Tuesday, December 2, 2008

Liberty,Equality,and Fraternity,still relevant?

Freemasonry continues to have a culturally and religiously exclusive approach in this society. We continue to give new brothers Bibles, without asking their preference. Importantly, it is well known that we do embrace men of all faiths, I merely point out that in practice we do not enforce the standard. We should offer other Volumes of Sacred Law. We continue to suggest that the body will be resurrected, when every new age bone in our body knows that the soul is immortal and doesn't require a body. We continue to be insular, to men of other religions and other cultures for members, and we don't make a serious effort to understand other religions and cultures, who now live in the communities where our near empty lodges go fallow. The Sikh and the Sufi, the Buddhist and the Hindu, the Zoroastrian and the Pantheist, all of course have perfectly legitimate belief structures which do not conflict with Freemasonry. Why are we reticent, simply because most of us believe in the teachings of the Master Jehosuah, to vary from the formal religions tied to their ancient dogma? This is a major stumbling block to the growth of the Fraternity. Someone once said you can not have two Masters. Primarily I believe that men from other cultures who would like to mainstream, have a perfect vehicle in Freemasonry, and we should somehow make it our mission to attract them to our society. Maybe they won't join right away. But maybe their sons will. The prohibition against so-called "recruitment" has to go away, before we go away.

2 comments:

Tom Accuosti said...

Dude - I can't think of anyone who has seriously suggested that Buddhism, Sikhism, Sufiism, etc., conflict with Freemasonry.

I can't imagine why you suggest that we "continue to not reach out to other religions" when Freemasonry itself is not a religion. We do, however, continue to reach out to men, so long as they be good men and true, with a belief in a Creator. Their religion, naturally, is immaterial to us.

I think that your tail is trying to wag the dog. There are probably men of other (i.e., non Judeo- Christian) religions who may believe that Freemasonry is not for them because our allegories and metaphors are based on Old Testament writings; assuming that they bother to learn enough about the Fraternity to understand even that much. Is it incumbent upon our fraternity to go into various religious communities to proselytize for members?

Radcliffe said...

My Brother, I am referring to the Judeo-Christian orientation only, not that we are a religion, clarification made to text, duly noted. However, you may have noticed that we continue in a downward trend on membership. That is due only to relevancy in my opinion. What makes us relevant today? As many of the tenets we hold dear are now the standard order of the day, such as religious tolerance, equality of men, and liberty. And my answer to your question about reaching out, is founded on the fact that only Massachusetts and Deleware have shown growth is membership. We know that Massachusetts is most definetly reaching out. Why perpetrate an old concept about informing the society at large about us. We have nothing to hide.