Can We Save It All?
Should we?
Due to what I presume will be the controversial, and perhaps divisive nature of this post, I’m limiting its reach to those holding a paid subscription to Emeth.
Here in Washington we have a good number of Lodges that are really thriving and growing in 2026. Some have been doing that for quite a few years now, more are joining their number all the time.
But, the majority of our Lodges are not. They are struggling.
The Scottish Rite seems to be doing well.
The York Rite seems to be in awfully rough shape.
The Shrine seems to be a mixed bag, some Temples seem to be doing quite well, at least one seems to be on the verge of death.
The OES and Amaranth seem to be badly struggling.
Our three youth groups don’t seem to be doing well.
These are my perceptions, for what they are worth. I imagine that some will disagree with one or more of the perceptions mentioned above. My perceptions are also necessarily colored by the geographical areas I most often hang out in.
But, ultimately, it seems to me that we can’t save everything. We will continue to see Lodges close, and we will probably continue to see local chapters of our various Appendant and Concordant bodies close.
The thing is, I don’t think that we can save everything.
And I think that if we try, we will ultimately lose even more, because we will run our most active and involved members ragged. We’ll burn our very best out.
A well known Masonic author pointed out, years ago, that many of these appendant/concordant organizations were founded because their founders didn’t like what they found in Masonry.
Brothers wanted a Christian form of Freemasonic expression, so the Knights Templar was founded. Brothers wanted to go wild, so the Shrine was founded. Brothers wanted Masonry to include women and children, so the women’s and youth organizations were founded.
Nothing at all with any of that, but it isn’t Craft Masonry. It’s the leaves of the Masonic tree, not the roots.
So, what is Craft Masonry? Actual Freemasonry?
Well, in my opinion, it is our Craft or Blue Lodges of course. The individual Lodges operating under the Grand Lodge. It’s the Scottish Rite, because while the Scottish Rite does not generally confer the Craft Degrees in the United States, it rightly possesses those Degrees, confers them in limited places here, and confers them as a matter of course in some other nations. It’s the Royal Arch, which has been considered by many to be a part of Ancient Craft Masonry since the union of the Ancients and Moderns.
The rest, in my opinion, are ornaments to Masonry, not Masonry itself.
