Encouraging Local Volunteerism In Your Masonic Lodge

by Christopher Hodapp

Are members of your lodge especially active in volunteering in your community? Or are you looking for ways to get your lodge involved in local volunteer programs to help your town or neighborhood? For many years, Americorps and the Points of Light global network have jointly awarded the President's Volunteer Service Awards to hundreds of individuals and organizations all over the U.S. in recognition of their dedication and service to local communities. Masons and Masonic lodges are among the different types of civic, social, religious and non-profit organizations that qualify for the award.

From the program's website:

In 2003, the President’s Council on Service and Civic Participation founded the President’s Volunteer Service Award to recognize the important role of volunteers in America’s strength and national identity. This award honors individuals whose service positively impacts communities in every corner of the nation and inspires those around them to take action, too.

The PVSA has continued under each administration since that time, honoring the volunteers who are using their time and talents to solve some of the toughest challenges facing our nation. Led by the AmeriCorps and managed in partnership with Points of Light, this program allows Certifying Organizations to recognize their most exceptional volunteers.

In order for a lodge to participate and make its members eligible, it must become a Certifying Organization by filling out an application and taking a short quiz to be sure you understand the program's requirements.

A Certifying Organization is an organization that has been granted authority through an application and review process to give out the PVSA to volunteers. Certifying Organizations verify and certify that a volunteer has met the requirements to receive a PVSA within a 12 month period specified by the Certifying Organization. Only Certifying Organizations can certify volunteers’ eligibility for the PVSA and order awards.

Certifying Organizations must be established and operate in the United States, its territories (Puerto Rico, Guam, American Samoa, U.S. Virgin Islands, and Northern Mariana Islands), or on overseas U.S. military and state installations. Additionally, Certifying Organizations must receive or facilitate volunteer service.

The award has several different levels, depending upon how many hours in a 12-month period are provided by an individual or (Bronze, Silver, Gold and Lifetime) for "unpaid acts of volunteer service benefitting others." 

In the agreement, your lodge becomes a certifying organization that keeps careful track of how many hours are volunteered, who performed that service, and reporting them to the awards program. The lodge also agrees to cover the cost of the award package itself, which, if you go whole hog on the options, costs less than $30. The award can include the official President’s Volunteer Service Award pin, coin, or medallion; a personalized certificate of achievement; and letter signed by the President.

There is a detailed FAQ about eligibility requirements HERE.

Once the proper level of hours is reached, the lodge nominates that member for the award, and confers it when it arrives. The award is also accompanied by a congratulatory letter from the sitting President of the United States. Before anyone starts caterwauling about presidential politics, understand that every president since George W. Bush has supported this program. It is a completely non-partisan program designed to recognize and reward volunteerism, and Americorps relies on you as their certifying organization to tabulate the hours and apply for the awards.

Root around on the awards website HERE for lots more information about it. 

Also have a look at the Points Of Light Global Network website for ways to get your local lodge involved in civic volunteerism. Groups like United Way work with churches, lodges and other similar groups to pair volunteers with programs in the community.

Why Freemasonry Still Matters

by Christopher Hodapp

The United States has been rocked over the past month with images and stories relating to massive protests, rioting and statue-removing furor set off by the death of George Floyd while being arrested in Minneapolis, Minnesota. As the weeks passed, the toxic confluence of the COVID-19 pandemic shutdowns, anger, widespread unemployment, summer heat, pent up frustration, a breathless media, and the echo chamber of the Internet have all worked their worst influences to bring out some of the most socially divisive traits, allegations and arguments among Americans in more than 50 years. 

Over the last couple of weeks, some enthusiastic or activist Masons have advocated for the fraternity to 'get on the right side of history' and support the Black Lives Matter movement. Some energetic Masonic keyboard artists have created graphics to combine the square and compass of Freemasonry with symbols of social activism, such as a clenched fist of BLM, confederate flags, the 'gay pride' rainbow,' or others. Such symbols have been making the rounds of the Internet, often with the exhortation to 'get on board' with one side or another, because, according to the bromide, 'silence is violence.'

With all due respects to my energetically demonstrative brethren, that's not the role of Freemasonry. It never has been, and it cannot be today. Its role is just the opposite.

Freemasons are human beings, and as individuals, we often take different sides in arguments. This is as it has always been throughout the history of the fraternity, sometimes violently so. When you examine the wars involving America and other Western nations in which Masons have fought in the last 300 years, you will find dedicated Freemasons on both sides of those conflicts. We tout the famous Masons who led the American Revolution, but there were plenty of loyalist Masons throughout the American colonies who fought and died to keep us British. (And, no, the Boston Tea Party was NOT a Masonic action, despite what you might have been told.)

Individual Freemasons may fight for the causes they support, but 'The Freemasons' do not take sides in social, political, cultural or religious conflicts.

That's why images like this one are not appropriate for any Freemason. This very moment in time is an excellent teaching moment for this lesson, and our youngest, newest members need to understand it. 

