arkansasheritage.com

Robot Maker Shows Off Mechanical Goat

by Christopher Hodapp

Here's your first goat story of 2022.

Ah, the myth of the Masonic lodge goat continues to be told and retold. Despite 200 years of accusations from non-Masons that we ride goats as part of our initiation, it's never been true. It's a superstition that non-Masons repeat, and even some juvenile-minded Masons will use to frighten new initiates. Masons don't haze candidates, and if your lodge does, you should be ashamed of yourself.

But those Odd Fellows guys, on the other hand...

The Odd Fellows and lovers of goat lore have a new reason to rejoice. Motorcycle maker Kawasaki has just debuted a robotic mechanical goat at the 2022 International Robot Exhibition (iREX) in Tokyo. Officially known as 'RHPBex,' the industrial robotic billygoat comes complete with both feet and wheels attached to let it handle any terrain, and is capable of carrying more than 350 pounds of riders and cargo on its back. 

Bex even sports an impressive pair of curved horns on its head to give it just the right touch of Baphomet leitmotif.

No word as to whether Bex has occasional fits of head butting and making bleating noises.

For industrial clients, Bex has several different combinations of modular modifications to choose from - although there's no word yet if you can order one without the slightly creepy head and horns.

As time marches on, more and more companies are looking to replace a shrinking workforce of humans with robots. (I was accosted by a roving security robot in a supermarket chain in Wisconsin two years ago. It looked so much like a Dalek, I expected it to start yelling, "Exterminate! Exterminate!" when I set foot in the frozen food section.) If you think robotic machines still rare, Business Insider reports that almost 30,000 industrial robots were sold in the U.S. alone last year. And already increasing labor shortages were only accelerated under COVID restrictions of the last two years. 

So, given that not only the Freemasons, but ALL fraternal and voluntary associative organizations have seen their memberships decline in an almost straight line since the late 1950s, a robotic goat could do double lodge duty, playing a role in initiation rituals as well as sitting on guard outside as Tyler when not needed in the lodge room.

Somebody get the Odd Fellows on the phone.

Photos: Kazumichi Moriyama / YouTube.

When Competition Made Us Better

 "Among democratic nations, . . . all the citizens are independent and feeble; they can do hardly anything by themselves, and none of them can oblige his fellow men to lend him their assistance. They all, therefore, become powerless if they do not learn voluntarily to help one another."

--Alexis de Tocqueville

It's a VERY hot July weekend here at Hodapphaüs, and I stare at my backlog of unwritten articles, missed deadlines, ungraded essays, and half-finished emails with dread. I'm doing it. I'm doing it.

This really isn't going to be another one of Hodapp's wheezy posts about lost temples, and yet it will seem like it, because they are a symbol (like so much else in Freemasonry). Nonetheless, I'm in a despondent mood, possibly from reading too much about Masonry's past a lot lately. I just reacquainted myself with Arthur Schlesinger's "Biography of a Nation of Joiners" (1944) and Charles Merz' "Sweet Land of Secrecy" (1927), both describing the height of the Golden Age of Fraternalism in America (you can find both in the excellent collection Secret Societies in America: Foundational Studies of Fraternalism, edited by Will Moore and Mark Tabbert). That period coincided with our greatest building boom. 

And it finally occurs to me that the biggest ill ailing Freemasonry in modern times has absolutely zero to do with "modern man," not enough discretionary time and income, raising kids and conflicting soccer practices, falling morals, dramatic loss of religious faith and traditions, anti-Masonic forces, public perception, the Internet, streaming television, smartphones, not enough publicity, or expensive dues (don't make me laugh uncontrollably and pass my Diet Cherry Dr. Pepper through my nose). Nope, it's much simpler than any of that.

There's no competition anymore.

At every explosion of Masonic membership in America, we shared our spoils with (and also spawned) an ever-increaing number of imitators. In the time after our American Revolution, scores of scientific, philosophical, literary, and other self-improvement societies took off like wildfire to bring European and Enlightenment-era concepts to the new country and educate a rugged and growing population that was headed westward. After the Civil War, Masonic grand masters all over the country railed against the chartering of too many lodges too quickly, but to no effect — the membership went up and up. And we suddenly had stacks of competing orders all chasing the returning veterans to fulfill the sense of fraternalism they shared in the military that was now lost. Same way after WWI ended, through the '29 Depression, when there were close to 1,000 other fraternal associative groups in the country. Millions upon millions of Americans belonged to one or more of these orders, and they all needed a hall to meet in, dues to be paid (and kept competitively low), scores of officers to fill stations, ritualists to enact parts in their theatrical initiations, volunteers to cook dinners and undertake community projects, and members to line the sidelines. Churches competed for almost the exact same people for many of the same jobs and similar levels of participation. That's when Freemasonry built our most magnificent, landmark temple buildings, because so was everyone else.

