POLITE CHRISTIANITY
The social history of Albany’s Masons offers one example of Freemasonry’s widespread success in creating common ground across political and religious boundaries among elite white men. By the middle of the eighteenth century, market expansion, population growth, and non-English immigration had intensified political disputes, which the religious divisions that developed following the Great Awakening further exacerbated. Throughout the seaport towns of colonial America, Masonic lodges worked against this factionalism by including in their membership elite men of different backgrounds. One Anglican cleric and Masonic leader said, “When our MASTER CHRIST shall come again to reward his faithful Workmen and Servants; He will not ask whether we were of LUTHER or of CALVIN? Whether we prayed to him in White, Black, or Grey; in Purple or in Rags; in fine Linen, or in Sackcloth; in a Woollen Frock, or peradventure in a Leather Apron. Whatever is considered as most convenient, most in Character, most in Edification, and infringes least on Spiritual Liberty, will be admitted as good in this Café.”99 Baptists, Lutherans, Presbyterians, Quakers, Anglicans, Catholics, and even Jews, among others, were admitted to Freemasonry.100 Although not all of the elite joined—both the Quakers of Philadelphia and the Puritans of New England were less evident among the brotherhood—no other late-colonial institution, notably political parties and Christian churches, encouraged so many white male political and religious adversaries to find common ground.
Part of the attraction of Freemasonry to the newly cosmopolitan elite was the fraternity’s embrace of Enlightenment ideals of sociability and benevolence. Its belief in promoting friendship “among men that otherwise might have remained at perpetual distance” suggested that human beings naturally enjoyed one another’s company because of their innate sentiments—perhaps even a sixth sense—of benevolence, what Shaftesbury called a “moral sense.”101 What mattered most, according to John Locke’s widely read Some Thoughts Concerning Education, was “respect and good will to all people.”102
In setting aside religious differences in favor of “that Religion in which all Men agree,” Masonic thought also resembled the latitudinarian movement in the Anglican Church.103 Influential clerics sought to include a wide range of nonconformists in their fellowship by emphasizing rational religion as a basis of agreement and minimizing the importance of revelation. Missionaries whom the Anglican Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts (SPG) sent to America were to begin instructing their charges with the principles of reason and natural religion.104 The common colonial Masonic practice of processing into an Anglican church and listening to a sermon prepared for the occasion suggests a substantial overlap in the Masonic and Anglican world views.
The Church of England was the established church in six of the original thirteen colonies and second only to New England Congregationalism in number of churches through much of the eighteenth century. Anglicans were most heavily concentrated in the populous Chesapeake Bay provinces and the Atlantic coastal towns stretching from Portsmouth, New Hampshire, to Savannah, Georgia. There the church’s welfare was assured not only by the authority of the crown, parliament, and a long tradition but also by the support of those who found in its broad and generous orthodoxy a religious home that allowed for a society with more culture and tradition than the rest of America afforded at the time. By the middle of the eighteenth century, Anglicanism, the pursuit of knowledge, and religious toleration were commonly linked.
Colonial ministers and adherents of the Church of England believed that God habitually conveys his goodness through the proper order of society and the moral behavior of his people. The missionaries of the SPG and the books distributed by the Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge spread such values of the moderate English Enlightenment as free will, reasonableness, and correct moral behavior to the colonists. These placed Anglicans at odds with Congregationalists, Presbyterians, Dutch Reformed, and other Calvinist churches, whose teachings were far less optimistic about human ability and the possibilities of individual salvation. Similarly, the Church of England’s embrace of liturgy, sacraments, authority, and correct formulations of dogma resulted in tensions with the simplicity, democracy, and egalitarian spirit of the Quakers, not to mention the enthusiasm and disorder of the First Great Awakening. Obedient to God, king, and the “proper” ordering of church and society, the colonial Church of England provided American colonists with close ties to English culture, customs, and Enlightenment ideals.105
The agreement to worship in Anglican churches and listen to Anglican clerics on Saint John’s Day suggests that many members of the colonial brotherhood were also members of the established church.106 Trinity Church in Boston, Christ Church in Philadelphia, and the other new, grand Anglican churches, with their high steeples, organs, and rich interior decorations, were the favored sites for Masonic services. Samuel Seabury, the first American bishop, and William Smith, a rector of Christ Church, were among the many Anglican Masonic clerics who extolled the virtues of the lodge. Some, such as the Reverend Samuel Howard of Maryland, delivered the Saint John’s Day sermon while serving as a lodge grand master. Others, such as Charles Inglis of New York, never joined a lodge but willingly addressed Masonic audiences.
The Saint John’s Day sermons continued the medieval heritage of divine worship on patron saint’s days and the Anglican custom of the charity sermon. In Britain the charity sermon was a well-established institution by the middle of the eighteenth century. Freemasons and other benevolent organizations set aside a day for these festivities, selected a popular preacher (when one could be induced to undertake the task), and supported the event by assuring a large congregation of members—and a consequently large offering for the poor, the needy, and the sick. The well-known evangelist George Whitefield preached the first American Masonic charity sermon, on June 24, 1738. “I was enabled to read prayers and preach with power before the Freemasons,” he wrote in his diary, “with whom I afterward dined.” Whitefield preached at Solomon’s Lodge at Savannah to raise funds for an orphanage. The earliest printed Masonic sermon was Reverend Charles Brockwell’s Brotherly Love Recommended, delivered at Christ Church, Boston, on the Festival of Saint John the Evangelist in 1749 and published the following year.107 Brockwell, who served as “His Majesty’s Chaplain in Boston,” had been a Mason since 1740 and rose to senior grand warden by 1753.
The fifteen Saint John’s Day sermons published prior to 1780 have a similar structure and content, emphasizing mutual love, charity, and the need for virtuous behavior. According to their preachers, the purpose of Freemasonry is to encourage human beings’ innate love for others so that it extends outward in circles of mutual benevolence, transcending divisions, like those of religion, and ultimately including all of humanity. The intention of the society, Rev. Brockwell stated, is “the uniting of men in the stricter bands of love; for men, considered as social creatures, must derive their happiness from each other.” Preaching after the enthusiasms of the Great Awakening, Brockwell cautioned that this love should not grow “hot or cold in our inclinations” but proceed “upon the steady principles of Reason and Religion.”108 Moreover, in contrast with those whose affections diminish according to proximity, extending to family and neighbor but rarely further afield, Freemasons enlarge the operation of their sympathy through mutual bonds. As another orator put it, “Friend,