S. Brent Morris, Stephen C. Bullock, Kojo Nnamdi
c/o The Supreme Council, 33°
1733 16th Street, NW, Washington, DC 20009-3103

The following article is edited from an interview with two well-known Masonic scholars. They were guests on a National Public Radio show on July 31, 2002. It was broadcast to 30 public radio stations across America and, via the Internet, to persons around the world.

Nnamdi: From WAMU at American University in Washington, D.C., this is Public Interest. I'm Kojo Nnamdi.

You know they say ignorance is bliss; it can also be pretty funny sometimes, because when Peter Carlson started writing an article for the Washington Post Magazine last year [Nov. 25, 2001] about Freemasons, he was, well, truly ignorant about Freemasons. Here's what he thought: 1) that the weird pyramid with the eye on top of it that appears on the dollar bill is some kind of Masonic symbol; 2) it's a secret society that conspiracy theorists believe is plotting world domination; and 3) the geezers who wear funny hats and drive goofy go-carts in Memorial Day parades are Masons.1

Well, would those people be planning world domination? That is the conspiracy theory that some people associate with Freemasons. But what is the truth about Freemasonry? That's what we're going to discuss this hour. And in order to help us in our Washington Studio is Brent Morris. He is a Masonic Historian and Director of Membership Development for the Scottish Rite of Freemasonry, [Southern Jurisdiction]. Brent Morris, welcome to our studio.

Morris: [In studio] Thank you, Kojo.

Nnamdi:: Peter Carlson in the aforementioned article also describes you as a Royal Arch Mason and a Cryptic Mason and a Knight Templar, a Perfect Elu, a Grand Pontiff, a Knight of the Brazen Spirit, and a Master of the Royal Secret. You are a 33° Mason and there is no 34°? What does that mean-a 33°?

Morris: Well, the 33° is a recognition for service to the Fraternity. About 1.5% of the Scottish Rite Masons in the United States have received the 33° in recognition of their service.
I guess that about 30% or 40% of the Masons in the United States have joined the Scottish Rite, something on the order of 600,000 Scottish Rite Masons out of about 1.7 million Master Masons.2

Nnamdi: Joining us now by telephone is Steven C. Bullock. He is a professor of History at the Worcester Polytechnic Institute. He is also author of the book Revolutionary Brotherhood: Freemasonry and the Transformation of the American Social Order, 1730-1840.
Steve, welcome.

Bullock: [On the telephone] Thank you. Glad to be here.

Medieval masons were distinguished from other workers because they were free to travel around Europe.

Nnamdi: Tell us a little bit about the founding of the Brotherhood, and some people trace it-some Masons do-back to the Crusades, Pythagoras, and Euclid, even to the pyramids of Egypt. Any truth to that at all, starting with you Steve?

Bullock: People trace it back all the way in the 19th Century … some people trace it all the way back to the beginning of the world, saying that Masonry's principles were universal and come directly from God. The actual modern Masonic Fraternity, that is an organization not of builders, not of people engaged in actual stone masonry or….

Nnamdi: But, Freemasonry started out as an organization of people working with stone masonry.

Bullock: It started out that way. That's right. But those organizations go back probably into the Middle Ages. We don't know much about that, but we do know that around the beginning of the 1700s, there developed a fraternal group which had no real relationship to actual building with stones and which instead attempted to build men. And this organization began probably around England; the key moment seems to be 1717 when you not only have a series of Lodges, but an organization which goes above them, the Grand Lodge. And this is a group that begins in the early Enlightenment. Many of the Founders were members of the Royal Society, which was the premier scientific organization of the time, an organization headed by Sir Isaac Newton. In fact one of Newton's close associates3 in the Royal Society was a key member of the early fraternity, so, of course, out of that early 18th century world.…

Nnamdi: Well, I would like both of you to answer this question because Steve Bullock is not a Freemason. Brent Morris is. Let me start with you, Brent. Why is there so much mystery and secrecy surrounding the Freemasons?

Morris: That's part of the baggage that we carry. Let me back up a bit if I may just a second and tell you what are the "secrets" and how we believe they originated. Freemasonry evolved from a labor union, a building guild. And at the time Freemasons were largely illiterate; they were skilled craftsmen, but the.…

Nnamdi: And they were called Freemasons; because of their skill they were allowed to travel around Europe.