Forgive the local nature of these observations, but in my home town of downtown Indianapolis, of the classic "secret society" fraternal groups, only the Freemasons retain our big and impressive post-WWI clubhouses: Indianapolis Freemasons Hall (1909), the Scottish Rite Cathedral (1929), and at least part of the Murat Shrine Temple (the 1958 expanded clubhouse side, though the theatre side built in 1909 was leased to others long term). Several Prince Hall lodges (including Central Lodge 1 PHA) and appendant bodies banded together as the Prince Hall Masonic Temple Association in the 1980s and bought the former Oriental Lodge 500 Temple (1916) on Central Avenue, and so even it, too, remains as a Masonic building today. 

Former Knights of Pythias building in Indianapolis

Former Odd Fellows (IOOF) building,
Indianapolis

The only other large and impressive fraternal structures that remain within downtown Indianapolis are the former Odd Fellows tower (1908) at Washington and Pennsylvania Streets, and the beautiful, white glazed porcelain brick, former Knights of Pythias building (1925) on Meridian Street (even it was not a meeting hall, but originally housed the offices of their once burgeoning insurance program). When Indiana's Freemasons celebrated our 150th anniversary in 1968, neither of those two other groups owned their buildings, and were already mere ghosts of their former selves nationally - the Odd Fellows are down to a mere four lodges left in all of Indiana, according to their Grand Lodge website.

There's still the good sized Knights of Columbus McGowen Hall (1922) on Delaware Street, but the recently abandoned American Legion Headquarters (1927) anchoring the now incongruously named 'American Legion Mall' sits vacant. The Athenaeum (once Das Deutsche Haus, built in 1893-98) is still the home to a variety of German-related clubs and groups, but these never been what anyone would consider "secret society" sorts of places. There are other local, former fraternal buildings dotted around our downtown area, but none of them retain their original ownership and purpose of being a meeting hall for initiating and gathering their members.

Former Knights of Pythias high-rise,
Indianapolis (now demolished)

When these other halls were built in the 1920s, the Freemasons were the pinnacle of fraternalism in a very crowded field. We were the top of the heap, the gold standard. That was our reputation to the outside world, and inside of our own lodges, too. We built great temples and did great things because we thought the best of ourselves, and in many ways, attracted only the best of men because of that.

And today, for all intents and purposes, we are all that's left. 

The Odd Fellows formed in 1730 and were once larger than Freemasonry in national membership. Today, they are down to under 600,000 worldwide (or a million, depending on how you count and whom you ask, since they also have recognition and regularity issues, and nobody likes to admit falling membership to outsiders anyway). The Knights of Pythias were down to 50,000 in 2003, and don't want to talk about numbers anymore. The Woodmen of the World claim 900 chapters nationwide, but they are largely an insurance company, and have been for decades. They just "rebranded" themselves as WoodmenLife. The Foresters and the Macabees went the insurance route, and are essentially gone. The Redmen are mostly vanished, and if there's an aging member of the Tribe of Ben Hur out there anywhere, send me a note. The Moose, Elks, Eagles and others cling on as social clubs (and remain popular in pockets of the country), but the Owls and the Oaks are gone. So are hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of other major and minor groups (take a stroll through the Rathbone Museum in Lafayette, Indiana sometime—that's their photo at the top of this post).

The world became an ever-increasingly impersonal place, we all stopped dealing face to face, and a handshake stopped meaning anything besides a involuntary reflex greeting like saying "Hi!" or "Have a good one!" Person to person, middle-class jobs and relationships vanished, communities died, people retreated to suburbia and one year lease apartments, and the fraternal groups closed one by one.

Now, Freemasonry is the last order standing, in the world of the formerly large, non-sectarian "secretive societies." We have no reason to be better or more impressive or more selective or more interesting than the other "dues-card-and-a-pin-I'm-in" orders, because there's no one else. And in all honesty, the world is not a better place for it, because the fraternal groups reinforced the sense of community that we don't share anymore. When the big fraternal groups competed to build the bigger or better buildings on our skylines, they signaled that our towns had lots and lots of citizens who cared very much for their communities. Now we pitch them overboard, build pole barns in cornfields, and offer little at our meetings to entice anyone to come back next month. Or join in the first place. Much less, to make large donations in their wills for us to do bigger and better things when they join the Great Majority. 

