Freemasonry

During the last three decades of the nineteenth century a fascinating debate took place inside the Masonic Fraternity of northern California. This debate centered on the question: Is Freemasonry a religion? It is relevant today for two reasons. For one, this debate was not an isolated phenomenon. There is evidence the same controversy was occurring at this time not only in northern California but across many jurisdictions of the Fraternity in the United States.

This video presentation is part of the Worldwide Exemplification of Freemasonry, a Masonic lecture series produced by the Grand Lodge of Indiana. It was first shown on December 24, 2011.

The historical study of American fraternal organizations can yield surprising insights into the complex social processes associated with the term assimilation. A look at the Masonic fraternity in Gilded Age San Francisco provides a case in point. There the Freemasons brought together foreign-born and native-born Protestants and Jews to form a distinct subset within the broad middle class of the city. By examining in detail the extent of Jewish integration within the fraternity, it is possible to show some of the accomplishments and limitations in this process of Masonic identity formation.

Evangelical Protestantism occupies an established place of prominence in the history of the American West. Successive outbursts of revivalism, which enlivened rural areas and cities alike during the nineteenth century, and the great interdenominational associations to promote Bible-reading, Sabbath-keeping and temperance which followed in their wake did much to bring social order and civilization to the vast regions of new settlement. Symbolically capping this united spiritual effort during the post-Civil War decades stood the Evangelical Alliance, a national body of Protestant leaders in roughly forty cities formed to coordinate the multi-faceted evangelical crusade.

The recent debate sparked by the arguments of Robert D. Putnam over the contribution of associational membership to the health of American civil society has kept the historical study of fraternal organizations in the scholarly limelight. Once a neglected academic subject, the study of these ubiquitous bodies during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries has figured over the past twenty-five years in discussions concerning the formation of middle- and working-class identities, the evolution of gender roles, the creation of political culture following the American Revolution, and the origins of the welfare state.

MORRIS, Robert (31 Aug. 1818 – 31 July 1888), Masonic lecturer and poet, according to most biographers, including his son, was born near Boston, Massachusetts, the son of Robert Morris and Charlotte (maiden name unknown), teachers. However, the reliable twentieth-century Masonic historian Henry Wilson Coil in his Masonic Encyclopedia asserts that he was born Robert William Peckham in New York City and at age seven, after the death of his father, went to live in Massachusetts and western New York State with John Morris, from whom he acquired his surname. If the latter account is true, it may help explain why the ritual themes of Freemasonry, which are centered around the martyred death of a widow’s son, provided such fertile ground for his creative work.

A moral and religious fraternal practice within the Judeo-Christian family, Freemasonry (or Masonry) arose in Britain early in the 18th century and quickly spread to the European continent and American colonies. The movement derives its name from the work of the masons of King Solomon’s temple, whose physical labor in constructing this biblical house of worship is taken as a model for the task of building one’s character in the modern world.

Historians of American religion have recently turned their attention to the subject of regional variations in the expressions of faith. Not surprisingly, New England and the South have led the way among regions in offering material for hypotheses about geographic religious distinctiveness. But California, a state large and populous enough perhaps to be considered a region of its own, may now also claim a bold interpretation to account for its religious character in the nineteenth century.

In 1871 San Francisco’s Masonic Mirror reprinted a story that had first appeared a decade earlier and served throughout the Gilded Age as a favorite among fraternalists. Written by James Linen, a local Mason, the account was entitled, “The First Masonic Funeral in San Francisco.” It told of how on an August day in 1849, very early in the morning, a corpse was found washed ashore on a beach at the edge of the gold rush city. Upon examination, the body presented a startling sight: