This article is taken from the November 2023 issue of Fraternal Review titled, “Guarding The West Gate”.
Much has been written about the rapid increase in membership following World War II. Many Masons view this period as if it were the only rapid expansion of membership ever to occur in American Freemasonry. Perhaps this is because it is the one that has been used as a benchmark in the twenty-first century, frequently cited as a starting point to show how membership declined thereafter. The records are clear. Membership in American Freemasonry increased beginning in 1945 and continued to escalate until 1959, when it reached a record level of 4,103,161. The reasons for the increase have been analyzed and commented upon by Masons, scholars, sociologists, and writers for almost seventy years. Few have considered that similar rapid expansion had occurred three times previously in the history of American Freemasonry, each time carrying similar consequences.
This membership anomaly plainly illustrates how Freemasonry has never been adequately prepared for rapid expansions, much less ready to take advantage of them when they occur. The institution could not guarantee that the structure and administration of the Order could handle such a swift injection of membership. It must be kept in mind that this fourth rapid expansion in membership did not occur overnight. A steady increase took place over fourteen years—almost a full generation of men.
Already weakened by the losses caused in the aftermath of the previous rapid expansion and by social changes injected because of the growth of the fraternity during the Golden Age of Fraternalism, the structure of the Order was easily overwhelmed by the euphoria surrounding such a major comeback. Freemasonry, as an institution, has proven unable to resist the jubilation of seeing its ranks swell, even at the expense of misplacing even more of its heritage.
More important than a discussion of why the membership increased over these fourteen years is the examination of why Freemasonry was unable to do anything more than ride the crest of what appeared to be an unending surge of members.
When we see the membership rolls begin to decline and continue that drop for the next two generations (until they resume the level from 1945), one has to consider, aside from natural attrition, that something was not holding the interest of members. As the membership steadily declined to levels not seen since the end of the nineteenth century, it becomes even more apparent that Freemasonry had a two-fold problem: not only was it incapable of holding the interest of its current membership, it also lacked a wide enough appeal to maintain a steady membership at any level perceived as “suitable” in the mind of mainstream Masonry. […]
Again, understanding the reasons for the swelling of the membership during this fourth period of rapid expansion is not as important as understanding the reasons it could not be maintained. One reason is that Masonry no longer offered what it did when it was a smaller and more manageable body, an educational and philosophical institution that had not yet given up its exclusivity. As American Freemasonry became more addicted to the notion that to remain relevant, membership rolls must be high, the practices with Freemasonry became less important than the institution itself.
The meaning behind the idiom “once bitten, twice shy” does not seem to mean much to American Freemasonry. Thus, taken together with the institution’s identity crisis during the years of declining membership following previous rapid expansion, American Freemasonry has been subject to decades of listlessness and doldrums. During this lull, its members fretted, and those in formal leadership positions began to embrace predictable quick-fix notions like lowering the age qualifications for candidates, relaxing solicitation standards and dress codes, and hoping against hope that Freemasonry would return to a steady level of high membership for some reason—or perhaps explode once more in a rapid expansion.
None of that worked.
A narcotic-like obsession with the belief that the fraternity must be a multi-million-member organization to survive continues to plague American Freemasonry today. That obsession has overshadowed more practical solutions, but having more members was considered essential if the costs of grand buildings and flush endowments (a fixture of American Masonry in the early part of the twentieth century) were to be met. Among the miscalculated solutions arising from this obsession was yet another stab at rapid membership expansion in the final decade of the twentieth century. This one, instead of occurring in the manner of the previous expansions, was synthesized out of that ill-placed reverence of mass membership. In an unprecedented doctrinal shift, the fraternity bowed to the theory that more members could be artificially and successfully injected into the Order by side-stepping its heritage. […]
A book could be written with citations from Masons across the nation underscoring not only the diversity of perspectives in American Freemasonry but also consistent themes that have emerged over the past two decades or more which offer insight into and substantial evidence of the paradigm shift occurring today. We tend to look more at the history of the fraternity than at its evolution as an institution against the social and technological fabric of the society in which it exists. […] What is clear and visible to one person may be invisible to another because of shifting paradigms. […]
The ordinary model, a paradigm which started in the late 1950s and is found limping today, became the casualty of five rapid expansion periods that smothered much of the life out of the Craft. […] One of the five periods of expansion were the unanticipated influx of men coming into the fraternity following World War II—a flood that overwhelmed the structure of American Freemasonry and ultimately accelerated the lingering adverse effects of the first two periods. Slowly, the institution … became more ordinary. The fifth expansion was caused by Masonry’s deliberate decision to expand its ranks as rapidly as possible by reducing standards and implementing mass one-day initiations. Hailed by many at the time as evidence of the hunger men had for Masonic Light, the eras of rapid expansion ended up dimming that Light after the expansions ran their course. […]
We can identify the paradigm we are in not only because we so easily see how the previous model was exhausted, but also via the increasing volume and tone of many new Masonic scholars writing since the 1990s. … The observance movement has helped give the paradigm a reference point and a name. […]
In its brief history, the observance movement has established regular outposts that now serve as important stations on the outskirts of ordinary American Freemasonry: repositories for reference materials and real time libraries preserving and exemplifying early features, practices, community and systems of Freemasonry. These conservators coexist with the rest of American Freemasonry as their pioneering ideas continue to slowly fuel the next phase of that movement: the internal turnaround required of mainstream lodge cultures.
