I Was Wrong, Conspiracies Are No Laughing Matter

by Midnight Freemasons Contributor

WB Darin A. Lahners

In September and October, Freemason Lodges across Illinois started to receive anti-Masonic literature like that above.  This literature was deposited by a person or persons who not only have no idea what Freemasonry is or does, but that also decided to reuse arguments from Leo Taxil's hoax as the main basis for their Anti-Masonic rants.  Today, the arsonist that attacked several lodges in Vancouver, British Columbia was sentenced.  While he attacked them because of his drug problem and mental illness, the basis for the attack was because of his belief that the Freemasons were up to no good.  I also read today on social media about a brother who was having a conversation with some of his other brothers in front of his Masonic lodge after an event, when a truck stopped and a gentleman got out and started calling them, "Baby-eating satanists." 

The last example has realized my fear that some of the conspiracies put forth by Q-Anon, which has linked Freemasons and/or the Illuminati as being part of the cabal made up of satan-worshiping pedophile US politicians and entertainers which they believe wanted to remove and keep former President Trump from rooting them out, is at the heart of the rise of anti-masonic rhetoric.

Read about it - "Facebook Removes Thousands of Pages Linked to QANON Conspiracy Theory"

It's gotten so bad that there are people claiming that the Bible that President Biden took his oath on is a "Freemasonic Bible", further giving credence to their beliefs.  Read about it here.

We only need to look back in our recent history to see what popular Anti-Masonic sentiment did to our craft.  This culminated with the formation of a political party that sent members of it to Congress in the 1830s. Is it only a matter of time before we face similar forces?

When I raised my concerns about this disturbing trend on other social media platforms, most of the reaction I have received is that I'm somehow legitimizing the conspiracies by addressing them.  Unfortunately, I do not think that we can afford to bury our collective heads in the sand, and to believe that the people that believe these conspiracies are going to disappear--they're growing in number.  Recent polls have shown that 15-20% of Americans agree with Q-Anon's beliefs, while others have shown that it's more like 4-5%. Any percentage over 0% is too much.

Back in the simpler days of September 2017, I wrote a satirical piece for this very blog about Conspiracy Theories and Freemasonry.   You can find the article here. 

I was wrong.

At the end of the article, I stated that I didn't care what someone believed as long as they were a brother. Unfortunately, I need to say that this is no longer the case.  I do not care what your religious beliefs or political affiliations are as long as they are not ones that hold that Freemasonry is evil, immoral, or indecent. If you subscribe to anti-Masonic conspiratorial beliefs, then we are in opposition.  Yes, I understand that I also just wrote an article about Being Curious and not Judgmental,  however,  I cannot in good conscience do that when the person on the other side of the argument has already judged the institution of Freemasonry as being something that it is not and will never be.

I want to be clear because I don't want to get accused of taking sides politically for having specifically called out Q-Anon.  This isn't a political issue.  Any group that holds anti-Masonic conspiratorial beliefs regardless of their political leaning is a direct threat to the institution of Freemasonry. Also--it's just plain rubbish.

Our new Grandmaster in Illinois, MWB Michael Jackson, made a very important point to the Freemasons gathered at our Annual Communication in October.  His point was that a Masonic Lodge is like the human body.  If it is not active, it will atrophy and will most likely die.  However, if it is active and healthy, then it has a better chance of survival.  His words ring true as there is only one way to combat conspiracies, and it's something that my mother lodge has been struggling with--hell, many lodges are struggling with this. The only way to combat conspiracies is to show that they are not true by being transparent and active in your community.  

This means opening your lodge doors by having open houses and inviting your community in.  Yes, we need to start talking about what Freemasons are and what we do in public forums. Not only this, but we also need to start participating in community events and actively promoting our charitable efforts in the media (social and otherwise) if we are not already doing so.          

While we might not convince someone that is firmly entrenched in their conspiratorial beliefs about Freemasonry, we can at least try to make sure that those same beliefs don't spread like cancer in our communities by showing that we are the opposite of what the conspiracies say we are.  We will not be giving away our secrets by doing so.  Who knows, maybe we might gain some new members this way as well.  We just need to make sure that we are doing our due diligence and guarding the West Gate.

