That Religion in Which All Men Agree
The publisher gratefully acknowledges the generous support of the Ahmanson Foundation Humanities Endowment Fund of the University of California Press Foundation.
That Religion in Which
All Men Agree
Freemasonry in American Culture
David G. Hackett
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS
Berkeley•Los Angeles•London
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University of California Press
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University of California Press, Ltd.
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© 2014 by The Regents of the University of California
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Hackett, David G.
That Religion in Which All Men Agree : freemasonry in American culture / David G. Hackett.
p.cm.
Includes index.
ISBN 978-0-520-28167-7 (cloth, alk. paper) —
ISBN 978-0-520-95762-6 (electronic)
1. Freemasons—United States—History.2. Freemasonry—United States—History.3. Group identity—United States—History.4. United States—Religion—History.5. United States—Social life and customs.I. Title.
HS515.R452014
366’.10973—dc232013025218
Manufactured in the United States of America
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10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
In keeping with a commitment to support environmentally responsible and sustainable printing practices, UC Press has printed this book on Natures Natural, a fiber that contains 30% post-consumer waste and meets the minimum requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (R 1997) (Permanence of Paper).
For Evie and Ben
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
PART ONE. EUROPEAN AMERICAN FREEMASONRY
1.Colonial Freemasonry and Polite Society, 1733–1776
2.Revolutionary Masonry: Republican and Christian, 1757–1825
3.A Private World of Ritual, 1797–1825
4.Anti-Masonry and the Public Sphere, 1826–1850
5.Gender, Protestants, and Freemasonry, 1850–1920
PART TWO. BEYOND THE WHITE PROTESTANT MIDDLE CLASS
6.The Prince Hall Masons and the African American Church: The Labors of Grand Master and Bishop James Walker Hood, 1864–1918
7.Freemasonry and Native Americans, 1776–1920
8.Jews and Catholics, 1723–1920
Epilogue
Notes
Index
Acknowledgments
“Where are the men?” I asked myself some years ago, while studying the membership lists of Albany, New York’s early nineteenth-century churches. In 1830, 74 percent of that town’s male work force did not belong to a church, and 72 percent of the members of its churches were women. City directory lists of Masonic lodges and their officers suggested themselves to me as holding possible answers.
I initially read my way into the literature on Freemasonry while looking for the existence of a male world that might broadly complement the Protestant women’s sphere. As my research progressed, I saw larger implications. The fraternity’s legendary history and ceremonial practices were part of a larger supernatural world inhabited by colonial men and women. Revolutionary-era Christian, republican Freemasonry had an influence on the creation of the United States that rivaled that of Protestantism. The brotherhood’s private ceremonies were centrally involved in changing understandings of the body and sensory experience. Moreover, at different times Masonic beliefs and practices paralleled, interacted with, and diverged from not only white, mainstream Protestantism but also the black church, Native American world views, and immigrant Jewish and Catholic communal understandings. Though not a religion to its adherents, Freemasonry played a considerable role in the American religious past.
For assistance in my journey through Freemasonry, I thank the librarians and archivists who directed me to many of the materials for this book. The libraries of the Grand Lodges of Massachusetts, New York, Philadelphia, and Iowa were essential to this work. I am especially grateful to the librarian Bill Kreuger, who helped me find my way through the Prince Hall manuscripts at the Iowa Grand Lodge library in Cedar Rapids. Research visits to the American Antiquarian Society, the New York State Archives, the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture at the New York Public Library, the archives of Salisbury College in North Carolina, the First Congregational Church in Bedford, Massachusetts, and the Masonic Temple in Albany, New York, all provided needed materials. The Interlibrary Loan staff at the University of Florida, especially Janice Kahler, has always gone the extra mile in pursuing elusive materials.
I am grateful as well to a variety of sources for supporting this project. A National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship and sabbatical homes provided by Princeton Theological Seminary’s Center of Theological Inquiry and Princeton University’s Center for the Study of Religion in America enabled the initial research. Daniel Hardy at the seminary and Robert Wuthnow at the university were gracious hosts. The Louisville Institute for the Study of American Protestantism supported a later year of research, which the Institute for Ecumenical and Cultural Research at Saint John’s University in Collegeville, Minnesota suffused with Benedictine spirituality. Here again I was gifted with warm and caring hosts, in Patrick Henry and Killian McDonnell. I am thankful to Wheaton College’s Billy Graham Center for a travel grant to visit its collections and to my home university, the University of Florida, for providing summer support and research leaves.
I also thank the academic audiences who listened to and engaged with my evolving project in ways that made it better. The residents at the Center of Theological Inquiry and the fellows and graduate students of the Center for the Study of Religion in America discussed my early workshop papers. It was a stroke of luck to have Nancy Ammerman, Jim Bratt, Peter Paris, and Albert Raboteau among these conversation partners in my sabbatical year. I presented successive papers at the annual meetings of the International Society for the Sociology of Religion, the American Academy of Religion, the Canadian American Studies Association, the American Studies Association, the Organization of American Historians, the American Society of Church History, and the International Conference on Freemasonry. I am grateful too for invitations to discuss my work at Yale University, the University of Chicago, Harvard University, the University of Notre Dame, Drew University, Union Theological Seminary, the Center on Religion and Politics at Washington University, and the New York Grand Lodge of Free and Accepted Masons.
I have benefited from comments from and conversations with a number of colleagues and friends in addition to those already mentioned. Early on, Mark Carnes welcomed me into his home and shared his efforts to understand the burgeoning of late nineteenth-century fraternal orders. Cathy Albanese, Randy Balmer, and Mark Noll all offered advice and encouragement in the early stages.