Morris: That's right. They were free to travel as opposed to the other serfs who were bound to the land. Because once you finished working on the bridge or the church or the castle, there wasn't any more work, and you had to travel to the next site. So they were distinguished by being free to travel. But, if they ran out of work at one site and wanted to travel to another, how would they prove that they were a member of the union?

Well, they couldn't read, they couldn't write, and so what developed, what we believe developed, was a series of passwords. So, I would finish working on the site in Sussex, or they wouldn't need my skills anymore, and then I would travel to another site. I would introduce myself to the Master of the site, I would step over to the side, he would ask me some questions, I would tell them the secret password, and then I would be ready to work again. It's very much like a member of a trade union today.4

Nnamdi: How did you gain an interest in Freemasonry?

Morris: I was back in college. In fact I was curious about the "secrets" of the Masons. So I went to the college library, and I started reading in the library. I wish I had a good book like Steve's Revolutionary Brotherhood, but I read what I could find. Then it turned out that a college fraternity brother made an off-hand comment that he was getting ready to join his uncle's Masonic Lodge, and I said, "Hey, if you wait three months until I turn 21, I'll join with you." And there it is.

Nnamdi: The rest, as they say, is history. Steve, what is the origin of your interest in Freemasonry?

Bullock: It is primarily academic. I was in graduate school and looking around for something to study and finally recognized what a wonderful topic Freemasonry was. I only later found out that, like huge numbers of people, that one of my grandfathers was actually a Mason. So I do have a personal connection that I did not realize when I got into it.

Nnamdi: Well, my father was actually a Mason, and the Freemasons have been accused in the past, Brent, of promoting segregation. Any historic truth to that?

Morris: I don't think it's so much promoting segregation as we are an unfortunate part of the American history of segregation. Nothing would make me happier than to say that every relative I had believed the "right way" about every issue. Nothing would make me happier than to say every organization I belong to believed the "right way." In fact, what happened is interesting.
Back in Boston in 1775, 16 free men of color in the city of Boston were made Freemasons. They wrote to England, and said, "Can we have a Charter?" And England said, "Sure!" So African Lodge No. 459 was created in Boston. This was along with the Lodge of St. Andrew, which was Paul Revere's Lodge, and several other Lodges. There didn't seem to be any problem with this.

George Washington was the most prominent Mason among the American leaders who created the revolution. Other Masons included, Benjamin Franklin, John Hancock, and Paul Revere.

The Revolution comes about. Then after the Revolution started, the Freemasons in the United States weren't quite sure what to do. They were in the same awkward position as the Anglicans. The Mother Church-or the Mother Lodge-was in England. What should we do? Well, as it happened, the decision was that the states in the United States started declaring their independence from the Grand Lodge of England, and they would create their own state organizing groups called "Grand Lodges."

Massachusetts formed a Grand Lodge, and not all of the Lodges in Massachusetts affiliated with the Grand Lodge of Massachusetts. African No. 459 remained loyal to England, and the Lodge of St. Andrew remained loyal to Scotland. Records at this time are weak, and, as we go forward in time, we see that finally in 1813 the Grand Lodge of England renumbered all of its Lodges, made the false assumption that every Lodge that was in the United States was no longer affiliated with it, and dropped them off the books. Now, we know that in the interim we found records where African Lodge No. 459 and its Master, named Prince Hall.…

Nnamdi: That's how the Prince Hall Freemasons came about.

Morris: Exactly, after their first and most famous member, Prince Hall wrote letters to England sending money to the Charity Fund, and I find this particularly touching. Surely free African-Americans in Boston were not among the elite economic class in the city, and yet here they were able to take up a collection to return it to England to help the destitute and the poor. Now, at least two letters were written by Prince Hall, but they never made it to England, and the assumption is that the sea Captain that was entrusted with the money and the letter just pocketed a little extra money. Well, in 1827 you see a newspaper announcement that the Prince Hall Masons say, "We are declaring ourselves independent of everybody."

Nnamdi: And they are to this day.

Morris: And they are to this day.

Nnamdi: Prince Hall Masons are all around the country. Back to you Steven. A number of our Founding Fathers were Masons. What influence did that fraternity of men have on the early establishment of the United States?