~DAL

WB Darin A. Lahners is our Co-Managing Editor. He is a host and producer of the "Meet, Act and Part" podcast. He is currently serving the Grand Lodge of Illinois Ancient Free and Accepted Masons as the Area Education Officer for the Eastern Masonic Area. He is a Past Master of St. Joseph Lodge No.970 in St. Joseph. He is also a plural member of Homer Lodge No. 199 (IL), where he is also a Past Master. He’s a member of the Scottish Rite Valley of Danville, a charter member of Illinois Royal Arch Chapter, Admiration Chapter No. 282, and a member of the Salt Fork Shrine Club under the Ansar Shrine. You can reach him by email at darin.lahners@gmail.com. 

Sure You're a Master Mason, But Are You A Fellow?

by Midnight Freemason Contributor

Robert H. Johnson

Last week I decided to read a paper on the podcast, Whence Came You? In it, the author described the organization of Freemasonry in the days of our operative craftsman--when we were literally laying stones. Something that caught my eye and that I pointed out within the episode was related to the following:

In the days of our operative craft, a person became an Apprentice, and when they were good enough, they became a Master. But if they traveled and truly worked, they were a Fellow. So here we are today, three degrees in Freemasonry. Entered Apprentice, Fellowcraft (Fellow of the Craft), and Master Mason.

We put all the prestige on Master Mason, don't we? In several Lodges of Research to which I belong, Illinois Lodge of Research, Kansas, California, (I just petitioned Missouri)-- to become a Fellow, means you have produced actual work. Of course, you need to be a Master Mason to join..but not everyone is a Fellow.

You don't just go to the "...big meets and big eats." as Joseph Fort Newton puts it. The Fellow has something he's done--something tangible that you can see, hold, read, experience. To me, with this in mind, I think "Fellowship" is something to which we should all strive toward. Be a Fellow.

~RHJ

RWB Johnson is a Co-Managing Editor of the Midnight Freemasons blog. He is a Freemason out of the 2nd N.E. District of Illinois. He currently serves as the Secretary of Spes Novum Lodge No. 1183. He is a Past Master of Waukegan Lodge 78 and a Past District Deputy Grand Master for the 1st N.E. District of Illinois. Brother Johnson currently produces and hosts weekly Podcasts (internet radio programs) Whence Came You? & Masonic Radio Theatre which focuses on topics relating to Freemasonry. He is also a co-host of The Masonic Roundtable, a Masonic talk show. He is a husband and father of four, works full time in the executive medical industry. He is the co-author of "It's Business Time - Adapting a Corporate Path for Freemasonry" and is currently working on a book of Masonic essays and one on Occult Anatomy to be released soon.

It Matters

by Midnight Freemason Contributor

Darin A. Lahners

Three weeks ago I was sitting with a candidate about to undertake his Entered Apprentice degree at historic Homer Lodge #199 in Homer, Illinois. Something happened that evening that I don’t recall ever happening to me previously in Freemasonry. Granted, I’ve only been a Master Mason since 2011, so my Masonic experience is less than 10 years. However, I was so caught off guard by it, that I felt it necessary to discuss it. The candidate, Tyler and I were eating dinner prior to his degree, and he looked around the dining room and asked me: “Are all these guys here for me?” My reply, was: “Yes, they’re all here for your degree tonight.” To which his reply was: “That’s awesome.” It was in this moment, which only shared between the two of us, that I realized that it displayed the power of our fraternity. He was the first candidate that I had ever heard recognize the effort that these men, who were for the most part essentially still strangers to him, were putting forth for him and express that he felt gracious for it.

On a grander scale, what the candidate acknowledged was something many of us already know, our strength lies with our active membership. According to the Masonic Service Association of North America, in 2017 the Grand Lodges of the United States of America had a combined 1,076,626 members. Extrapolating this number further, let me argue that 10% of that membership is active. For the purpose of this article, I’m defining active as a member that is attending regular stated meetings and degree work more often than not. That leaves 107,662 members that are responsible for keeping their lodges going, and participating in degrees, for the whole of the United States as of 2017. I would suspect that the number maybe down to around 100,000 members in 2019 as well as close to a million total members given attrition.

Furthermore, I’d be willing to wager that the average age of the active membership is somewhere in the mid 50’s to mid 60’s. What does this mean? Personally I take it as a challenge to step up my game. I turned 46 on Saturday, October 19. While I consider myself a decent ritualist, there is still much that I need to learn. Why? Because at some point, the brothers that are currently doing it won’t be there to do it anymore. I don’t mean to be morbid, but that’s the reality. They’ll either be physically unable to do it, or they will be dead. When that happens, who is going to carry the torch? The answer needs to be the rest of us. Participation matters.