Freemasonry teaches men to behave properly, to treat each other fairly, to live by the cardinal virtues and follow our precepts. But it does not tell Masons what to think, how to vote, how to worship God, what protests to march in, what products to boycott, or what bumper stickers to put on our cars. The sanctuary of the lodge is absolutely shattered by any member who seeks to abuse its good offices by assigning political or religious motives to it that do not exist. 
Freemasonry is a force for good by espousing and teaching mannered toleration, reinforcing the cardinal virtues, and providing a sanctuary from the divisive nature of the profane world. If a Mason abuses the square and compass into a symbol that creates a deliberately divisive atmosphere within the Masonic community, to compel his brethren to also adopt his favored cause, or to erroneously create a false public perception of Masonry's motives -  that Mason has erred, not the fraternity.


James Anderson listed in the Constitutions of Masonry our responsibility to the civil authorities (second only to God):

A Mason is a peaceable Subject to the Civil Powers, wherever he resides or works, and is never to be concern’d in Plots and Conspiracies against the Peace and Welfare of the Nation, nor to behave himself undutiful to inferior Magistrates ; for as Masonry hath been always injured by War, Bloodshed, and Confusion, so ancient Kings and Princes have been much dispos’d to encourage the Craftsmen, be- cause of their Peaceableness and Loyalty, whereby they practically answer’d the Cavils of their Adversaries and promoted the Honour of the Fraternity, who ever flourish’d in Times of Peace. So that if a Brother should be a Rebel against the State, he is not to be countenanc’d in his Rebel- lion, however he may be pitied as an unhappy Man ; and if convicted of no other Crime, though the loyal Brotherhood must and ought to disown his Rebellion, and give no Umbrage or Ground of political Jealousy to the Government for the time being; they cannot expel him from the Lodge, and his Relation to it remains indefeasible.

Masons from the past who have been prominent leaders of revolutions (along with not-so-prominent ones who were on the losing sides of failed ones) never marched at the head of mobs wearing a giant square and compass on their chest or helmet, for good reason. Riots, revolts, revolutions, wars - these take place between nations or factions or masses or mobs of peoples. Freemasonry is practiced between individual human beings who seek to retain their individual honor and humanity, and to civilize and improve their town, their country, and the world by their own actions. Freemasonry is not a movement - it is a cultural institution that can only function if it is seen as a diverse, calm, civil, and evenhanded organization of a community's best leaders, regardless of their particular political affinities. 

The Western world is currently caught up in a moment that measures diversity only by the hue of skin color - literally the one human trait that cannot be altered, controlled or changed, and therefore the very least important one - and not by diversity of thought, belief, achievement, or aspiration. That is how Freemasonry seeks to differ from the outside world. If we're doing it right, we welcome diversity among men in all its intellectual, theological, economic and vocational forms. But I have never in my 20 years as a Mason seen a petition for the degrees of Freemasonry that asked a man's race. 

It is why, for instance, the meetings of lodges under the Grand Lodge of Israel are attended by Masons who are Jewish, Muslim and Christian, from all races, and from political persuasions that are diametrically (sometimes militantly) opposed to each other in that turbulent part of the world. Even the seal of their grand lodge reflects its uniquely Masonic diversity. It is the true meaning of meeting 'on the level.'

We say that Masonry becomes the 'center of union' because it conciliates true friendship among men who would for any other reasons have remained at a perpetual distance. Living through a tumultuous moment in time with heated passions on all sides doesn't imbue any of us with the ability to decide who is 'on the right side of history.' That's the nature of mass conflict and social unrest and upheaval. Only the lapse of time and history itself can make that judgement. 

The famed 'Friend To Friend' statue at the top of this post, erected at Gettysburg by the Grand Lodge of Pennsylvania, is a parable in bronze that demonstrates the unbreakable mystic tie between two Masons on opposing sides of a deadly conflict.  Union General Winfield Scott Hancock and Confederate General Lewis Addison Armistead were personal friends and both were Freemasons. Secession wasn't a Masonic cause, and neither was preserving the Union. These two men had served and fought side by side in the US Army before the Civil War broke out. But Armistead said he could never raise his sword against his fellow Southerners and joined the Confederate Army in 1861. 

Armistead led his men against Hancock’s troops in the ill-fated Pickett's Charge at Gettysburg, but was mortally wounded in the battle - by the irony of fate, Hancock was also wounded during the same battle. The statue depicts Union Captain Henry Bingham, also a Freemason and staff assistant to General Hancock, rendering aid to the fallen Confederate General. It was a bloody day - Henry Bingham himself had been wounded in the fighting, but he knelt by Armistead's side as he died. General Armistead is shown handing his watch and personal effects to be delivered to his friend and Brother, Union General Hancock. A final act of friendship among men who would for any other reasons have remained at a perpetual distance.

It's one of those lessons people can learn if statues aren't toppled by mobs. 

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UPDATE: JULY 7, 2020

This post generated an unprecedented amount of discussion, pro and con, in numerous Facebook groups and elsewhere over the last several days. 

Brother James R. Morgan III is a Prince Hall Mason in Washington, D.C. and a volunteer coordinator at that city's African-American Civil War Museum. He is an author and historian, and recently published the outstanding book, The Lost Empire: Black Freemasonry in the Old West (1867-1906). 

On Sunday, James was motivated to pen a thoughtful response to my essay above, entitled 'What to the Prince Hall Freemason is the Fourth of July? - Why Black Masonic Memory Matters' (his title is a deliberate play upon a famed abolitionist speech by Frederick Douglass in 1852, commonly known as 'What to the slave is the Fourth of July?'). In it, he rhetorically points out numerous incidents and issues I did not discuss in my original post, and seems to be critical less of what I said than of what I did not say. Please read it and decide for yourself. I don't regard either of us as being on opposite sides of things, merely looking at it from both sides of a picket fence that sometimes blocks as much as it admits. 

CLICK HERE: 
https://www.facebook.com/jamesrmorgan/posts/10217184280782312

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Did the Freemasons create the United States?

Scranton's Masonic Temple To Host Presidential Town Hall

by Christopher Hodapp

Scranton, Pennsylvania's magnificent Masonic Temple will get the national spotlight turned onto it this week as the U.S. presidential campaign season shifts into high gear. President Donald Trump will take part in a Town Hall meeting hosted by the Fox News Channel on Thursday, March 5th at the Masonic Cultural Center. Before everybody gets their aprons in bunch over Masons and "No politics in the lodge!" this is EXACTLY what our Masonic temples used to do on a regular basis. 

In the 1930s, Scranton's Masons hosted the biggest New Years Eve parties in the whole city at this temple - 4,000 attended in 1935 alone. Scranton's Masonic Temple is especially huge. At approximately 180,000 square feet, the Temple has two theatres, lodge and appendant body meeting rooms, a grand ballroom as well as numerous other rooms and areas. 

The main auditorium can accommodate 1,800 people. They formed an independent, not-for-profit organization in the early 2000s to preserve the place and operate the facility as a regional performance and cultural hub — in addition to still being a hub of Masonic activity. That separated it from specifically Masonic ownership, and the arrangement has worked well for the Masons and the community alike. Masonic temple associations these days confronting similar issues of big, underused buildings would do well to consider these types of arrangements.

Scranton's Temple has branded itself as a cultural center in that city for more than a decade now, but up until the 1960s or so, communities regarded all of our larger temples and halls as centers of civic culture automatically, without needing it plastered on signage. That was when the Freemasons were still considered to be vital players in the social and civic fabric of a city or town, and before the mass exodus from town centers into anonymous steel pole barns.

I will cite my local examples because I'm most familiar with them. In my own home town of Indianapolis, our first combined multi-lodge/grand lodge temple was built in 1850, but before it even officially opened in 1851 for our own use, it was turned over to the State of Indiana for three months for use by the delegates for a convention charged with drafting the state's new Constitution. 

The Indianapolis Masonic Temple and its grand Freemasons Hall was considered the first large-scale public building in the city. Abraham Lincoln came to town and spoke there in 1859, and for decades no election went by without one candidate or another, from any party, holding a speech or debate at the Masonic Temple. It hosted the Republican Party convention of 1866.  That was in addition to hosting countless theater shows, musical performances, talks by traveling orators and authors, anti-slavery rallies, and much more.

In 1904, Socialist Party candidate Eugene V. Debs began his presidential campaign at a speaking engagement held at the Masonic Hall in Indianapolis. Debs, by the way, was a member of Terre Haute Lodge No. 19, F&AM.

Arguments over "regular" or "clandestine" Masons? Nope. The first public procession of the state's Prince Hall-derived, so-called 'African Masons' marched to our Masonic Temple, which hosted their inaugural banquet.

No religion in Masonic lodges? Balderdash. The first Indianapolis Masonic Temple provided its Freemasons Hall to two different churches for their Sunday services, and we weren't alone in that. Masonic lodges in America frequently partnered with a local church to share facilities as the western frontier pushed farther and farther into the wilderness. The reason why churches and Masonic lodges in countless states were both tax exempt from the beginning is because government leaders realized the importance of both institutions in forming and perpetuating the kind of 'civic virtues' that were (and are) so vital to the smooth functioning of a democracy. Churches and Masonry had (and have) the same ultimate goal - to make the world a better place by making our congregants and members better individuals.

During World War II, almost 100 of the major Masonic temples in the U.S. took part in the Masonic Service Association's Army/Navy Service Center program to provide vital services to military personnel. As late as the 1960s, before government took on the massive domination of public and civic life it has today, Masonic temples were frequently the hosts for new immigrant naturalization ceremonies. It was a perfect location to impress upon new citizens the sort of idealism that Masonry shared with the United States: toleration, cooperation, honesty, integrity, "with malice toward none, and charity for all." There could be no better institution than Freemasonry to hold out that shining example.

These days, I wish more Masonic halls were used as polling places, and it makes sense to periodically volunteer our spaces for that purpose to local election boards. They don't change very often, but if you have a lodge building that has great parking (few do), AND is easily handicap-accessible on one level (even fewer are), AND has a large enough clear space like a dining hall to hold the required tables and equipment, make sure your community's election officials are reminded that the Masons want to help.

Regardless of your political affiliation or opinion of any, or all, of the candidates this election season, let's congratulate Scranton's Masonic Temple for hosting this Town Hall meeting. Every single Masonic lodge in the U.S. should look to this example and offer its facility to local, state and national officials and candidates for their debates, public policy meetings, town halls, and other civic events like health fairs. Don't play favorites - be that deliberately neutral ground few others provide anymore. We're not activists, we're supposed to be formative, not performative. 

We were once at the very center of civic life in America. It's way past time for us to do it again.

