George Washing was a Freemason
Well, here I am again probing the under belly of Protestantism. This time it's the Masonic connection.
A few months back
someone asked me if any of our Baptist forefathers (such as those whose names are celebrated on
the walls of traditional Baptist churches) had connections with Freemasonry.
That these Baptist grandees had great social & business success, plus their
use of symbolic heraldry might have prompted this question. (See Samuel Morton Peto as an example of that
success). The person I was approached by was worried that such a connection
might be the cause of one those "spiritual blockages" which are vaguely reminiscent of fears that some kind of witchcraft has been worked on the church.
As it turns out the Masonic connection seems unlikely,
although absence of evidence isn't necessarily evidence of absence. But the
imagination of the religious mind, as we are seeing in North America today, has
a tendency to erupt into a kind of spiritual delirium in the absence of evidence. Deeply
sensed intuitions, sometimes taken to be the promptings of the Almighty
Himself, can then kick-in as an override and be regarded as sufficient
condition for the confirmation of truth. But claimed knowledge arrived at
either by strong intuitions or rationality still have to express themselves
through a flawed human nature, leaving them both open to cautious critical
appraisal.
After polling three church historians on the subject, I drew a blank. So unlikely was the idea
that it seems never to have occurred to them to even ask the question: In the
light of what we know about Freemasonry it’s easy to dismiss any Masonic
connections with Baptists without thought.
However, it's a well-known fact that some C of E clergy have joined the
Masons (moreover George Washington was C of E). The only non-conformist Freemason one of my historians came up with was
Lord Leverholme. Another of them said
that someone had told him that Spurgeon was a Mason, but frankly that's looking
like web-rumour mongering. Rumour mongering seems to be the conspiracy
theorist's and witch hunter's epistemic method.
As for Freemasonry itself: It's a secret boys-club involving
bizarre rituals & sinister oaths that I doubt are taken too seriously by
many rank-&-file Masons, a rank-&-file who are probably in it for the benefits of elite social connection, blokehood and an off-the-peg career structure of social advancement for the exclusive few. This, taken together with the high sounding talk about the ritual entering into a new
life of achievement and morality (but only for a male elite), makes it a
questionable option for Christians. After all, for Christians the new life has
already started and (cult versions of Christianity apart) is based on a message that is public property, not the
secret property of an exclusive elite. If I had to summarize Freemasonry in a word I would say that it is strong on God as architect and creator, but weak on God as saviour.
Freemasonry is in large part an eighteenth century start-up
with some historical antecedents. With its lineage largely based in the Western
world it is suffused with Judeo-Christian symbolism and is clearly strongly
influenced by it: The meaning of some of the symbols one finds on the façade of
The City of Bath's Circus (built by the Freemason John Wood Jnr) can be
applauded (although there are also legendary pagan influences via druidism and the classical world). All this is no surprise as Freemasonry was influenced by the eighteenth century enlightenment which in turn was influenced by Christianity.
With Freemasonry, as with all human institutions, the rough
comes with the smooth. Although owing a huge debt to Christianity Freemasonry
nevertheless short-changes the God-head. The same goes for much Western secularism. It’s been said
with some plausibility that Western secularism (& Marxism?) is a kind of
Christian heresy & the same might be said of Freemasonry. Historian Tom Holland
has remarked on the Christian influence that saturates the values &
thinking of Western secularism, much of which one can applaud and support. But
those values & thinking teeter on the edge of the nihilist abyss if God and
Christ are either ignored or denied.
But even if Freemasonry is in a church's lineage it would
not in my opinion taint it to the point of causing the spiritual blockage that
some "witch hunters" are looking for. For although such a pass would rightly be the target of
criticism, unless one can show that Freemasonry has an occult element (&
there’s no evidence of that as far as I’m aware) it would not cause a blockage:
We don't inherit sin: We only inherent a sinful nature. "Original
Sin" really should be translated as "Original Sinful Nature".
There is much I would personally criticize about Freemasonry but there is also much I can applaud. The same can be said of Christian fundagelicalism: For let us put criticism of Freemasonry in the context of some of today’s Christian excursions into the absurdities of Conspiracy Theorism such as QAnon, the flat earth conspiracy, Covid 19 hoax theories, anti-vax ideas, the millennium bug conspiracy farce, climate change hoax theories, false-flag conspiracy theory, the failed Trump 2nd term prophecies & links to the far-right to name a few. Fertile ground for these harmful notions has been provided by antecedents such as quasi-gnosticism, fideism, extreme libertarianism and anti-government & anti-academia sentiments. Nevertheless I endeavour to be fair and take a lenient view on these extremist opinions with an understanding of the mitigating circumstances under which they have formed; namely, a faith that is currently under great cultural pressure and which is increasingly marginalized and ostensibly in a state of decay. And yet Christianity is still raided for its moral standards, its grace and its rationality. But The Source of all morality, grace and rationality is too often neglected or proactively rejected.
***
I like to think that our Baptist grandees did well and made
a name for themselves not because they had the unfair advantages of belonging
to an elite secretive club that plays fast and loose with Christian language
& standards but because of their faith & honesty and gave glory to the only One to whom it was deserved. If that is the case then their names deserve
to be memorialised on the walls of a traditional Baptist church.
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