I coincidentally ran into two poignant blog entries found on other websites recently. The first is Robert Johnson's post a couple of weeks ago, Shadows Burned Onto the Walls - Addressing Freemasonry's Biggest Problem. 

In it, Robert expresses the despair nearly all contemporary members of the fraternity have at one point or another. I sense that the entry was based on a speech he gave at some point, and buried in it is perhaps the sagest of sage wisdom ever said to a fellow Freemason in times of troubles: “You have to be okay with Masonry the way it is. Work on your own path.”

Read it over on the always excellent Midnight Freemason blog site HERE.

The other entry I'll point you to is the haunting exploration of the former Los Angeles Scottish Rite Center by Brother Greg Stewart on the Freemason Information blog site: Something Lost: The Los Angeles Scottish Rite Cathedral.

Built at enormous cost and with great care in 1961, yet essentially dead in (appropriately) just 33 years, the Cathedral was recently converted to a modern art gallery. Greg recently took a tour of the newly reopened building, and he echoes my own sentiments whenever one of our more magnificent temples gets consigned to the dumpster voluntarily by our own members.

Thankfully, the new owners reserved a small room set aside to display the artifacts “…left behind by the Masons before they abandoned the building.” But entering that room did not bring much joy to Greg:

"I can’t say for certain if it was the space, the items in the space or the words taken in the context of the aforementioned relics of what Freemasonry once was. Leaving the relic room, I was moved to tears — not for the casual housing of materials sacred to me, but tears for what those relics once represented to the people in the space. To the owners of the history that poured the foundation and raised the marble edifice. Perhaps more so, the thought that this was the future of Freemasonry. That an empty building full of abandoned “relics” was really what lay at the end of it all. Yes, the building is just a building, but it affects the priest no less to see the church he dearly loved, laid low by a fire or an earthquake.

"Masons are builders and buildings can be replaced. But walking through the bones of a structure built to show the “intensity of feeling throughout history toward the Meaning of Masonry” felt like a priest walking through the ashes of his fallen church.

"I wanted to feel optimistic about the space. I wanted to appreciate it for what it once was.

Instead, I left haunted feeling depressed and overwhelmed. Not at the space or the modern art within its walls. I was haunted by the ghosts of what it once was."

Civil Society and Freemasonry

Solomon's Lodge No. 1, Savannah, Georgia

Columnist Salena Zito may or may not have realized that yesterday was St. John the Baptist Day and its importance to Freemasons when she wrote her essay for the Washington Examiner.  She was visiting Savannah, Georgia and was in the famous red brick home of Georgia's Solomon's Lodge No. 1 as their members streamed in.  The landmark building was once home to the city's Cotton Exchange nearly two centuries ago, before the Masons of Solomon's Lodge bought it.  But in both of its historic roles over the years, that distinctive place has been a center of civic life in Savannah.  

I encourage you to read Zito's editorial (excerpted below), because it speaks about the vital importance of fraternalism in America throughout our history, and why organizations like the Freemasons are needed at this very moment in time more than ever.  

From America's Dearth of Civil Society:

Freemasons are civic leaders, and the room is filled with men of all ages, races and backgrounds, about to meet over what they can do next to further the betterment of their community. They are members of a dying American tradition that once drew young men by the hordes, in particular after the end of World War II when memberships in fraternal organizations like the Mason’s, Elks, and Rotary Clubs swelled with young veterans reared on the ethos of community service.

America today has a recession of civic activity as we emerge into a society that [is] less united in a common endeavor with fewer people willing to listen to elders who could guide young men and women with the skills of cooperation and citizenship.

For the past 200-plus years Americans eagerly formed countless associations within their communities. It didn’t matter if their neighborhoods were in large cities, small towns, or spread out in expansive rural farming areas. We liked to form associations; a lot.

Some were serious, some were frivolous, some had ties to commerce in a town or were wedded to a church and some were exclusive, but nearly all of them were formed to advance or foster a better community or a better city.

Or as Alexis de Tocqueville wrote of America’s burgeoning democratic order and the rapid formation of civic groups, through example “they form a society.”

But we don’t join things the way we used to. The question is why? The first obvious answer is we are busy, but so were our parents and grandparents and they joined the Rotary Clubs and Kiwanis.

The second obvious answer is technology. It does everything for us and connects us to people instantly so why would we want to connect in person?

You can answer that one by looking around yourself at an America with an eroded public square. Things are not going well.

Traditional member-based organizations, especially the do-goody ones, rarely included politics and brought diverse different ideas together that helped make communities and societies form cohesively.