Thursday's Town Hall will be hosted by Brett Baier and Martha MacCallum, and broadcast live from the Scranton Masonic Cultural Center on Thursday March 5th at 6:30pm EST on the Fox News Channel. It will be replayed at 11pm EST.

RELATED ARTICLES

Make Your Masonic Hall The Center of Your Community — Again

Make Your Masonic Hall The Center of Your Community — Again

A public radio station in Wisconsin posted an article Friday that shines a light on just how important a Masonic Temple really can be in a community. They looked at two different lodge buildings, in Rhinelander and Wassau, Wisconsin. The first is still owned by the fraternity, Rhinelander Lodge 22, while the second was vacated a few years ago. Wassau insisted on not tearing theirs down, but finding someone to rescue it.

The title of the article says it all: Not so Mysterious: Past and Present Masonic Temples Build Community

"Recently we received a question asking us to investigate the history of local Masonic Temples, which led us to wonder… what is the role of a Masonic Temple in a community?

"Mackenzie Martin headed to the Rhinelander Masonic Temple and the former Wausau Masonic Temple to find out...

(CLICK HERE to read the article in full, or listen to the NPR story - I quote much of it below)

When I was researching Heritage Endures, I came across news accounts of the very first joint Masonic Temple that was built in my home city of Indianapolis back in 1850. At the time, what is now the largest city in my state was still being created from scratch, a planned capitol city in the middle of a clearing in the woods that otherwise wouldn't have existed naturally at the confluence of two shallow, unnavigable rivers. The Grand Lodge and the lodges in Indianapolis built our first large, joint Masonic hall here at just about the same time the state opened its new State House on the opposite corner. We picked that important location then because so many of our members were involved in the government of the state and the new capitol city. 

You could make the case that we occupied the most influential street corner in the entire state of Indiana.

The Indianapolis Masonic Temple in 1850,
as it appeared when seen from the lawn of the Indiana State House

In 1850, before we even officially moved in and opened the doors, the state's delegates to the Constitutional Convention found that they couldn't all pack into the State House along with the General Assembly at the time. So, we volunteered our brand new Temple to them for the duration of hammering out the Indiana Constitution.

It's hard to get more vital to the entire state and the community than hosting a constitutional convention. Back then, we were a center of the community before we even moved in to the joint.

Over the years, our first Temple would be the preeminent public meeting space in town. We had built the biggest and the first public hall in the city, and theatrical productions, musical events, banquets, lectures, political speeches, touring groups and private parties all poured in to the Masonic Temple. Even more poured in once the railroad came to town and East Coast road shows could easily get here. 

Even when the Odd Fellows built their own large hall down the road six years later, most folks wanted to hold their important events with the Masons. 

The home of the Freemasons was no stranger to controversy then. "No religion, no politics!" only applied in an open lodge, not to the building itself. When a local church burned down, we let their congregation hold services there on Sundays until they could rebuild. Despite the image you might have about African-American versus caucasian Freemasonry before the Civil War, when the Prince Hall-descended 'African Masons' held their first public procession in Indiana in 1855, they ended at our Masonic Hall and held their 'sumptuous banquet' there. In the 1850s, the Indianapolis Masonic Temple was the site of numerous civil rights meetings, as pro- and anti-slavery forces duked it out in the run-up to the Civil War. Anti-slavery meetings were commonplace at the Temple. 

"No political speeches in Masonic halls??!!" Balderdash. They were common as ragweed.  Abraham Lincoln came to town and spoke there in 1859, and for decades no election went by  without one candidate or another, from any party, holding a speech or debate at the Masonic Temple.

Even after our first Temple was knocked down and replaced in the 1870s by a bigger one on the same corner, the new Indiana Freemasons Hall auditorium continued to host public events, despite having lots more competition in town by then. And when our present limestone Temple was built several blocks north in 1909 (giving up our choice location), our even bigger Indiana Freemasons Hall auditorium was used for many years for civic and political meetings, speaking engagements, musical recitals, even as a popular location for swearing in newly naturalized immigrant citizens. One of the first regular inhabitants of the theater was a Christian Science Church service every Sunday.

During World War II, our basement was remodeled into a Masonic Service Center for traveling servicemen, similar to a USO club. Many of the larger temples in bigger towns were part of a whole nationwide network of these centers that were developed by the Masonic Service Association. The Indianapolis Masonic Temple was listed in the paper every single day as a location in the city for military personnel who wanted a place to relax, write letters, read their local papers from all over the country, catch a nap between train or bus connections, get a decent meal, play cards or pool, or go to a dance on Fridays. Even all of our youth groups and the Eastern Star ladies pitched in to help staff it. And "everybody knew" the Masons were there to help. At least they did then.

Here's more of that article by Mackenzie Martin:

Masonic Temple in Rhinelander, Wisconsin

As is the case for many small towns, the Masons were instrumental in building Rhinelander in the early days. In 1930, the town of Rhinelander raised $50,000 to build the Masonic Temple, which was a lot of money for a small town going through a depression. They are also the oldest civic group and they laid the cornerstone for the Rhinelander District Library and the Oneida County Courthouse.

Whole rooms upstairs are full of historical portraits of Rhinelander’s early masons.

