SOT LitnerStandard of Truth listener companion
George Mason's Final Four
S2E13 · Freemasons Part 1
0:00 / 1:00:41
13 chapters
← All episodes
Standard of Truth · Season 2 · Episode 13 · 1:00:41

Freemasons Part 1

In 1830 Joseph Smith warned his brother Hyrum to "beware of the Freemasons," yet by 1842 Joseph, Hyrum and most of the Twelve were Masons themselves.

Press play above. The page follows along.
The question ·

What was the Church's early participation or involvement in Freemasonry?

Richard

Responding to several listener emails, Richard and Gerrit take on the Church's early ties to Freemasonry. Gerrit first explains why fraternal orders felt as normal in the 1800s as Scouting did to their generation, then sketches Masonry's origins and its growth in early America. He shows how the anti-Masonic fever of upstate New York lined up with the Smith family's world, including Joseph's 1830 warning to Hyrum, before the Church embraced Masonry in Nauvoo as part of fitting in with its neighbors. The episode ends in Utah, where Masons barred Latter-day Saints until 1986, and sets up next week's question about Masonry and the temple.

Who comes upJoseph SmithHyrum SmithSamuel Harrison SmithW. W. PhelpsGeorge WashingtonGeorge MasonJames MadisonBrigham Young
Now playing · 0:38

George Mason's Final Four

Richard introduces listener emails on Freemasonry by recalling a March Madness run.

