
Source: Time Magazine
http://www.pathfinder.com/time/magazine/1998/dom/980525/society.endangered_c
onsp2.html

MAY 25, 1998 VOL. 151 NO. 20

Endangered Conspirators

Freemasons, who used to be blamed for everything, now seem almost quaint.
Can a youth movement rescue them?

By DAVID VAN BIEMA

Nostalgically, Bill Feingold intones the excruciating litany. "Having
your tongue torn out, and your throat cut across," he rumbles, recalling
words memorized on a New York City rooftop 38 years ago. "And buried in
the sands of the sea, where the tide ebbs and flows twice in every 24
hours--if you should reveal the secrets belonging to the degree of
first-degree Mason. The second degree is to have your breast torn open
and left prey to the vultures of the air. The third degree..." If he
wonders whether anyone really cares what happens when you reveal the
secrets of a third-degree Mason, Feingold doesn't let on.

First degree, third degree. Ceremonial apron and secret handshake; the
Square and the Compass; the letter G for the Grand Architect himself.
There was a time when America was dying to know and no one was telling.
Freemasonry, which claims to be the world's oldest fraternal society,
has been called the civil religion of the American Revolution. As
recently as 1959, its U.S. branch constituted an earnest and convivial
army of 4.1 million. Yet today those ranks are decimated. True, the
group is still a philanthropic presence, donating some $750 million a
year to charities. But its 2.1 million national membership, notes
Richard Fletcher of the Masonic Information Center in Silver Spring,
Md., is "the lowest it's been in some time." By which he means since
around 1888. And it will plummet further, since the average brother is
pushing 70. To baby boomers the Masons are a fusty memory. To the
boomers' children, well, it's a philosophical conundrum: if a
million-member secret society dies quietly, does anybody notice--or
care?

Feingold does. It has come so far: he is the secret society's flak. His
opening gambit is to invite a reporter to a gathering of worldwide
Masonic grand masters at the New York Grand Lodge. And the event is
grandly international: 75 delegations in Masonic aprons of every color
and design, Lebanese hobnobbing with Cote d'Ivoirans and multitudinous
Brazilians, engaged for the first time (although the cabal-obsessed may
dispute this) in establishing an international Masonic coordination.
Still Feingold can't forgo bragging about the domestic organization.
"Fourteen Presidents have been Masons," he says; "nine signers of the
Declaration of Independence ..." And on and on, through such current
luminaries as John Glenn, William Bratton and Wendy's founder Dave
Thomas. Freemasonry probably began formally in the 1600s as an English
gentleman's club, but by 1717 had evolved into an engine of the European
Enlightenment. Its members were committed to egalitarianism, civic
participation and other ideals expressed through tropes of the
stoneworkers trade: the square for straightforward virtue; the compass
to circumscribe one's passions; the plumb line to stay upright. There
was little religion but much ritual, which enraged churchmen and engaged
conspiracy theorists, who still flood the Web with Masonic villainies,
but it posed no problem for the Deists, who frequented the Continental
Congress. Benjamin Franklin joined in Philadelphia and later guided
Voltaire through the order's mysteries. Colonial lodges, says Masonic
historian William Moore, offered "a civil space in which to play with
self-rule in a world where democracy was not yet a fact." The
brotherhood helped unite the squabbling colonies and primed them for
that quintessential Enlightenment political enterprise, the Revolution.
Grand master George Washington eventually set the Capitol cornerstone
attired in his ceremonial apron.

The group has had its ups and downs since. By 1830 its members' near
monopoly on government positions--and a scandal over the mysterious
disappearance of a brother who broke secrecy--provoked the birth of
American single-issue politics: the Anti-Masonic Party nearly wiped the
group out. The Masons eventually bounced back as the preferred club of
the country's merchant class--the Strauss family reportedly built
Masonic columns into New York City's Macy's--and again as political
incubator. The two Roosevelts, Tom Dewey and Harry Truman all belonged.
After World War II, G.I.s who had enjoyed its patriotic but egalitarian
flavor abroad returned to swell the lodges.

The 1960s and '70s were a different matter. John Wayne was a Mason,
which meant the protest generation wasn't. Nor did '80s
antiestablishmentarians-turned-entrepreneurs feel much affinity toward a
group of admitted joiners who perceived squareness as a virtue. That
left the war veterans and youngsters like Feingold, now 62, who was
taken under the wing of a brother in his Queens neighborhood in 1960.
The man was a stickler for ritual and dragged Feingold up onto a Forest
Hills roof at night so that he could recite in secret. But the
then-apprentice has no regrets. He remains awed that "a man could walk
up to another man and say, 'I need a thousand dollars to pay my rent,'
and the brother would give him a check and say, 'Give it back when you
have it.'" He still believes in the group's pledge to "take good men and
make them better." He eventually joined the Shriners, the fez-headed
Masonic subgroup with a philanthropic specialty and more recently
undertook the hyping of a dying colossus. "We're in a very strong
rebuilding program," he insists. "Young people are starting to show a
dramatic interest."

Actually there is a glimmer of hope there. The uptick among young
initiates has not offset the deaths of the old soldiers, but it is
visible. New York's venerable Independent Royal Arch Lodge No. 2 boasts
an average member age of about 50 and an unusual concentration of
college-educated men. There are brokers, lawyers and journalists with
interests running from martial arts to organ music to the Masonic
references of James Joyce, explored in black tie over wine and cigars.
Says John Chang, 39, a lawyer active in local Democratic politics:
"Maybe now that my generation is getting a little bit more established
with families, they're getting interested in organizations that are
beholden to certain moral values." Lodge 2, he says proudly, is simply
"a good body of men." Adds his lodge brother John Hilliard, 52: "This
elusive male bonding that people try to recover sitting in sweat lodges
and drumming, the Masons have had it for generations. They never lost
it." Lodge 2 may be too good to be true; New York is anomalous in so
many ways. But it's a thought worth playing with. Are you attracted to
club chairs and Montecristos but find the swingers' scene a bit weak on
moral discourse? Are you tempted by the camaraderie of Promise Keepers
but put off by the catharsis? If one must dabble in male-only culture,
why not try something with a pedigree and an established philanthropic
track record? Think of it as an experiment: Can the secret handshake
ever be made hip again?


