Freemasonry and United States Essay

Freemasonry, teachings and practices of the secret fraternal straddle officially known as the Free and received masons, or Ancient Free and accredited Masons. Organizational Structure There argon approximately 5 million members worldwide, loosely in the coup take States and other English-speaking countries. With adherents in al approximately every dry land where Freemasonry is not officially banned, it forms the largest secret baseball club in the world.There is no fundamental masonic permit jurisdiction is divided up among autonomous national authorities, called grand stand bys, and umteen another(prenominal) concordant organizations of higher- head Masons. In the joined States and Canada the highest authority rests with state and provincial grand nightspots. fashion is the supreme authority of the assemble, and there atomic shape 18 elaborate symbolic rites and ceremonies, most of which l intercept oneself the instruments of the stonemasonthe plumb, the squ ar e, the level, and compassesand apocryphal events concerning the building of powerfulness Solomons Temple for allegorical purposes.The principles of Freemasonry view as traditionally been liberal and democratic. Andersons Constitutions (1723), the bylaws of the marvellous Lodge of England, which is Freemasonrys oldest extant lodge, cites sacred toleration, loyalty to local government, and political compromise as primary to the masonic ideal. Masons are expected to believe in a Supreme Being, use a divine book appropriate to the religion of the lodges members, and maintain a blaspheming of secrecy concerning the orders ceremonies.The basic unit of Freemasonry is the local Blue lodge, generally housed in a Masonic temple. The lodge consists of three Craft, Symbolic, or Blue Degrees Entered learner (First Degree), Fellow Craft (Second Degree), and maestro Mason (Third Degree). These gradations are meant to correspond to the three levelsapprentice, journeyman, and lordof the m edieval stonemasons guilds. The average Mason does not rise above earn Mason.If he does, however, he has the choice of advancing finished about 100 different rites, embrace some 1,000 higher degrees, throughout the world. In the United States, the two most democratic rites are the stinting and the York. The Scottish eucharist awards 30 higher degrees, from Secret operate (Fourth Degree) to Sovereign Grand Inspector universal (Thirty-third Degree). The York Rite awards ten degrees, from Mark Master to Order of Knights Templar, the latter being mistakable to a Thirty-third Degree Scottish Rite Mason.Other pregnant Masonic groups are the Prince Hall Grand Lodge, to which many a(prenominal) African-American Masons belong the Veiled Prophets of the enrapture Realm (the fraternal fun order for Blue Lodge Masons) and the Ancient Arabic Order of the Nobles of the Mystic Shrine (Thirty-second degree Masons who, as the Shriners, are noted for their psychedelic parades and support of childrens hospitals). There are also many subsidiary Masonic groups, including the Order of the Eastern Star, limited to Master Masons and their female relatives De Molay, an organization for boys and Jobs Daughters and Rainbow, two organizations for girls.many of the orders maintain homes for senior members. Development of the Order The order is eyeshot to exhaust arisen from the English and Scottish fraternities of practicing stonemasons and duomo builders in the too soon Middle Ages traces of the alliance have been found as early as the 14th cent. Because, however, some documents of the order trace the sciences of masonry and geometry from Egypt, Babylon, and Palestine to England and France, some historians of Masonry deal that the order has roots in antiquity.The validation of the English Grand Lodge in London (1717) was the beginning of the widespread public exposure of speculative Freemasonry, the present-day fraternal order, whose rank and file is not limited to wor king stonemasons. The sextuplet lodges in England in 1700 grew to about 30 by 1723. There was a analog development in Scotland and Ireland, although some lodges remained unaffiliated and open only to practicing masons. By the end of the 18th cent. here were Masonic lodges in all European countries and in many other parts of the world as well.The first lodge in the United States was founded in Philadelphia (1730) Benjamin Franklin was a member. Many of the leadership of the American Revolution, including John autograph and Paul Revere, were members of St. Andrews Lodge in Boston. George Washington became a Mason in 1752. At the epoch of the Revolution most of the American lodges broke away from their English and Scottish antecedents.Freemasonry has continued to be important in politics 13 Presidents have been Masons, and at any given time quite a large number of the members of Congress have belonged to Masonic lodges. historied European Masons included Voltaire, Giuseppe Mazzini , Giuseppe Garibaldi, Franz Joseph Haydn, Johann von Goethe, Johann von Schiller, and many leaders of Russias Decembrist revolt (1825). Opposition to Freemasonry Because of its naming with 19th-century bourgeois liberalism, there has been much competition to Freemasonry.The most violent in the United States was that of the Anti-Masonic party. Freemasonrys anticlerical attitude has also led to strong opposition from the Roman Catholic Church, which first expressed its anti-Masonic attitude in a bull of Pope tender-hearted XII (1738). The Catholic Church allay discourages its members from joining the order. Totalitarian states have of all time suppressed Freemasonry the lodges in Italy, Austria, and Germany were forcibly eradicated beneath fascism and Nazism, and there are now no lodges in China.