Bullock: They were extremely important. Prince Hall, himself, I suppose can be seen as in some ways a Founder, a man who was born a slave, and who became free and went on to organize a new association, now in some ways very much a part of the founding of America. There are other leaders. Masonry in the period before the Revolution is an organization primarily of well-to-do people, but that one of the primary concerns is creating connections with other people in different areas and even across the Atlantic. Masonry considered itself a sort of universal fraternity. And that's in some ways what Masonry was about during the Revolution. When the American leaders attempted to create the Revolution, they weren't so much concerned with creating a new country, with becoming a nation in themselves, but with establishing a universal kind of set of beliefs and values that everyone could accept. And that's why the ideals of liberty and equality and--as the French said--fraternity, which is something I think that Americans leave out, but which I think a lot of American leaders in the founding period would have thought of as being part of these universal ideals. So Masonry is involved right from the beginning.

Nnamdi: How did the disappearance of William Morgan stir up public uprising against the Masons?

Bullock: What happens is that after the Revolution--to bridge this gap here from 1776 when America declares independence to 1826, 50 years later, when Capt. William Morgan disappears in upstate New York--Masonry in those 50 years grows dramatically; it becomes a sort of symbol of the country. It's an organization used to lay the cornerstone in the United States Capitol building in 1793. It spreads into every small town in America, and what happens is there is a reaction against it in the 1820s. Originally, with this man William Morgan, that you mentioned, who was actually a real stone mason besides being a Freemason in upstate New York, and he decided that he was going to publish a book revealing the rituals of the fraternity, something which is part of the "secrets" of the fraternity that Brent was talking about, and many Masons-not officially, but unofficially-decided that this is a very dangerous thing, that Masonry needed to be protected, and so what they did was attempt to pressure Morgan to stop, and when that didn't work, eventually kidnapped him and took him up toward Niagara Falls, around there, and from there we are not sure what happened to him. Some people later on claimed that they had killed him, they'd thrown him in the river; other people said, well, he went on to Canada and lived his life out there.

Nnamdi: And some of this may have given rise to the Anti-Masonic Party that arose in the 1820s and apparently had some influence at the time. Brent Morris is a mathematician who is also a Freemason. What did you write your dissertation on?

Morris: I wrote my dissertation on the mathematics of card shuffling.

Nnamdi: The mathematics of card shuffling?

Morris: I looked at issues of how well can you randomize a deck of cards with different kinds of shuffles. I claim to be the only person in the world with a PhD. in card shuffling.

Nnamdi: Okay, back to the discussion on Freemasonry. Think of that what you will. We also know, of course, that Brent Morris is a Masonic historian, and so you can pick up the conversation about the Anti-Masonic Party that came up in the 1820s.

Morris: One of the things that I figured would be great for Jeopardy: the Anti-Masonic Party was the first political party in the United States to hold a nominating convention. So just remember that if you are ever on Jeopardy; I'm sure that's a good answer.

One of the ironies about the Morgan Affair … the Freemasons in upstate New York were indeed concerned that their "secret" rituals were going to be published. What they were unaware of is that the Masonic rituals and their "secrets" had been in continuous unauthorized publication since 1723. They're secret only from someone who doesn't know how to use a card catalog.

So, what Morgan was going to publish was nothing that wasn't already known. There are theories about what happened. Was he murdered? Did he migrate to Canada? Some people claim to have seen him later, but as it happens, it was a good enough excuse to start a panic and a fear.

Lodges were burned in this Anti-Masonic period. The Anti-Masonic Party was the first third-party in the United States, the first significant alternative party in the United States. They had a presidential candidate, William Wirt; I think that was the election of 1836. They elected a governor of Vermont, I believe. Freemasons in Vermont went completely out of business during this period. The number of Lodges in New York State dropped by 90%. If you can imagine a ripple radiating out from New York, the further you get away from upstate New York, the less impact it had. But it had impacts even as far south as North Carolina and as far west as Michigan.

Nnamdi: The party merged with the Whigs in 1838. Steve Bullock, back to you. Religion and Masonry: How does religion play into idea of Masonry?

Bullock: Religion has been part of Freemasonry right from the beginning. In some ways the fraternal society begins at a time of enormous religious upheaval, after a century in England where you'd had two revolutions which had been largely about religion. And what Freemasons argued is that religion is significant, it's important, but yet the differences between different groups, different religious groups, are not necessarily all that significant. This is what is known at the time as "Latitudinarianism," a long term. Essentially "wide latitude" is the term we use today. It's believing that if you are a Presbyterian, a member of the Church of England, an Anglican Episcopal, that those two beliefs are not necessarily in sharp conflict with each other, but there are areas of agreement, and so Masonry begins there and goes on throughout its history to have a very strong religious kind of roots. On the other hand, many religious groups have opposed Masonry. So there is this other side to…

Nnamdi: The [Roman] Catholic Church is a bit leery about Masonry, isn't it?