“It’s a lifetime of learning,” says Jones. “You start seeing some of the street names when you look at the rolls of members here, of what they did… The school board, the telephone company… It’s almost limitless what these men came up here to do... And then when you look at all of these pictures, they came up here by wagon train or on foot or by horse drawn carriage and they built something out of the woods. And that’s where we stand today...”

 I'm not sure when Masonic lodges decided to button up and shy away from being home to big community events. By the 1950s event announcements at our own downtown Temple slowed to a trickle. I'm sure much of that was due to our failure to air-condition the place. Countless other venues around the city were far more pleasant with their new 'refrigerated air' systems, at least during the summer months. We never cushioned our wooden theater seats from 1909 that still retain their wire under-seat racks for holding hats, from the age when all proper gentlemen still covered their heads. We essentially shut the doors to our auditorium in 1963 when even our Grand Lodge moved its large annual meetings across the street into the bigger and more comfortable climes of the Scottish Rite Cathedral. I'm sure our 19th-century brethren who wore wool three-piece suits and beaver felt hats everywhere would call us pathetic, cringing little milk sop girlie-men now.

In addition, our state's Masonic code got filled up with more and more restrictions on use of lodge rooms that too many Masons believed also included the rest of their Temples. Rules were tweaked to specify what groups could and couldn't use the lodge rooms; Sunday events were banned; Masonic trustees became more and more convinced that the lodge was somehow sacrosanct or secret or both, and the public was shut out for everything but fish frys and occasional family and friend nights. 

That's a damn shame, because that's just about the very same time American Freemasonry was starting on its downward decline in size that has never stopped since. Maybe part of that can be laid at the feet of our own retreat from being vital gathering places for the community. We gave up being essential to the civic fabric of our towns, cities and states, which helped perpetuate the great tail-eating ouroboros of dwindling membership and vanishing public image.

We even went through an absurd national movement in the 1980s and 90s to remove the world temple from our buildings and replace it with generically non-specific terms like Masonic center, lest somebody get the wacky notion that anything solemn, sacred or even vaguely important might go on inside.

But some of our leaders have finally looked around and are starting to ask why we shouldn't be clawing back that vital position within our communities we occupied for so long, and can again. That seems to be the case in Wisconsin. Here's more from that article:

Giving back to the community is a huge part of what their Masonic Lodge is trying to do now, but it didn’t used to be like that. It all changed about two years ago, prompted by a decision from Wisconsin’s Grand Lodge.

“The Most Worshipful Grand Master of the State of Wisconsin sent out a note, or an edict, out to all the lodges, saying it’s time to become family-friendly again,” says Jones. “A lot of the lodges were kind of shrinking in number and so that wasn’t going out.”

“We got together and said, you know, our organization can go one of two ways,” says Bob Dionne. “We can keep doing what we’re doing and just dry up and blow away, or we can change.”

They decided to bring the Masonic Temple back to the old days of being a community building, when Prom and other events had been held in the basement. They now host community events with partners like the Rhinelander District Library in addition to weddings and other parties now. This September, they're one of four downtown Rhinelander music venues for Project North Festival.

Both of Jones and Dionne now feel like they’re using the building for the purpose it was meant to be used for, even if not everyone agrees.

“There are people who think we should maintain the integrity of what it was,” says Jones. “I like what we’re doing now because people like coming here.”

Jones also says that in a world of online interactions in an area as spread out as the Northwoods, he thinks the message of masonry to create an in-person social network for men especially resonates today...

In keeping with that newly invigorated sense of civic participation, the Rhinelander Lodge is holding a "Roots Celebration" in October that will invite local clubs and civic groups to participate and "celebrate the history" of their town. From the poster, it appears it will be a two-day event, and is exactly what every lodge needs to take a careful look at and adapt for our communities. 

Up until the last half of the 20th century, everyone in any town that contained a lodge knew who and what the Masons were and what their importance was to their community. That's been lost as society has balkanized and become isolated into tinier and tinier slices.  Nothing can or will change overnight, but this is an excellent start.

Constantine Consistory's annual Men's Health Fair in 2018

Similarly, here in my own city the local Prince Hall Scottish Rite Masons host a Men's Health Fair every year. They invite the local health, hospital and related services, and it is well supported. They do theirs at a local neighborhood center instead of their Temple (which is arguably not large enough for this fair), but there's no question that 'The Masons' are the hosts and organizers. They also provide voter registration, food vendors, and more. Local politicians are often attracted enough by this fair to show up and meet the community - something that mainstream Masons used to accomplish naturally and don't anymore. With fewer Americans out there who have an awareness of who and what we are now, the PHA guys are making sure their local community has a reason to remember "The Masons." We can all learn a good lesson from this.

And what better organization could hold an event that appeals specifically to men than Freemasons?

The rest of the Wisconsin article talks about adaptive re-use of a Masonic Temple once the Masons inside pitch it overboard. The immediate question that comes to mind is, if a private individual can make a financial go of running a large venue with big public spaces inside, why can't 50 or 100 Masons do it, keep their temple, and still make it an active money-generating space for the public? 

As the article points out, our older buildings (not the generic steel pole barns in potato fields, but the centrally located, impressive ones that we once spent a fortune to build) are still significant community centerpieces, whether Masons inhabit them or not - too significant to let them fall down. What we once looked upon with pride and worthy of our work and sacrifice, we now regard as disposable and no more significant than an abandoned Taco Bell. Fortunately, not everybody feels that way. Our communities still recognize them for the important places they are, even when we think of them as nothing but albatrosses to be put out of our collective misery:

The Temple in Wausau was sold.
In May, it opened as Whitewater Music Hall.

