Pastor Fienen:
Freemasonry is not a centrally organized and uniformly administered organization.
Me:
Actually, it is - or at least used to be in its heyday - more highly organized and hierarchical than the Roman Catholic Church or the U.S. Military.
Pastor Fienen:
Rather, from what I can gather, it is a rather loosely connected movement with considerable independence among the various branches and local groups.
Me:
That's not the Masonry I knew in DeMolay and the Masons and Shriners of Iowa in the 1950s and 1960s.
Pastor Fienen:
In any case, within the umbrella of the York Rite (aka American Rite) one subgrouping is the Knights Templar. To participate and advance within the Knights Templar one must be Christian since part of the requirements is to sign a declaration to profess the "Doctrine of the Holy and Undivided Trinity." .... Would being a Christian in the Knights Templar alongside other Christians of other denominations be "unionism?" That would very much depend on what one considers Freemasonry to be. Is Freemasonry a nonreligious organization that recognizes the value that some members place on religion? Then unionism is not a consideration.
Me:
But Mason ritual requires prayers, acknowledgement of God and prayers that we are good enough to enter heaven.
Pastor Fienen:
For example, at one time I was Rotarian for a number of years. As a pastor, I was frequently called upon to open meetings with a prayer or give the table prayer since we typically met for lunch. (LCMS are willing to pray with other Christians.) As I was giving the prayer and it was not a prayer to which I would have religious objections, there was no problem. While the Rotary Club encouraged and promoted good behavior, its "philosophy" did not delve into religious issues. So there was no unionism.
Me:
Hooray for you and Rotary.
Pastor Fienen:
Freemasonry is officially (in as much there is official Masonic teachings) not only religious but promulgates several specific religious teachings.
Me:
In the "old days" of the 40s and 50s, Freemasonry had as much "specific religious teachings" as any church. Some of my Masonic friends contended that this "didn't really matter," to which, I said "then why have it? Why ask me to make vows in the name of an unknown God?"
Pastor Fienen:
... Freemasonry in general favors no religion over another and holds that worship of any supreme being is as good as any other. It teaches a form of what we would call works righteousness as key to entering a good afterlife and especially in its funerary rites being a good Mason is important. Thus it is at the least Syncretistic.
Me:
And Deistic and vague and avoiding any preference for salvation through Jesus Christ.
Pastor Fienen:
One does not simply enter the Knights Templar if one chooses when embarking on Freemasonry. One must first become a Mason in which these non-Christian (and I would say anti-Christian) teaching are held.
Me:
Yes.
Pastor Fienen:
While if one considers Freemasonry as primarily a social and charitable organization with a few religious overtones then Christians of various denomination mixing together would not be unionism since they are primarily doing social and charitable stuff, not religious. Even so, a Christian in such a group should personally abstain from participating in any non-Christian prayers.
Me:
Some joined for social and status reasons. But one would not be able to "abstain from participating in any non-Christian prayers." And you make your vows orally in chapter or lodge meetings.
Pastor Fienen:
However if it as, as it proclaims itself to be a religious organization with religious beliefs and teachings (even if it claims that however religious it is it is not a religion - logomancy) then concern over unionism would be overshadowed by a concern about syncretism.
Me:
Masonry tried to not proclaim itself as "religious." The LCMS, Roman Catholics and some of the rest of us didn't buy it.
Pastor Fienen:
While it is always dangerous to guess at other's motivations, I think that some of these concerns figured into Pr. Austin's decision to leave Masonry after DeMolay.
Me:
All of them did in various ways. I found the vows, rituals, concepts of God and "plan for getting into heaven," not to mention the often historically-skewed mythology, quite incompatible with what I understood as my Christian faith. (This conversation has reminded me that once I took one of my Presbyterian friends to my Lutheran church where he found the vestments, "ritual" and "liturgy" off-putting and, I think, to him a little silly. Yet this friend, a DeMolay brother, was scrupulous about chapter rituals, square corners when approaching the grand master, capes for the "precentors" and strict memorization of the "creeds" and "vows.")
