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In 1959, about 4.5% of all American men were Freemasons, only in recent years membership has fallen off roughly 75%. To a higher place, the Scottish Rite temple in Washington, D.C. Joe Sohm/Visions of America/Universal Images Grouping via Getty hide explanation

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Joe Sohm/Visions of America/Universal Images Group via Getty

In 1959, nearly 4.v% of all American men were Freemasons, but in recent years membership has fallen off roughly 75%. In a higher place, the Scottish Rite temple in Washington, D.C.

Joe Sohm/Visions of America/Universal Images Group via Getty

Freemasons have long wielded the qualities almost irresistible to thriller writers and conspiracy theorists — secrecy, politics, ability and celebrity. Among their members are Founding Fathers, presidents, musicians, artists and businessmen. Simply today, every bit membership plummets within one of the oldest international fraternal organizations e'er to exist, a new question persists: What is the indicate?

The challenges facing the organization have been decades in the making. While part of the problem is that Americans merely don't bring together clubs or fraternities as often as they used to, some critics contend that Masons have too struggled to go on up with the changing face of the nation. Many lodges however don't allow women to join, and others accept struggled to attract members of colour. In contempo years, membership has dropped roughly 75% from a loftier of more than than iv.ane million in 1959 — when virtually 4.five% of all American men were members.

The Freemasons have a long history of secrecy and influence, but today many of their traditions are a simple Google search away. Here, nigh 200 "high" Masons join President Herbert Hoover at the White House in May 1932. AP hibernate caption

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AP

The Freemasons have a long history of secrecy and influence, but today many of their traditions are a simple Google search away. Here, nearly 200 "high" Masons bring together President Herbert Hoover at the White House in May 1932.

AP

Within the organisation's ranks, some members hoped the coronavirus pandemic might offer an opportunity to shed its reputation for mystery and secrecy and instead showcase the charitable work that Masons perform in communities nationwide. But that hasn't been the case. Instead, the virus continues to sweep the nation, keeping men abroad from their lodges and making information technology even more than difficult to conscript new members — something some say is too steeped in tradition to be attempted over Zoom.

"I don't know, really, how we combat [the loss of members]. If I had the answer to that, we would have solved the problem years agone," said Christopher Hodapp, a historian and author of multiple books on Freemasonry. "But I'll tell you, something that's scaring the hell out of me is this COVID shutdown thing. God help the states all when we stand back and survey the aging wreckage that that has acquired."

Explaining the reject

Like many organizations facing an uncertain future — one that could be more online and less interconnected — Freemasons are budgeted an inflection point.

It wouldn't exist the first time. Lodges saw a big dip in membership in 1826 post-obit the mysterious disappearance of William Morgan, who allegedly broke his vow of secrecy as a Freemason by working on a book revealing the organisation's secrets. The scandal fueled a national political movement tasked with taking the fraternity downward. But Freemasons survived the scandal — and others that followed.

"Certainly in the 18th century and moving through the middle part of the 19th century, you could be powerful and influential without being a Freemason, but it was more likely that you would have been a Freemason," said Jessica Harland-Jacobs, an associate professor of history at the Academy of Florida who studies Freemasonry.

Many Freemasons meet the refuse in membership as symptomatic of the overall reject in all voluntary associations, rather than a problem specific to their fraternity. Membership has been steadily falling in everything from church groups and school associations to labor unions and Greek organizations, according to a 2019 congressional study. The Articulation Economical Commission report establish that membership rates in some organizations roughshod from 75% in 1974 to 62% in 2004. At 52%, the driblet was steepest among congenial organizations such every bit the Freemasons or the Knights of Columbus.

Role of the part of many fraternal organizations was to serve as a social rubber net of sorts for its members, a driving force behind some membership, according to Harland-Jacobs. Until about the 1930s, she said, function of the appeal of groups such as the Freemasons is that they offered a way for members to acquire insurance.

"Some might've been more interested in the social aspect, and some might've been more than interested in the insurance attribute: These are the days before actual insurance, so it would be prissy to accept your brethren to rely on if yous needed them," she said.

John Dickie, a historian at University Higher London and author of The Craft: How the Freemasons Made the Modern Globe, also points to the thought that the secrecy of the fraternity that could have in one case intrigued men is less alluring.