Meanwhile across the country, many Masonic lodges have had to downsize and move out of their temples because there are less Masons than there used to be. It’s not all bad, though. In some communities, it’s creating a new kind of community space.

For example, Minocqua Brewing Company in Minocqua used to be a Masonic Temple, and the former Masonic Temple in Wausau was recently sold and in May, it opened as Whitewater Music Hall.

One of the owners, Kelly Ballard, says the history of the building is a big part of the reason she loves it. They barely changed anything when they moved in.

“The layout is one thing,” she says. “It’s perfect as far as they have their gathering room, plus their ceremonial room serves our purposes of having a tap room and a music space.”

Ballard says Whitewater Music Hall wants to be a stage for everyone in the greater Wausau community, and she’s excited to be in a building that she thinks was overlooked for the last few years. But she also knows it’ll take some time to rebrand themselves.

“Until this first generation dies, this will always be the Masonic Temple,” she says.

She’s hoping a mural on one of the walls next year will help.

In the end, the purpose a Masonic Temple serves in the community depends on the community and the Masonic Lodge. No matter what Masonic Temple you’re in though, there’s likely a lot of history there – and a few secrets.

Take a good hard look at your own city, town or village, and think hard about what sort of role your Temple could be playing there. Who needs to build a new "neighborhood center" when the Masons did it a century ago, and it's still there waiting to be re-discovered? Make your Temple the place where volunteers teach English lessons to immigrants, or the Kiwanis and the Optimists meet. Offer it up to Weight Watchers, Al-Anon, an "opioid addiction support group," a daycare center, a computer skills learning center, or what YOUR community is in need of. 

And here's a completely hare-brained closing thought to consider: if your lodge already moved out of downtown years ago, and you now see that your old city center is reemerging as the hot new place to live again? If the old Masonic Temple is still there, find out if you can rent back your old lodge room from the current owners and return to the place from whence you came. You might find a whole new life for a struggling, anonymous suburban lodge. Or charter a brand new lodge in that old location again and be there for a whole new generation of young men.

This isn't a plan that a grand lodge needs to invent for you. All Freemasonry is local. Be part of the larger civic solution, the way we used to be all along. 

And become indispensable to your own neighbors... all over again.

How the 1960s Really Killed American Freemasonry's Future

When critics of Freemasonry opine that fraternities like ours aren't suited to Modern Man™ or Modern Society™, they might very well be right. But the problem is that those critics don't seem to really know just WHY they are right.

When I was writing Heritage Endures two years ago, I was working on a chapter addressing the thorny issue of membership numbers, and how they have affected American Freemasonry since about 1960. I was writing specifically about Indiana, but I looked out at the larger American landscape to see what grand lodges had done since the 1950s in reaction to falling numbers of men becoming Masons. The short answer is that they made BIG changes, and most were not for the better. 

In my own way, I was engaging in the very sort of monster hunting that I have accused others of in an effort to see just what the original tipping point really was that sent us into a shrinking membership. I never found it before my deadline, but I didn't really care at the time, because I was actually just wanting to chronicle what changes had resulted: things like reduced proficiency standards, one-day classes, printed rituals, open recruitment, advertising, lowering of petitioning ages to 18, and lots more were all done to address shrinking numbers of petitioners and ongoing participation. If you want the stories about those changes, you need to read the book. But those were all effects, not the cause.

Well, I think I've stumbled into it. At least, I think it was a MAJOR cause, if not THE cause. and you might think I'm crazy or just engaging in rank nostalgia for some misty, forgotten era that never existed. And I'm not. 

I'm dead serious.*

It was the death of the McGuffey Readers in America's schools.

In 1837, an American son of Scottish immigrants named William Holmes McGuffey was teaching in Ohio, and he was asked by a Cincinnati printer to devise a series of books to teach children how to read. McGuffey had worked as a traveling teacher since the age of 14, and eventually became a lecturer on theology at Ohio's Miami University. Between 1836-37, he created four volumes of graded readers (eventually expanded to six, with the help of his brother Alexander). The first volume of McGuffey's Eclectic First Reader for Young Children began with the simplest of phrases and the basics of phonics, just as most of us have learned to read today: A cat and a rat. The lad has a hat. See the frog on the log. And so on. Each succeeding chapter and subsequent volumes became more complex as the reading level rose. The books also taught children how to write, showing examples of handwritten sentences, and requiring kids to practice with chalk on slate to emulate them.

The McGuffey Readers became enormously popular almost instantly. They were snatched up by American teachers all over the growing nation, and this coincided with the explosion of demands in the 1820s and 30s for public education in every new state. McGuffey's method was vastly superior to the way the Founding Fathers had learned to read and write, by rote memorization and endlessly writing proverbs in a copybook.

As a direct result of McGuffey's books and the teaching method that came about, the Americans who fought in the Civil War in the 1860s as 20-year olds were the first literate, mass-educated generation in the modern world. That's why Civil War-era letters and diaries from soldiers on both sides of the conflict are so vivid and numerous today, compared to previous eras.