They bettered the schools by providing funds for small projects. They bettered the parks by volunteering to weed, seed and keep the area tidy. They encouraged young people to join and mentor them towards improvement. And they avoided using the government for all of their tasks. It was a way to network and a way to support worthy causes.

No politics. No handouts. All from within.

Today all of these organizations face memberships in the decline, as their members die out their influence does too – and that may not be a good thing.

“This country would not have grown to be the great place it is today without the civic engagement that all of these different fraternal organizations have provided. We have to think ahead as to how to maintain them, they are and can still be the core of a civil society,” [Past Master Bryan] Hoffman says as the old trading floor, now complete with pale blue seating on three sides, fills up with members.

The only groups we seem to join these days are political, and we have no tolerance, or at least little tolerance, for those who do not share our point of view.

Part of America’s greatness comes from our willingness to strengthen, foster, grow and promote our localities. Our exceptionalism has never come from politics, or government, a new impulse that neither educates our democracy nor restores our faith in each other, it might be time to redirect our energies and reflect on where to better utilize them...

Zito concluded her essay with an appeal to join the Rotary, and that's a fine idea.  Service clubs like the Rotary, Kiwanis, Lions, and Sertoma are great organizations, and especially connect people in businesses, encouraging them to participate in their communities in countless ways.  Like the Freemasons, they don't permit religious and political arguments to creep into their meetings — or at least they try not to, which can be tough given that businesses have to interact with government so much.  

But the service clubs are very different from the fraternalism to be found in a Masonic lodge.  Freemasonry forms a bond between its members that business-related groups do not and can not.  That's not a bad thing, because ANY group these days that broadens our circle of acquaintances and friends outside of the protective sphere and echo chambers of political or advocacy groups will help to calm the turbulent social waters we are experiencing right now.  But Freemasonry is much closer to a familial relationship than just a lunch companion a few times a month.  It creates a world-wide connection that we call the 'Mystic Tie,' that lets you step off a plane in Cleveland or Winnipeg or Istanbul or Mumbai, and suddenly encounter a Masonic Brother who will treat you as though he has known you all his life.  You may have absolutely nothing else in common, other than your Masonic membership.  Yet, he'll drive you where you need to go; he'll show you the sights; he'll treat you to dinner; he'll invite you to sleep on his couch...  

In short, he'll treat you like what you are: his Brother.  And you would do the same for him.

Since the contraction of the larger fraternal groups like Freemasons, the Odd Fellows, the Woodmen, the Knights of Pythias, and so many others in the last 50 years, America and the wider world have lost something critical that few realized was so important at the time (De Tocqueville certainly recognized its importance in his day).  Fraternalism was one of those guiding hands on society's shoulder (like religious institutions) that helped keep the human animal from constantly going after the other guy's throat.  All those "famous Freemasons" who fill up Denslow's books who were senators, congressmen, presidents, statesmen, business leaders, innovators, and others who helped to craft and operate the levers of civilization found ways to get along with each other, to cooperate for the common weal, despite having wildly opposing viewpoints.  People weren't any less passionate 100 years ago about laws or taxes or injustices or iniquities than they are today.  But they got along with each other because when they weren't at work or at home, they were sitting side by side in church, or meeting on the level in their lodges, or both.

We don't share much in common in Western society any more, now that we don't read the same papers, listen to the same radio stations, watch the same TV shows, and belong to the same clubs.  We've all gone tribal, and that's a dangerous place to find ourselves, because it always stresses our differences, not what we share.  In a country of 350 million people, tribes are likely to lash out when they feel under assault (whether it's true or not), especially now that we've redefined the smallest of slights and perceived insults as crime, and then given everyone an instant 24/7 media megaphone by putting a smartphone in every pocket.  Technology isn't going to roll backwards anytime soon.  So maybe it's time to consider the human alternative of finding ways to get along with each other again, face to face.  

There's a reason why Freemasons usually build our temples without windows, because inside you''ll find a sanctuary from all of the screaming and the noise outside.  Knock on the door of a Masonic lodge - or if you're already a member and haven't been back in a long while, go to the next dinner or meeting.  

You can take your place along that endless chain of union that binds us to the Mystic Tie, and help us make a better world, one man at a time.

(H/T Nathan Brindle)

---

On a related theme, see also:

The Decline of Men, and What Freemasons Need To Do About It

A Fraternal Gem: J. H. Rathbone Museum and Resource Center

Every state in the union has its share of odd museums dedicated to a wild variety of preservation causes (or obsessions, depending on how it's organized). That's what makes small, specialized museums so interesting in the first place, because what may be eminently missable to much of the population can alternately be endlessly fascinating to others.

Lafayette, Indiana (hometown of Purdue University, for you out of staters) is home to one of those unique museums that few have ever heard of, but if you have an interest in frateralism in America, you need to know about it. 

The J. H. Rathbone Museum and Resource Center was originally founded to store, preserve, and display Knights of Pythias memorabilia. In fact, their building is also the meeting location of Lafayette Lodge No. 51, Knights of Pythias. This was the home lodge for James Carnahan who was the founder of the Uniform Rank Knights of Pythias, a military branch best known for their drill teams, similar to the Masonic fraternity's Knights Templar. But since the Museum's creation, it has grown into fulfilling a much larger purpose. It now comprises a collection of thousands of items concerning all things fraternal.

The role of fraternal societies in America, especially during the period of their explosive growth between the end of the Civil War and the 1929 Great Depression, cannot and must not be ignored or forgotten. In 1927, author Charles Mertz estimated that 30 million of the 106 million people in the United States at that time held membership in at least one fraternal group. Just ten years later, author Charles W. Ferguson upped his estimate to 50 million fraternal members out of 122 million Americans. These societies helped people young and old to learn and appreciate the American way of democratic life and values during a period of massive upheaval and immigration from countries with little or no experience of it. In a different nation, such a huge clash of disparate foreigners arriving into a country might have become enormously fractious and divided along ethnic, religious, economic, or political lines. But America was different then, and fraternal groups had a lot to do with that. (And no, I'm not forgetting the elephant in the room of racial segregation that was enforced through the early 1960s.)

They taught their members basic civility, organizational skills, administrative roles, public speaking, religious and social tolerance and equality, and lessons of civic responsibility. And they provided economic stability and a social safety net when millions might very well have become what was referred to then as "wards of the state," or at least suffered tremendous poverty long before the days of government welfare, Medicare, Medicaid, and social security. 

The segregated African-American fraternal societies also exploded in popularity at the exact same time, many directly paralleling their white counterparts, and teaching the exact same lessons and skill sets to their members. Black fraternal groups arguably had as great an influence on their part of American society as the black churches in strengthening their community, family life, faith, business and civic skills at a time when white America was largely ignoring them.

Without fraternal societies at that critical period in time, America would have been a very, very different place. In fact, it's arguable that society is in severe need of a rebirth of the fraternal society right this very minute, for many of the exact same reasons, and more. America seems to have lost its most essential civic and civil skills these days, what with all of our internal tribalistic divisions and total lack of social manners and abilities, and a lodge room is perhaps the most ideal place of all to relearn them. 

But that's another post for anther day.

The Rathbone Museum is packed floor to ceiling with artifacts, clothing, regalia, hats, swords, books, newsletters, and all of the other ephemera that the fraternal societies of the 19th and 20th century poured out to their members. Freemasonry and the Odd Fellows were merely the largest of the groups, but the Knights of Pythias, Woodmen of the World, the Red Men, the Grange, the Foresters, the American Legion, the Veterans of Foreign Wars, the Knights of Columbus, the "animal lodges" of Elks, Moose, Eagles, and hundreds of others (an estimated 800 in 1927) were every bit as active and proud of their orders. Like Freemasonry, they had rituals and ceremonies, officers with bilious titles, costumes and regalia, jewelry, lapel pins and medals (Oy! the medals!), and more. Countless examples of all of this are on display in the Rathbone Museum's limited space.

Surprisingly, there are very few other museums like the Rathbone. (In fact, I hope that one day a friend and Brother of mine will open his unique Washington D.C. house as a museum, as it is packed with thousands of these types of items, as well, and deserves to be seen and protected.) While the Rathbone is a labor of love curated by Dr. Ken Moder, it is noteworthy that his board of directors is made up of others who may be known to some of you: Pennsylvania's fez-obsessed resident Seth C. Anthony; the House of the Temple's Heather Calloway; Kelby Dolan (who has done much work with us at the Masonic Museum and Library of Indiana); Odd Fellows member Michael Greenzieger; John Hardesty; and Teresa Snarr. 

So if you find yourself in west-central Indiana, maybe passing through on your way to Chicago or elsewhere on I-65, and Lafayette is not out of your way, be sure to stop in at the J. H. Rathbone Museum and Resource Center at 134 South Earl Avenue, Lafayette, Indiana. And if you encounter a treasure trove of items related in any way to any of the countless fraternal societies in America, please contact Dr. Moder and his team before you just shrug and consign grandpa's top drawer of rings, old ribbons or silly hats to the dumpster. They might have little or no monetary value, but they are not just junk. They might help to tell the story of an important period in time when organizations like Freemasonry and numberless others helped to weave the very fabric of American society into something unique and strong.