Re: FreeMasons and Civil Disobedience

On Dec 19, 10:05 pm, Doug Freyburger <dfrey...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Torence wrote:
But enough of my opinion, what is yours?
I think it's obedience to just government. That's why dictatorships ban
Freemasonry when they get power. Masons might go from fostering
obedience to a just government to fostering revolution to an unjust
government. It's happened in the past, individual Masons anyways.

I would like to know a little more myself about who wrote and what
motivated the Charges of a Freemason in Anderson?s Book of
Constitutions. Whether he or Payne or some other Brother was the
author, the instructions are very clear that individually we must
endeavor to be generally peaceable to the civil powers. Should one of
our peers find himself on the wrong side of the law, we should own him
and his act, and still love him throughout his ordeal of trial. I
would also like to think that if he were incarcerated, that as
individual FreeMasons we would not completely disown him. But my
experience among the Masons of my time is that we do not do that.
Indeed if you were to continue to help an incarcerated Mason, even one
whose imprisonment he professes to be an injustice, you may find the
cogs of the machine shift gears to head in your direction.

How this maps to acts of civil disobedience as protest I haven't thought
through. I have friends who have gone out to certain sites and crossed
the fence to get themselves arrested on camera. It's an honorable thing
to do iMO. As far as I know when I took my degrees I agreed not to do
that.

But civil disobedience is not a tactic that is limited to disputes
between men and their government. I would like to think that every
FreeMason that I know, both here and in our other circles, would not
tolerate a tyrant or dictator. But injustice in our time is often
inflicted by the cold robotic hands of other public institutions. In
Anderson?s day, religious strife was fresh, in our time bad business
and a corrupted education system are in need of reform. I have been
doing some reading up as to how Freemasons here in Chicago behaved
when our club was dominated by politicians and Captains of Industry
while many rank and file members organized the Knights of Labor and
made Pullman?s social experiment a workable reality. No doubt,
Chicagoans lost much in the 20th Century due to the peculiar short
sightedness of that day. I wonder if our club could tolerate members
who were to conceal a fugitive who engaged in sabotage or disruption,
particularly when such acts posed no threat to public safety.

As Masons where exactly does our moral responsibility lie?

Fraternally,
Torence Evans Ake
Secretary ? Auburn Park Lodge No. 789 ? Crete, Illinois

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