Chapters

Tap a chapter to jump there

Transcript

113 moments · tap a time to play from there
Intro Welcome to the Standard of Truth Podcast, hosted by historian, Dr. Gerrit Dirkmaat, where we explore the early days of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and gain rare historical insights into how a young farm boy was able to establish a new church and grow it by way of visions, manifestations and miracles.
Gerrit Hi, welcome to another episode of the Standard of Truth podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Gerrit Dirkmaat, and I'm joined by my friend, Professor Richard LeDuc.
Richard Hello, Gerrit. In this week's podcast, we are responding to several emails that we've received about the Church's early participation or involvement in Freemasonry. Now, when I first read this, now it is time for the March Madness season. When I first read it, all I could think about was obviously George Mason and their run to the Final Four in 2006.
Gerrit Which was a great boon to their university.
Richard All of a sudden.
Gerrit I remember reading some story that inquiries for enrollment quadrupled over the next year, simply because they almost made it to the championship. Our goal is to actually turn this into a sports podcast.
Richard Michigan State, North Carolina, Wichita State, when they were good, Go Shockers, UConn, and then they lost to Florida in the Final Four. Very exciting, thrilling run, really.
Gerrit Yeah, it was great. Pretty sure that people asking weren't concerned about sports history for seven, 10 years ago.
Richard In the context, I believe that they were.
Gerrit Right, so the only reason they cared about Freemasonry at all.
Richard Well, the only reason we're talking about it is because it reminded me of George Mason. And I said, Gerrit, we've got to talk about this.
Gerrit Literally almost all of the topics we cover on this podcast are because Richard said, hey, let's do this. And I say, I don't want to do that. And then there we are.
Richard Sure enough, there we were, picking blueberries. Picking blueberries. Fun fact, it appears that George Mason wasn't a Freemason. So that's a perfect lead into.
Gerrit Right. I mean, really you could kind of get like a little memory game where you flip it over with a Mason. No. So I'm not entirely sure where to start on this because no doubt we probably have at least one or two Masons listening. And so as I describe the history of your belief system, sorry about that. And you'll have to get your own podcast if you want the views of Masonry more deeply developed. So Masonry is pretty weird to people now.
Richard And I think that's part of the question, right?
Gerrit No, that is.
Richard It seems like, hey, this is such a weird thing.
Gerrit It's a weird thing because it's secret.
Richard Why is the church connected to it?
Gerrit It's a secret and I don't really know anyone who is a Mason or there's one weird guy that I did know and he was a Mason. And then I saw the Da Vinci Code, you know, things like that. Like, and so part of the problem is we live in an, in a completely different culture than even our grandparents lived in. And, and back then it was very commonplace, even in the earlier, you know, in the mid 20th century, to have many different kinds of civic organizations that people belong to, charitable ones. I mean, so I know all these things still exist. So I know we're going to get about 75 emails because I said they don't exist.
Richard Oh, you just made all the Kiwanis so angry.
Gerrit No, seriously. The Lions Club, the Elks Club, Lodge, you know what I mean? Things like that. That these like fraternal or, or, or, you know, some as they're open to both men and women, and organizations really kind of filled this like both social and charitable need in the country. But they also were ecumenical in the sense that, well, if I, you know, I might be a Democrat and Bill might be a Republican. But when we're at the Lions Club, we're both just trying to do charity. Right. So civic organizations, they've existed for a long time for that very reason. They exist to try to bridge the gaps of society, to provide a kind of, I mean, a leveling in the sense that people from different backgrounds are united in the same cause. Well, social groups like that, especially like where I, you know, I'm going to the lodge on Friday night, that they've really kind of gone away in the information age.
Gerrit I know they all still exist. So if you belong to one, I'm not talking about you. I'm just talking about your grandkids who won't belong to one because it won't exist by then. The reality is in order to be part of a social group, I don't need to go join, you know, the Kiwanis. And if you are a member again, that's great. I'm not saying don't join it, but people don't feel the need to. I can go join a Facebook group, feel like I'm connected to people around the country and perhaps for a charitable purpose or whatever. So that's the first hardest part about discussing this is it's very difficult to think of a world that's different than the one you live in. In the world you live in, if millions upon millions of people were a member of something, the only legitimate thing that you can think of in your mind is they could be members of a church or they can be members of a political party.
Gerrit Those are the two things legitimately that you can, that's not weird, right? I guess maybe the AARP. But the reality is in the 19th century and obviously in the 20th century, these kinds of civic groups are far more popular. And so to kind of give you an idea of how things shift, let me just use this as a bad example. I grew up in scouting. I grew up with some legendary scout masters on so, so many campouts. And you love camping. Yeah, there's a reason why I compare camping to Protestant hell. I mean, it's terrible. I feel like no one really wants to go and that even when they're there, they're pretending that it's great, but the whole time they're like, yeah, I just slept on a rock and I just ate dirt and I can't wait to freeze to death. This is wonderful. How much did we pay to get here? Anyway, so I think that I attribute that back to having, we camped a lot.
Gerrit And so I think I got to the point where I was like, you know what? You know what's better than being outside in the middle of the snow? My house. You know what's better than sleeping on the ground?
Richard My bed.
Gerrit Anyway, Richard, I'm sure you also grew up as a scouter.
Richard Oh yeah, no, I have several fewer digits than I should from Klondike Derby's Gone Poorly.
Gerrit Right, and you already don't have as many as you should.
Richard That's right, that's right.
Gerrit So the reality is, scouting was an incredibly gigantic part of our young lives. And I would guess for most of the people listening, scouting was a big part of their family's lives. It just was. Well, now the church isn't affiliated with scouting anymore. And there are very few, relatively, church members in America that are still, you know, pushing on with scouting, even though the church is no longer affiliating with it. Well, think about what your grandkids will think about scouting. Your kids right now, I mean, my kids right now, they at least were affiliated with it. I mean, Kai did Cub Scouts and Riker was in Scouts before it ended. But what will their kids think about scouting when they see pictures of their dad dressed up in this quasi military uniform with a bandolero of merit badges strung across the front with a nacre chief, you know?