Most American Freemasons would serve themselves and the institution well to start re-examining their thinking that the fraternity in this country will once again become an institution with multiple millions on its membership rolls. All Freemasons might want to recalibrate their mindset, too, on the practices, perspectives, and social club atmosphere created by rapid expansion. […]
Fertile seeds planted in the history of American Freemasonry advance the paradigm shift we are experiencing of Freemasonry today. It is more likely than not that the future of Masonic membership in our country, once counted in the millions, will make previous periods of membership decline look insignificant. What is presented as Freemasonry in its ordinary mainstream form, however, will certainly continue for some time. Also, from time to time, new lodges will be chartered for the express purpose of practicing observances promoted by the observant movement, or a hybrid thereof.
But new lodges that do so will not become most of Freemasonry in America. What can be predicted from the timely and powerful influence of the observance movement is the only practical avenue that restoration can take: changing existing lodge cultures into Masonic lodge communities. […]
To the surprise of the old culture, an increase in retention rate and a decline in suspensions for non-payment of dues by men who have only been members for less than three years is observed when old cultures are replaced by an emerging Masonic community within a lodge. The next surprise to an old culture comes when a motion to raise dues is carried by most of this cadre, who seamlessly became part of an almost invisible slow change in the culture of their lodge. […]
Another issue considered in the process is that retention rates are meaningless if those retained are not suitable for Masonry but those who leave are, which again brings up the quality of the men allowed through the West Gate and whether they are supplied with the education, experience, and promise of Freemasonry they are seeking.
As part of considering that matter, men need to be engaged quickly to become aware and supportive of the aim and purpose of a lodge. In the Island lodge, the men making up the active and engaged lodge community make it clear that everyone who is a member has a “job” designed to contribute to the purpose of community as defined and embraced by most of its membership. These jobs range from positions in chairs, of course, to committee-related services or those tasks more programmatic in nature. The lodge environment itself is transformed and speaks to the Masonic experience men are seeking.
These jobs are extended in the form of men learning to become instructors and ritualists if they choose. Everyone who wants to contribute is given a job. And if everyone has a job and clearly understands how their service contributes to the overall life and success of the Masonic experience the lodge has adopted, they have chosen to create for themselves the Masonic experience they seek.
Importantly, there must be a written plan that covers multiple years—not just the year of the current or incoming Master—and that plan should be crafted with input from active, engaged members, made available for review by those who were not. In the Island lodge, the plan was put to a vote and unanimously adopted by the lodge. Everyone who wanted a voice had the opportunity to express their opinion, as everyone received an outline of the vision and was given an opportunity to play a role in its construction and application. […]
When lodge culture changes in this fashion, the lodge itself becomes an island of the kind of Freemasonry the majority of active and involved members desire. Their island represents the dominant view of the majority, just like the previous culture did. But the previous culture was not an island; it was part of the continent of Freemasonry that devolved into the ordinary, unable to consistently keep the votaries it attracted interested or even in good standing. The rejection of the ordinary by a slowly evolving core of men, uniformly providing a fundamental education about their degrees and the factual heritage of the Craft, driven by the principle conveyed in the Latin phrase Cura te ipsum (heal thyself), was responsible for making the lodge a community and an island of Freemasonry as these men wished to practice it.
Excerpted from John W. Bizzack, Island Freemasonry, “The Fourth Rapid Expansion,” “Freemasonry’s Narcotic: Obsession with Membership Rolls,” and “Cura Te Ipsu—Heal Thyself.” (© 2017 Macoy Pub. & Masonic Supply Co.) pp. 115-117, 188-192, 194-195