Before you jump on the R bandwagon.. when this was put into masonary it had nothing to do with the color of a persons skin.. ! it had to do with a lot of strange lodges.. some had women as member.. there were a lot of reasons why regular masonary would not reconize other lodges and had very little to do with race.. !
And on the other had don't know what all the whinnnnnning is about .. ! went to lodge the other night with a bunch of EA's and one was black and NOBODY pay any attention to his color.. ! any black in the state of Texas can join.. !
Well that is great to know but that is not the case across Texas. There have been several instance of open Racism in Lodges with NO ACTION. As far as the whining you speak of that is the younger guys looking at the state of Masonry in Texas and the direction and saying "Look, open your eyes, you guys are running us in the ground." Consider us the warning alarm that you hear when you are dropping altitude in a plane. You know the one that you hear when you are about to hit the ground a kill everyone on board. Yeah that’s us. Look at the stats. People are joining but not at the rate they are dying and on top of that we want to make it more exclusive.
There are 34 Lodges that are currently in arrears, and possibly have their lodges demise or merge. My Lodge membership has an average age of 70 years old with over 50% of our members over 70 and 75% over 60. We have 17 Master Masons under 40. I thought this is just a fluke but when I have looked at other Lodges it is THE SAME. Now do you hear what we are "whining" about. We don't need just need to get members in but we need to RETAIN. Most Lodges have a 10% - 20% active rate and only 1 out of 4 EAs become a Master. Tell you what, you just sit there and think that your Lodge is getting it right, and maybe it is, but we are looking at the status of Masonry in Texas, not just in one town. Because if that is true it is not the norm.
You want to know what the great thing about these stats are? In a few years we can look at the numbers and guess who will be able to change things, US. The people whining. You guys do what you need to do. Continue to shut Lodges down with inactivity but we are growing by the dozens each year and pretty soon it won't matter. My question is, have you left Masonry in better shape then when you joined? If so, then I think that is wonderful.