Between the first editions in 1836-37, all the way through 1960, more than 130 million McGuffey Readers were sold, and it has been conservatively estimated that each copy was read by at least ten students. That's how pervasive they were. And that's why when the McGuffey Readers were yanked out of schools in the early 1960s, it has had what is clearly a direct and arguably corrosive effect on society at large, and for the purposes of this story, on Freemasonry itself. Here's why.

The more advanced Readers contained increasingly sophisticated stories and excerpts of what were (and still are) considered the Classics: the Bible, Shakespeare, Dr. Johnson, John Milton, Byron, Charles Dickens, Sir Walter Scott, Washington Irving, founding fathers like Franklin and Jefferson. As children learned to read and the volumes advanced, they were introduced to the great works of literature and taught not to fear them. McGuffey himself was a Scots Presbyterian, a Calvinist at heart, a Biblical scholar, and he taught theology. Consequently, as they progressed, the books instilled his messages of what he saw as universal beliefs, habits and manners in every single student who learned to read using his Reader. The Biblical passages were used to teach moral lessons, not religious or denominational ones. The non-Biblical readings also taught allegories, explained historical events, or told heroic tales of acclaimed heroes of the past. There were poems, tales of excitement and daring, cautionary fables, and countless others that became the shared fabric of what "everybody knew" in America. 

Additionally, McGuffey's method stressed the importance of speaking properly. Generations of children were encouraged to memorize passages from the books to be recited aloud. This was their first experiences in speaking in public, along with the mental discipline of memorization. McGuffey's instructions in the books urged students to engage in discussions to more fully understand what they had read about. In this way, children were taught the basics of logic and public oratory.

In the 1870s after McGuffey's death, his books were revised and the reading passages were updated. At that time, the Readers were given a facelift with new illustrations, and new messages replaced some of the Biblical readings, but certainly not all. Critics had complained that the original books didn't apply to the enormous new waves of immigrants who came to America, which is why they were revised with more specifically American themes at that time. They were made more patriotic in nature, and taught what we call today the civil religion - what later critics sneeringly came to mock as 'middle-class values' in the 1960s and afterward. Even the most innocuous of reading exercises gently nudged messages about responsibilities: bravery, honor, manners, mutual respect, doing good, not being rude, sharing, friendship, industriousness, and charity. In other words, guidelines for being a good citizen.

All of these were in line with what the Founders had regarded as the founding principles that were absolutely necessary to the success of the American experiment of a democratic republic. The Founders agreed that the public was nothing more than a mob if they weren't equipped with a basic moral code they wouldn't violate when no one was looking. That was the only way the new American society could possibly work without falling apart. McGuffey provided that handbook in a pretty effortless manner, even to those who would never set foot in a church or crack open Deuteronomy.

Modern scholars and sociologists want to pig-wrestle McGuffey's Readers (the very few alive today who know about them) into the blame game that hurls race and gender roles into the wider societal slop bucket - and nearly every other discussion these days - but that's not at all a fair estimation of the enormous and pivotal role the Readers had. They became the common currency of general knowledge for nearly every single American child - from the children of millionaires, Supreme Court justices, and captains of industry, right down to the kids of street sweepers, coal miners and ditch diggers. Toney kids from Philadelphia's Main Line, Boston's Beacon Hill, and the FFV's of Virginia in 1950 learned to read the very same stories and learn the same lessons and moral code that freed slaves, illiterate immigrants, and backwoods dirt farmers and their children did in 1870. 

More than any other influence on America, the McGuffey Reader became the great leveler for almost a century and a half.

The Age of Snark didn't begin in the 2000s, it started in the mid-50s. By the 1960s, McGuffey's books were branded as hopelessly out of date and out of touch with "modern society." McGuffey's Readers were put on the chopping block and eliminated in favor of the Dick and Jane stories, blanched of the virtues, patriotism, morals and manners messages. Gone, too, were the standardized Classical reading excerpts found in the more advanced Readers. So were were McGuffy's readings about rural life and ethics, in favor of SRA reading exercises that leaned more heavily on the cynicism and "sophistication" of city dwellers (overwhelmingly New Yorkers) regarding small town life and "middle-class morality."  Thus, the almost universally shared cultural messages passed on to tens of millions of American children each year that made the country so homogenous in attitudes when they entered adulthood - regardless of race, gender, national origin, religion, or social class - were eliminated in less than a decade. The second half of the Baby Boomers became the first generation to learn how to read without McGuffy's guiding voice about ethics, virtue, morality, manners, language, and introduction to the Classics. No generation of American children since has shared that common basis of education on a widespread basis. And what used to be called the 'Melting Pot' of America was replaced by what modern sociology majors call the 'Salad Bowl,' in which we now share very little in common.

With the death of McGuffey's Readers went so much that helped Freemasonry to grow to its enormous size in the 1870s, again in the 1920s, and finally in the 1950s. That common, shared set of principles, morals and literary knowledge that was taught to almost every child all across the country was baked into the cakes of the millions of men who joined (and grew) our Masonic lodges. They all learned it exactly the same way, and even your 80-year old grandparents today can likely still recite some passage they learned as a child in a Reader from memory. Few Americans have ever read the Bible cover to cover in this or any other age. But the passages in McGuffey were everyone's collective knowledge base, because nearly everyone had read them. The reading selections were overwhelmingly optimistic, uplifting, laudatory, and at times cautionary. Consequently, they were even more influential than any church on the mass consciousness of all Americans for 130 years.

