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We all know someone who is a mason, but I’ll be darned if I really know what that means.  Most of us are like:

I think my pappa was one, not sure what it means though.

My uncle used to go to Masonic meetings I remember him picking up Dad a couple of times. That’s about all I know.

So What is Freemasonry?

Masonry (or Freemasonry) is a fraternity. The actual origins have been lost over time. Often thought to have grown out of the guilds of stonemasons who built cathedrals in the Middle Ages.  Stretches exist to the Knights Templar.

A Fraternity or a Religion?

It ultimately a little of both.  Freemasonry refers to the principles, institutions, and practices of the fraternal order of the Free and Accepted Masons.  Freemasonry is an organization of men based on the “fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man”.   The religion comes with the belief in a Supreme Being and in the immortality of the soul as two key requirements for membership.

Core Tenants?

Take care of yourself, do good and be honorable.  Masonry teaches each person has a responsibility to make things just a little better in the world.  Masonry is deeply involved with helping people through non-profits — it spends more than $1.4 million dollars every day in the United States, just to make life a little easier.

The lodge and the brotherhood lets men associate with other men of honor and integrity.  In some ways, Masonry is a support group for men who are trying to make the right decisions.  A collaborative life coaching group if you will.

Paranoia and conspiracy theories are just good fun. What some folks say on TV sermons, write in books and generally blog about is most interesting when it comes to religion. Here are some right wing “conspiracies”, not necessarily all religious, but religion plays a part in each one:

• Christian Evangelist Jack Van Impe claimed the United Nations was placing secret codes on the back of national highway signs to reveal the locations of believers so the new world order could persecute them.
• Jerry Falwell cited Lucifer as behind the Supreme Court ruling in Topeka, Kansas regarding school integration.
• The “American Mercury” carried a piece about the secret 1913 Federal Reserve Act that set into motion a process begun in l819 to benefit secret bankers who rule the United States. Perhaps they are responsible for the latest collapse of free markets – hmmm…
• Lutheran minister Gerald Winrod,known as the Jayhawk Nazi, believed all these conspiracies can be traced to Adam Weishaupt. Adam was a Jew who worked with the Masonic Lodge in Europe to set up the Illuminati. We can rest easy in the states because Winrod did not beleive the American Lodge was infected.
• Robert Snow’s book on Christian militias. He noted that many militias believed that on the back of a 1993 box of Kix Cereal was a map teaching children about how the U.N. will divide up the United States.
• In 1959, the John Birch Society issued an urgent alert: Christmas was under attack.  “One of the techniques now being applied by the Reds to weaken the pillar of religion in our country is the drive to take Christ out of Christmas — to denude the event of its religious meaning.” The central front in this perfidious assault was American department stores.  The “Godless UN” was schemed to displace religious decorations with internationalist celebrations of universal brotherhood.

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