Scranton, Pennsylvania's magnificent Masonic Temple will get the national spotlight turned onto it this week, as the U.S. presidential campaign season shifts into high gear. President Donald Trump will take part in a Town Hall meeting hosted by the Fox News Channel on Thursday, March 5th at the Masonic Cultural Center. Before everybody gets their aprons in bunch over Masons and "No politics in the lodge!" this is EXACTLY what our Masonic temples used to do on a regular basis.
In the 1930s, Scranton's Masons hosted the biggest New Years Eve parties in the whole city at this temple - 4,000 attended in 1935 alone. Scranton's Masonic Temple is especially huge. At approximately 180,000 square feet, the Temple has two theatres, lodge and appendant body meeting rooms, a grand ballroom as well as numerous other rooms and areas.
The main auditorium can accommodate 1,800 people. They formed a not-for-profit organization in the early 2000s to preserve the place and operate the facility as a regional performance and cultural hub — in addition to still being a hub of Masonic activity.
Scranton's Temple has branded itself as a cultural center in that city for more than a decade now, but up until the 1960s or so, communities regarded all of our larger temples and halls as centers of civic culture automatically, without needing it plastered on signage. That was when the Freemasons were still considered to be vital players in the social and civic fabric of a city or town, and before the mass exodus from town centers into anonymous steel pole barns.
I will cite my local examples because I'm most familiar with them. In my own home town of Indianapolis, our first combined multi-lodge/grand lodge temple was built in 1850, but before it even officially opened in 1851 for our own use, it was turned over to the State of Indiana for three months for use by the delegates for a convention charged with drafting the state's new Constitution.
In 1904, Socialist Party candidate Eugene V. Debs began his presidential campaign at a speaking engagement held at the Masonic Hall in Indianapolis. Debs, by the way, was a member of Terre Haute Lodge No. 19, F. & A. M.
Arguments over "regular" or "clandestine" Masons? Nope. The first public procession of the state's Prince Hall-derived, so-called 'African Masons' marched to our Masonic Temple, which hosted their inaugural banquet.
No religion in Masonic lodges? Balderdash. The first Indianapolis Masonic Temple provided its Freemasons Hall to two different churches for their Sunday services, and we weren't alone in that. Masonic lodges in America frequently partnered with a local church to share facilities as the western frontier pushed farther and farther into the wilderness. The reason why churches and Masonic lodges in countless states were both tax exempt from the beginning is because government leaders realized the importance of both institutions in forming and perpetuating the kind of 'civic virtues' that were (and are) so vital to the smooth functioning of a democracy. Churches and Masonry had (and have) the same ultimate goal - to make the world a better place by making our congregants and members better individuals.
During World War II, almost 100 of the major Masonic temples in the U.S. took part in the Masonic Service Association's Army/Navy Service Center program to provide vital services to military personnel. As late as the 1960s, before government took on the massive domination of public and civic life it has today, Masonic temples were frequently the hosts for new immigrant naturalization ceremonies. It was a perfect location to impress upon new citizens the sort of idealism that Masonry shared with the United States: toleration, cooperation, honesty, integrity, "with malice toward none, and charity for all." There could be no better institution than Freemasonry to hold out that shining example.
So regardless of your political affiliation or opinion of any, or all, of the candidates this election season, let's congratulate Scranton's Masonic Temple for hosting this Town Hall meeting. Every single Masonic lodge in the U.S. should look to this example and offer its facility to local, state and national officials and candidates for their debates, public policy meetings, town halls, and other civic events like health fairs. Don't play favorites - be that deliberately neutral ground few others provide anymore. We're not activists, we're supposed to formative, not performative.
We were once at the very center of civic life in America. It's way past time for us to do it again.
Thursday's Town Hall will be hosted by Brett Baier and Martha MacCallum, and broadcast live from the Scranton Masonic Cultural Center on Thursday March 5th at 6:30pm EST on the Fox News Channel. It will be replayed at 11pm EST.
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