THOMAS W. JACKSON
Honorary Director, MASONIC FORUM Magazine
Several years ago, I experienced these two situations on the same day. First, an attorney from Lebanon with multiple academic degrees was in my office. He wanted to become a Freemason because of how much he thought it meant to the world and how much influence it had. His mother was one of his major sources of informa-tion. He was so enthusiastic, that it became the first time I found myself downplaying the power and influence of the Craft. That evening I spoke at a lodge meeting. Following the meeting, a member talked with me and told me that he was considering resigning his membership because of his disappointment with what Freemasonry had become, and I found myself defending it. That day I found myself caught between the idealism and the realism that has become Freemasonry.
The history of the world is replete with the names of men who have led in their country’s struggles for freedom and liberty. Some of these names may not be known to all of us but they are household names in their respective countries and areas of the world. In the United States, many of the names of our early patriots who led in its struggles for freedom are well known to most of us.
Canada has had its share of great government leaders who were also Masons, including six Prime Ministers. The first was Sir John A. MacDonald, and more recently, Right Honourable John G. Diefenbaker. We can add to that list Brothers such as Joseph Brant, John Ross Robertson, and Most Rev. William Lockridge Wright as Masonic greats who helped shape Canada. I also learned from M. W. Brother Bob Davies of the influence of Masonic brothers in the R.C.M.P. who greatly impacted Canada’s development.
These men all had at least one thing in common. They were all Freemasons. They were all nurtured in a Masonic Lodge, where they were taught the precepts of freedom, liberty and equality. This is not to imply that it was the Craft alone that made them the great men they became, but nor can it be coincidence that those who led in struggles for freedom in so many countries of the world that has freedom, were Freemasons.
History is also replete with the names of other men who most will recognize. We all know the names of Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Franco, Tito and Khomeini. They also had at least one thing in common. They all were enemies of Freemasonry.
Freemasons died by the tens of thousands at the hands of these men’s regimes simply because they were Freema- sons. Much has changed over the ensuing years, but tyrants remain the enemies of our Craft, and we should have no problem with that. We should wear their enmity as mantles of pride, for to oppose tyranny is to embrace freedom and that is a structural character of the Masonic Fraternity.
Historically, we have always risen above their attacks. It may have taken considerable time in some cases, but we have risen. Where there has been tyranny, Freemasonry has survived only underground, but it has survived the onslaught of tyrants almost from its inception, even flourishing in spite of them.
Of even graver concern, are those who have chosen to become our enemies and who quite possibly have benefited the most because of our existence. What makes this an even greater tragedy, is that their opposition to the Craft is for the very same reasons as that of the tyrant.
It’s almost incomprehensible that Freemasonry could have as opponents religious and government leaders of the free world, when they might very well be in those positions because of the efforts of Freemasons. And yet, even as with the tyrants, there have been men in these categories who must rank with the Craft’s greatest enemies. They also have had no long lasting effect upon our survival in the past, even though they can be traced back almost to our inception.
However, we, my Brothers, are today accomplishing what none of our enemies from without have been able to accomplish. I know that what I am about to say will be approaching heresy to some, but then, fools rush in where angels fear to tread.
We, my Brothers, are providing the environment for our own extinction. We, the leaders of the Craft for the last twenty years, have aided in the gradual eroding of the quality of the membership, and it is this loss of quality, that is the greatest threat to our survival as a significant institution.This loss of quality is already showing an impact on our quantity and it is counterproductive to that very goal of increasing quantity that is causing it. Why do we take this road?
Many of our decisions in recent years indicate a lack of interest in preserving the quality of the Craft. We seem more intent on redefining and reshaping it, for the simple reason that we, as leaders, do not want to be judged as failures because our numbers have decreased, and yet we acknowledge that this is a sociological phenomenon affect- ing almost all organizations. It is a phenomenon we cannot change, and it is one, which we must ride out. My Brothers, we cannot afford to continue to evaluate ourselves in terms of quantity instead of quality. To do so offers little hope for a future of an organization that changed this world, and we, as leaders, will shoulder the blame for future generations.
I quote from the book Reflections of Masonic Values: “If we shall not be careful in the admission of candidates and improve the procedure of admission, we are then starting the composition of a funeral hymn for the death of our noble institution. As Freemasons, we should not allow this to happen. If we do, we are doomed for we have just hammered the last nail in the sarcophagus of Freemasonry.”
We all realize that the Craft has had its ups and downs, its increases and decreases in numbers during its entire history. Following the Morgan affair in North America, it almost became extinct in some areas, but it survived to flourish again. Nothing the world outside threw against it was able to hold it down for long. Freemasonry in Russia, although little known, is perhaps a classic example of the tenacity of this organization. It might also be used as a study as to what the result could be if our approach in North America continues along the pathway we have been following in recent years.
Margaret Jacob wrote in Living the Enlightenment, that Freemasonry passed out of serious scholarship in the late 1940s, and I would suggest that this was the time when we began to lose focus on what we were. It is interesting that it was also the time of our most rapid growth. It was the beginning of our failure to guard the west gate. Even then however, quantity over quality was not promoted by our top leadership as it is today.
In my first dozen years as Grand Secretary, I never saw a resignation for religious reasons. Now we receive them routinely. Opposition by religious leaders is not new to Freemasonry, but it is becoming more pervasive and effectual. Why do you suppose that is? There was also the time when most of the prominent lay leaders of our churches were also the prominent community leaders, and they were also Freemasons. To attack Freemasonry was to attack the most supportive members of the church and the quality leaders of the community. We are now failing to attract these quality leaders. The church leadership has no longer reason to be concerned about our influence.
We have admitted for years, that only 10% of our membership is active (although I have often wondered where that statistic came from). This, of course, means that 90% is inactive, and yet they continue to pay their dues year after year, knowing full well that they will never be active. There is only one logical reason for doing this. They have a perceived value in being able to say: “I am a Freemason.” Take away that perceived value, and we risk losing the 90%, and that is what we are seeing today. The willingness to be suspended for non-payment of dues or the submission of resignations is indicative of a loss of respect for the meaning of Freemasonry by our own members.
We, as leaders, have made more changes in our struc- ture and system in those twenty years than have probably taken place in the last 200 years. This has all been done for one reason: to acquire numbers, and frankly, my Brothers, I don’t know if we have even slowed the loss. We may not have stemmed the decline of numbers, but we surely have decreased our influence in society and, with this decrease, our ability to accomplish our purpose.
I find it difficult to comprehend why we are incapable of recognizing that most of these changes made have not only not benefited us, but indeed may have caused considerable harm. I don’t understand our attempts to emulate other organizations that are declining at least as rapidly as are we, and with whom we cannot compete to begin with.
Freemasonry has been the best, we were different, and we were unique. Why not build on that uniqueness instead of trying to convert into something we have never been nor ever meant to be? There has never been any organization that could lay claim to being more significant to the world, outside of organized religion, than has Freemasonry. Why not look at Freemasonry in the world where it is succeeding, where it remains influential and try to emulate it? I am not in opposition to change when it is to our benefit, but we must recognize and distinguish what is beneficial and admit when we have failed.
I had some serious problems with the paper presented to the Grand Masters’ Conference by the Imperial Potentate at Savannah a few weeks ago, even though he had some valid points. When he said that we should ask how many Shriners are present at our lodge meetings, and then stated that we “will be amazed at the number of Shriners that are now keeping your lodges open and are officers,” then I must disagree.
Let it be known now that I am a very proud Shriner, but I became a Shriner because of Freemasonry, and I served as a Lodge officer not because I was a Shriner, but because I was a Freemason. I was not a Shriner keeping my Lodge open. I was a Lodge officer who also joined the Shrine. Without the early requirement of Masonic membership as a prerequisite for Shrine membership, which supplied the quality, the Shrine would quite probably be just another social club today, and a deletion of that quality may make it so.
There is no question that the environment in which we exist has changed. Now we must determine whether we wish to retain our principles and values and lift others to meet our ideals or change to fit into the standards of present day society.
We must also acknowledge that the present-day environment is undergoing a metamorphosis more rapidly than ever in our past. Changes are taking place today in our world, which out of necessity, must cause us to pause and analyse how we will fit in as part of that environment. Freemasonry could and may play a vital role as a stabilizing force in society throughout that metamorphosis. But we surely will not if we can’t even stabilize ourselves. We must reexamine our purpose, our precepts, and our philosophy and be willing to make changes in our modes of operation when necessary, but we must be certain that those changes do nothing to damage or destroy the basic principles and precepts with which we were born and with which we flourished.
I cannot believe that a philosophy that sustained us for almost 300 years is not applicable to today’s world. Have we become an anachronism in present-day society? Have our principles and values actually had no place for the last quarter century? I think not. Why then do we continue to make a concentrated effort to change into something we are not, and fail to recognize that we are destroying the quality of the Craft that is necessary to support that philosophy? If we truly do believe that our philosophy and principles have a place in the modern world, then we must pull others up to meet our philosophical standards not step down to meet theirs.
John Robinson made an astute observation concerning our Craft well before he became a member. He said that the problem with Freemasonry today is that it does not practice Freemasonry anymore. My Brothers, how can we, when the vast majority of our members do not even know what to practice? We don’t need more members. We need more Freemasons.
For the first time in our long and glorious history, historians are finally writing about Freemasonry, but they are not writing about our quantity. They are writing about our quality. What they write in the future is now in our hands. We cannot let it become less than it was, nor less than it can be.
Excerpt from: Thomas W. Jackson, North American Freemasonry – Idealism & Realism, Plumbstone, Washington DC, 2019, pp 1-8