Bullock: The Catholic Church--ever since, if you have the beginning of Masonry in the 17 teens, by 1738 the Catholic Church, the Pope himself-has come out against Freemasonry, and, so, in fact, that rule is still in existence today, although there are some local, some local organizations, some local leaders seem to allow Freemasonry. But there is also a very strong Protestant opposition as well, particularly Fundamentalist Christians often see Freemasonry as being a dangerous thing. And I think what unites them is the fear that an organization which allows people to make connections with people beyond the bounds of that religious group in some sort of religious setting is sort of a challenge, a danger to a church which sees itself as being the center of all sorts of religious things.

Nnamdi: Knights of Columbus was set up by Catholics as a response to the Masons, was it not?

Bullock: Knights of Columbus, I think it's 1882…

Morris: Well, if you talk to Knights of Columbus historians, they will bristle that they are a "Catholic response to the Masons." In fact this period at the end of the 19th Century was the "golden era of fraternalism," from 1870 to 1920, and in roughly half a century over 300 American fraternal organizations were formed. This is one every other month. You have the Knights of Ben-Hur, the Daughters of Pocahontas, the Elks, the Moose, the Benevolent Protective Order of Reindeer-for heaven's sake, the Orioles, the Owls. You have the Shriners created during this period. So in this period, Catholics found that they could not participate in what was, at that time, the great social activity of belonging to fraternal organizations. Because typically these organizations would offer a prayer on behalf of all the members at the beginning of the meeting, they would offer a prayer at the meal, and the prayer was unsupervised and uncontrolled, and so the Knights of Columbus were created. It's become a powerful, powerful fraternity, with an amazing insurance program, and their charitable works are just phenomenal today.

Nnamdi: Mark in Reston, Virginia. You are on the air, go ahead please.

Mark: I was wondering where did the hostility between the Catholics and the Freemasons start from and why is it such an ordeal?

Nnamdi: Well, did the conversation you just heard answer your question? Or you didn't hear the conversation we just had?

Mark: I heard part of the conversation.
Nnamdi: Oh, okay. Allow me to ask Steve to reiterate some of it for you. Steve?

Bullock: I think it is a key concern. And part of it is back in the mid-1700s. It's in virtually every society, except perhaps England and America. It's considered the normal function of a government to watch out for all sorts of organizations, to sort of prevent people from getting involved in organizations which seem dangerous or just seem to challenge the ruling group. So there is that element, I think. There is also the fear of a society which sort of claims to be religious, which is not simply Catholic. So that broadness, that universalism of the fraternity, is truly frightening, I think, to many religious groups.

Morris: And to expand that a little bit, in the late 19th Century, Pope Leo XIII, issued a series of Bulls against the Masonic fraternity. His most famous one was Humanum Genus issued, I think, in 1884, and in there he said the Freemasons believed that the citizens could change their government whenever they wanted to, that citizens were free to choose their own religion, and that parents were free to instruct their children however they felt like instructing them. And those were all dangerous. And for those reasons, Freemasons were condemned.

Nnamdi: So, today you can be a Muslim, a Buddhist, or a Christian, or Jewish, and be a member of the Freemasons.

(The conclusion of this article will appear in the January 2003 issue of the Journal.)

1. Mr. Carlson was wrong about 1 and 2, but correct about 3-Shriners, who often drive "goofy go-carts" in parades, are indeed Masons.

2. In 2000 there were 1,841,169 Masons in the U.S., of which 679,163 or 36.9% were in the Scottish Rite (382,476 Southern Jurisdiction; 296,687 Northern Masonic Jurisdiction). In 1998 1.45% of the S.J. members had received the 33°.

3. John Theophilus Desaguliers, b. 1683, d. 1744, third Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of England, 1719-1720.

4. For a detailed discussion, see "The Transition from Operative to Speculative Masonry," Harry Carr, Harry Carr's World of Freemasonry (Shepperton, England: Lewis Masonic, 1983), pp. 44-71.