"I retrieve maybe really the outcome is that secrecy has lost something of its magic," Dickie said. "Maybe, we've become a little bit drawn by the whole exposé draw, and in an age when it tin have 2 minutes or less on Google to find out what the Freemasons' secrets really are, I'm not certain that they tin really agree that much mystique for members anymore. Information technology's a flim-flam that they've played with slap-up success since 1717 or even earlier. 1 wonders what success it volition have in the coming decades."

"Exclusive practices"

Some exterior the organization say that the Freemasons would be able to offset the decline in membership more than easily if the group was seen as more inclusive toward women and people of colour.

"[Freemasons] should tackle head-on those issues: secrecy, race, gender, sexuality, all of those things," Dickie said of how the fraternity could attract new members. Just if that were to happen, Dickie added, information technology could backlash and lead to immediate "ruptures in Freemasonry" because some men are in the fraternity precisely because of those "limitations."

"A man, regardless of his religion, regardless of his social position, and regardless of his race is eligible to be a member of the alliance. That promise is obviously really attractive to groups who are traditionally excluded," Harland-Jacobs said. Simply the history of Freemasonry, she said, "has been the history of this tension between this inclusive promise and oftentimes its exclusive practices."

Men of any race are able to join Freemasonry, but that wasn't always the case. At the fourth dimension of its inception, you had to be a free human being to bring together — meaning people who were enslaved could non. When Prince Hall, an abolitionist Blackness man, attempted to join a lodge in the late 1700s, he was denied despite being a complimentary man. He, along with more than a dozen other Black men, somewhen started their own branch of Freemasonry called Prince Hall Freemasonry, which is still agile today.

Membership is more than complicated for women. Not all lodges in the U.S. volition initiate women, and even if they did, that is unlikely to reverse drops in membership, according to Brent Morris, managing director of strategic communications at the Supreme Quango of the Scottish Rite of Freemasonry in Washington, D.C.

"I don't think there would be a rush of people to the doors," said Morris, adding that membership was "a social experience that the men seek out and enjoy." Morris noted, however, that women are able to join affiliated fraternities such as the Order of the Eastern Star or the Order of the Amaranth.

On the issue of race, Morris said information technology was a challenge on which Freemasons take made major progress.

"I've been a Stonemason virtually fifty years — 49 and a half years — and I have seen breathtaking changes that take occurred during that period with acceptance of people of color, with acceptance for Prince Hall [Freemasonry], with Black men joining mainstream lodges, white men joining Prince Hall lodges ... and it'due south certainly a breathtaking step in the correct management," he said.

Friendships and escape

Morris joined Freemasonry because he wanted a community of supportive men akin to his college fraternity and said he was happy to discover information technology helped him "establish friendships at a local level and friendships that yous might not have otherwise."

"1 of the things that I constitute and so very appealing about Freemasonry is men from dissimilar backgrounds," Morris said. "It's overnice to go somewhere ... and socialize on a ground other than your occupation."

Freemasons argue that the reason to uphold the fraternity goes across maintaining historic traditions or belonging to something that one time bore immense influence. It might not be a secret society full of presidents and powerful men pulling the strings of order from the shadows, but that's never been the point for these members. Instead, they joined to establish friendships outside of work, and vibe with a community that isn't divisive. At a time in which polarization and division in the U.S. are growing more intense, Freemasons said it's refreshing to spend fourth dimension with people who aren't arguing.

"People are isolated," said Hodapp, the historian and author. "People are locked in their apartments, or locked in their parents' basement at the age of 35, and don't associate with each other, and social media has them screaming at the computer screen at iii in the morning because somebody told them to become blimp over something. Every Stonemason you talk to will stand up at that place and say, 'Yeah, nosotros're needed at present more than than we've ever been needed.' "

The challenge, he said, is finding a way to communicate that.

"How practise yous become the message of, aye, there is a identify where y'all can go where people aren't at each other's throats, there'due south a place that deliberately stops the kind of arguments that are making your life miserable."

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Source: https://www.npr.org/2020/11/28/937228086/freemasons-say-theyre-needed-now-more-than-ever-so-why-are-their-ranks-dwindling

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