If we want to impress upon our candidates the importance of being active Freemasons, then we need to stop telling them that “you get out of Freemasonry what you put into it.” We can’t keep setting the bar low for the members we’re bringing into the fraternity. We’re only contributing to the population of those that will go through the degrees and never attend a meeting. Worse yet they might attend a meeting, but we either run them off due to sheer boredom at hearing the minutes read, bills paid, debates over giving the Rainbow Girls an extra five dollars this year, or grumpy past masters “Helping” them after the meeting since they were forced to be Junior Deacon due to lack of participation of the other members who also don’t want to attend the meeting due to the same experiences. Sound familiar? If we had active membership, then we wouldn’t be in a situation where a new Master Mason would have to sit in a chair with five minutes of instruction prior to a meeting, and then have him humiliated, err I mean “Helped” by a past master that thinks they’re doing the new guy a favor.

Albert Einstein is attributed with saying, “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results.” Because we keep repeating the same mantras like “You get out of Freemasonry what you put into it.” or worse yet, “We’ve always done it this way”, we are practicing insanity. While we set expectations for how a candidate should act as a Mason during the degrees, we don’t lay out the lodge’s expectations for them after they progress through them. We need to start stressing the importance of involvement, not only for our continued success, but for their own growth as Masons.

How do we do this? The answer is really quite simple. We need to set the expectations of the candidate from the beginning. We shouldn’t be waiting until a candidate is through all of their degrees to set the expectations that they should be active. We need to indoctrinate them to the idea. We need to set the expectation as part of our investigation process. We need to ask the investigation committee if they set this expectation with the candidate. If they didn’t, then propose delaying the vote on the candidate’s membership until the expectation is discussed. Yes, I know that I’m only human, and Yes, I have missed Masonic Events due to sickness, family issues, and work. I’m not asking to create an army of automatons that do nothing but attend stated meetings and degree work. The candidate will be human also. There will surely be times when he will have life happen, and cause him to be absent from a meeting, degree, etc. We still need to make sure that Family and Work are prioritized over Freemasonry, and that the candidate knows this. Obviously we don’t want to cause someone to have marital problems over Freemasonry, or to lose their job due to their participation in Freemasonry. However, we should be able to set the expectation with them.

When you’re interviewing a prospective member, it’s important to invite them non-tyled lodge events. If they show up for these, and more importantly show an excitement to be participating; then you should be able to view this as an indication that they will continue this activity after they are raised. You see, sitting down with a man in his own home to investigate him doesn’t help you gauge how he interacts with the members of your lodge. It doesn’t allow for a situation where he has to put effort forth to be investigated. If he wants to be a Freemason, he will show desire to be one. He will come to meet you at your lodge prior to a meeting; or go bowling with your lodge, my point is that he won’t mind putting in the effort to interact with his future brothers. If you have any doubt that they will be an active member, then we need to make sure to throw the black ball. We need to devote our time to bringing in members that are actively participating in Freemasonry, instead of being so desperate for membership that we don’t care if they participate or not. To borrow from a popular ad campaign: Just OK is Not OK.

Tyler being awestruck at the display of the men showing up for his 1st degree tells me that he’ll be one of them someday. I don’t have fears about him being inactive. He’s shown up for every dinner before our meetings while he was a candidate, and experienced his first meeting as an Entered Apprentice this past Monday night. I feel confident that I did the right thing by voting for his admission into Homer Lodge. I have volunteered to be his intender as he goes through the degrees. You see, if you want to set an expectation of participation, then you have to be an example of it. Participation matters. It matters.

~DAL

WB Darin A. Lahners is the Worshipful Master of St. Joseph Lodge No.970 in St. Joseph and a plural member of Ogden Lodge No. 754 (IL), and Homer Lodge No. 199 (IL). He’s a member of the Scottish Rite Valley of Danville, a charter member of the new Illinois Royal Arch Chapter, Admiration Chapter No. 282, and is the current Secretary of the Illini High Twelve Club No. 768 in Champaign – Urbana (IL). He is also a member of the Eastern Illinois Council No. 356 Allied Masonic Degrees. You can reach him by email at darin.lahners@gmail.com.