The Revolutionary Transformation of American Freemasonry, 1752-1792

WYP HEN Brother Benjamin Franklin died in I790, Philadelphia's Masonic lodges were conspicuously absent from the funeral. An estimated 20,000 people, in a city of about 42,000, watched the procession-a concourse of Spectators, judged the Pennsylvania Gazette, greater than ever was known on a like occasion. The Society of the Cincinnati, the American Philosophical Society, and the Council and Assembly of the state took part, as did, the Gazette noted, all the Clergy of the City, including the Ministers of the Hebrew Congregation. The city's Masonic lodges, however, completely ignored the event, failing even to note the death of one of the first Freemasons in America and the former head of the order in Pennsylvania. By I790 Franklin was simply the wrong sort of Freemason for the Philadelphia brothers. Their refusal to acknowledge his death underlined the social and institutional transformation that had occurred within the fraternity during the sixty years Franklin had been a member.1 The Masonic order that admitted Franklin in I 732 had been created only fifteen years before. Noncraftsmen attached to the London craft guild had organized a Lodge in I 7 I 7, severing the connection between the craft and what they now called speculative Masonry, a fraternal order that built moral character rather than buildings. This new Grand Lodge, supervising both local lodges and mid-level provincial grand lodges, developed a series of degree rituals and a mythology that traced Masonic ideas and practices back to Solomon's temple and even before.2 Philadel

Political science · Transformation (genetics · Chemistry · Mormonism, Religion, and History · Religious Studies and Spiritual Practices

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