Why Proper Masonic Education Is So Important

[bupton52]

It really sucks that there is this constant "fight" between Prince Hall masons and the very large number of African American clandestine masons. One of the main problems for brothers who are members of a Grand Lodge of State is that we have been finding more and more that your information is being stolen from your lodge/chapter/etc. websites and passed off as their own to legitimize their clandestine orgs. I saw this today:

http://www.freewebs.com/detroitcommanderyno1/knightstemplarlocation.htm

and

http://sunsetgrandlodge.net/ten-reasons-why-you-should-be-a-knight-templar.aspx


It is literally a copy and paste. Furthermore, why is this information about the commandery is located on their Grand Lodge website? Your thoughts?

 

[crono782]

I guess since I'm new and all, I have such a hard time grasping the concept of entire clandestine Grand Lodges. More especially when I looked at http://www.masonicinfo.com/morephonies.htm and saw the list for Texas. It's crazy! I mean do their members not realize that they are clandestine? Do they not care? Are they trying to break from the norm? (I saw that Sunset "GL" has co-ed?)
I wonder how much some of these lodges purposefully leave out of their obligations...

 

[bupton52]

Sunset Grand Lodge is men only, but everything is always lumped together. In many cases, the GL governs everything. There are 1 million rebuttals to why all these GLs think they are legitimate and they believe in their hearts that they are. Since they style themselves as AFAM, I always tell them to go visit Aldine lodge or Spring lodge and see if they can visit. Nobody ever takes me up on my offer though.


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[Michael Neumann]

The large number of clandestine lodges result from the disconnect between the two recognized GL's in each state. If we would recognize one another and meet on the level then many arguments presented by these clandestine lodges would be void. After all, I believe, as someone posted on Amity's FB page, Prince Hall never intended African Lodge 459 to be a stand alone entity, it was intended to be and remain "mainstream". It was due to the times that it split and with the now rich history behind it merging would not due the work justice, so the best we can do to honor his memory is have free movement between the two recognized bodies of each state.

As a matter of fact none of the founding fathers intended there to be a disconnect at all, look at the original draft of the declaration. Thomas Jefferson, while never confirmed to be a mason, was active with lodge members. His original writing of Declaration was supported by many founders who were masons. According to, albeit unconfirmed, history Prince Hall was involved with many of these revolutionary men. http://www.princeton.edu/~tjpapers/declaration/declaration.html