Those very same messages were reinforced by the lessons in the fraternal groups that grew by leaps and bounds during the very same era - Freemasonry included (along with the Odd Fellows, the Knights of Pythias, the Red Men, the Woodmen, and hundreds more). Consider that those pre-1960s generations were not put off by what many today see as tortured language in the rituals, or Albert Pike's prose. What many modern Masons see as creaky or anachronistic stage plays in the Scottish Rite were common currency up to three generations ago, when your next-door neighbors were still actively involved in local theater groups, and every teenager learned debating and speech making. 

The morality plays of Masonic ritual were analogous to a live theater version of McGuffey for generations of Freemasons. The lessons of Freemasonry that stress virtues like fortitude, justice, temperance and prudence were found as often in McGuffey as in the Old Testament. That was true for members of mainstream grand lodges in the U.S. and Prince Hall-derived ones alike. Take a look at the contents of the Fifth Reader: the second and third readings were lessons about "The Poor Widow" and "The Orphan." There's "The Just Judge" and "Decisive integrity" and "The Intemperate Husband."  There's a passage about "The Festal Board" and "True Wisdom." There's "A Hebrew Tale" and "Death and Life." 

When grand lodges 'back East' like Virginia and Pennsylvania first sent charters for new lodges into the expanding wilderness as America grew westward in the late 1700s, their reasons were simple: to educate and civilize a rough and rugged population in regions that had no formal schools. Masonic lodges didn't carry the denominational baggage that the competing churches did, and they taught something that the churches weren't: how to effectively operate a democratic society in a world that had little experience at it at the time. But Masonry didn't achieve explosive growth until the end of the Morgan Anti-Masonic period and after the end of the Civil War because society was still largely illiterate. The majority of Americans in 1825 would have little or no appreciation of the Liberal Arts and Sciences because they had no experience of the concepts. But a growing number of adult American men over 20 years of age by 1865 DID have a basic understanding, and McGuffey's readers were the reason. And by 1870, grand lodges were chartering lodges by the hundreds each year - so fast that influential Masonic leaders became alarmed that they were growing too big, too quickly.

After American Freemasons topped more than 4 million in 1959, the decline began the very next year from which the fraternity has never rebounded. And it wasn't just the Masonic fraternity, either. Both Robert Putnam and Theda Skocpol wrote seminal studies around 2000 that recorded the dramatic plunge in America's voluntary associations and chapter-based organizations of all kinds after 1960 — from lodges like the Masons, Odd Fellows, Elks, and Eagles, to PTAs, card-playing clubs, bowling leagues, and the American Red Cross. Church attendance has been in a steady decline since that time, as well. Americans didn't want to associate with each other any more. But we've lost something more than just the desire to be with other people. 

It was by 1960 that the McGuffey Readers were entirely phased out nationally (although it started in the 1930s), and I would argue that Freemasonry and other similar institutions cannot recover because Americans — and all Westerners — no longer share those common cultural guidelines anymore. Freemasonry is, at its core, a Western philosophy that put the ideals of the English and French Enlightenment into concrete practice. But just like the democratic republic of the United States, its success is predicated upon a certain commonality of shared ethics, behavior and knowledge among its potential members. What Freemasonry teaches our members goes hand in hand with the 'civil religion' that the Founders believed to be essential. Without it, the whole thing collapses like last week's leftover broccoli. And that should concern all of us. 

In an age when no one "knows" anything anymore and our collective memory has been replaced by consulting Wikipedia on our iPhones while seeking 'likes' for our Twitter post one-liners, there's a whole lot more in danger now than just fewer Masons showing up for stated meetings. It is probably simplistic to say, but you can arguably trace much of the rank incivility and bleak pessimism that is so rampant today directly to the replacement of McGuffey's lessons by Howard Zinn and his ilk's deliberate anarchy, revisionism, and miserablism in the textbooks that have dominated schools since the late 1960s.

The McGuffey  Readers are still in print to this day, and still being used. In 1985, there were 150,000 sold. Today, they still sell about 30,000 a year, and they remain popular with private schools and home school families. So if I follow this premise to its logical conclusion, Freemasonry may have its greatest future among the young men educated in those types of environments.

But that's another article.

*As we used to say in the advertising business, 'Where do ideas come from? Somebody else!' I veered into this notion of McGuffy's Readers and the effects on society by their disappearance in Charles Murray's brilliant study, Coming Apart (2012). Anyone wanting to explore the death of middle-class mores and culture in the U.S. between 1960 and 2010 needs to start with Murray's book, which statistically lays out his case in black and blue. Murray's a dirty word in academic circles these days, and that's because he can back up his assertions with real facts and figures instead of feelings and opinions. It should be the next book you read after Putnam's Bowling Alone and Theda Skocpol's Diminished Democracy.

POST SCRIPT JULY 29, 2019

Charles Murray's theory of the McGuffey Readers' effects seems to resonated with others. About a month after this was posted here, Jon Miltimore picked up the theme on the Intellectual Takeout website. Have a look at his article A Code of Manhood for a Generation Suffering a ‘Masculinity Crisis’.