Gerrit And what will they think? And as you try to describe that to them, you could go ahead with that. You try to describe that. No, we'd like put these uniforms on. Was it like the military? No, no, we'd just put them on and then, well, what are all those badges? We would go like do things and they'd give us this patch and we'd sew it on. Why don't you just like watch a YouTube video and then you'd know how to do it? No, no, it's different. I mean, it's actually pretty difficult to describe, especially to someone who has no common frame of reference. And so scouting to people 70 years from now, 50 years from now, isn't just going to seem foreign. It's going to seem weird, bordering on crazy. And yet when scouting was at its heights in the United States, really prior to the various scandals that broke across it in the late 20th and early 21st century, it wasn't a weird thing to be a boy scout at all.
Gerrit It wasn't weird. No one was like, can you believe that guy was a boy scout? I mean, he's obviously a serial killer. You know what I mean? It was millions upon millions of men and boys were members scouts. And I'm not even talking about the Girl Scouts, which is still in existence, right? But again, millions of women and girls are in the Girl Scouts. It's not crazy in the mid 20th century.
Richard So even growing up in western Idaho, where growing up it was about 15% LDS where we grew up-ish, plus or minus, it wasn't just LDS folks. Like everyone was Scouts.
Gerrit Yeah, the Lutheran Church, very affiliated with Scouting. Scouting was a big deal. And it was in that sense ecumenical, right? You went to a Boy Scout Jamboree, and there would be Lutherans and Methodists and Catholic troops there. And again, that sounds totally normal to anyone who lived through it. 50 years from now, when someone's looking at pictures of great grandpa wearing his eagle uniform, it's going to seem weird. And so one of the first things you have to understand as we discuss Masonry is the fact that there was an organization called Freemasonry is in and of itself going to be weird to you as the listener, unless you happen to be a Mason. And again, if you are, I apologize. Time to get your own podcast and tell everyone about Masonry. But so I think you need to you need to you need to start with that understanding.
Gerrit This is going to seem weird to me because I actually don't even have anything that's comparable. I mean, Boy Scouts is like the closest thing comparable you can find where if you lived in Utah and you were, you know, active in the church, right? Almost everyone you knew was in some way affiliated with with scouting. They the leaders were scout, you know, had been scouts. All the youth were relative were scouts. But even outside of that, scouting was everywhere. And there wasn't anything weird about it. It was just what people did. It was a way to, you know, keep kids off the streets and whatnot, that kind of stuff. So why do I spend all that time describing? Well, because as I go in to discuss this, our knee jerk reaction to anything that's unfamiliar to us is to attribute some kind of nefarious or negative aspect to that. It's human nature. It's human nature. When you find out something that you didn't know before that greatly conflicts with your current life, culture and ideas, it's human nature to push back on it and say, wait a minute, I'm not okay with that.
Gerrit And so that's important to understand. Masonry itself has multiple origin stories. It sounds like we're doing a Marvel movie at this point. Yeah, this is a prequel to the prequel. What someone says the origin of Freemasonry is differs depending on who you talk to. At least ostensibly, ostensibly, Masons claimed in the 18th century, so the first modern Masonic Lodges are formed in 1717 in England and in Scotland, right? They have their origin with the guilds that were created in the Middle Ages of stone Masons. Okay, that's where you get the term mason, stone mason.
Gerrit Again, this is all ostensibly, because depending on who you're talking to, there are a lot of people that would say, well, there's absolute evidence that that's not the case, and there are other people like, look at all this great evidence for the fact that it existed. But we know that guilds existed in Medieval Europe, and in fact they were incredibly powerful. Well, why would that in any way affect Masons? Well, if I show up to work on, you know, the Notre Dame Cathedral that you're hiring me out for, and I tell you I am, you know, an incredible stone worker, and I've been working on Masonry for 20 years, how exactly do you know whether or not I have been? I mean, what are you going to call and check my references on the phone that doesn't exist for the guy who died in the plague last week? The reality is you have no way of checking, right? I mean, how could you possibly check? So, at least again, let me say at least reportedly, reputedly, that what they would say is that they developed a series of both code phrases or code words and handshakes or symbols to demonstrate to another Mason from another place.
Gerrit When you show up to work there, I'm actually Mason. By the way, you can tell by what handshake I know what level of Mason I am. Am I someone who just like built one stone house or am I someone who put up St. Peter's Basilica? They're not the same thing. So, that's at least the reported history of it. Now, among that, these Masons and these guilds, there came to be the claim that the handshakes, the symbols, their code words, they actually dated all the way back to Hiram Abiff, who was the supplier of the cedars for Solomon's Temple in Solomon's Temple. And so, there's this ancient claim to what is a much more modern organization.
Gerrit Like I said, Freemasonry is we know it today with Freemasonic lodges. Historians can only trace that origin to 1717. If you talk to a mason, they will say, yes, I know that those organizations were formally created in 1717, but they actually date all the way back to Solomon's Temple, and they've just been handed down and handed down and handed down and handed down. You'll find most people in the historical community rejecting that idea. And honestly, you'll find many masons rejecting that idea. For a mason to believe that they are a part of something important, they don't need to prove that it goes all the way back to Solomon's Temple. Okay, so this is the most boring one we've ever done.
Richard No, townships.
Gerrit Yeah, but even townships, I felt like we at least got to call Craig out a little bit on that.
Richard And my brother-in-law.
Gerrit Yeah, and now I feel like unless you are currently a mason and you're already writing me an email, Dear Gerrit, how dare you talk about masons? And, you know, I don't know.
Richard That's a good... Well, so one of the favorite things that I think that we've picked up on this episode is that moving forward, anytime that you get a complaint, you just tell them to start their own podcast. If you're so smart, if you're so smart... No, no, if you're so smart, Kiwanis, why don't you start your own Kiwana podcast?
Gerrit I'm tired of you Schweiners riding around on your little cart. On your little L-cart Cora and giving me the business. But the reality is I'm not a specialist on masonry.
Richard No, but I think that that's...
Gerrit I am not a mason. And so I don't want anyone to think that, you know, look, don't take everything I say as the Gospel's truth, but I can speak to it from a historical perspective. And so in England and Scotland in the 18th century, after these laws of reform, now, like most civic organizations, the people who join most charitable or civic organizations would come from the more middle to upper class. That's not a commentary on the fact that, like, oh, poor people just don't care about helping other poor people. It's that, well, that single mother is working three jobs. And so, yeah, she doesn't have Friday evenings free to also go down to the Lions Club. You see what I'm saying? So the reality of socioeconomics is that people with more money are able to have more leisure time and they're able to devote themselves more to these civic organizations.
Gerrit Obviously, that's not across the board. Obviously, there are people who are working those three jobs and running the PTA. You know what I mean? There are certainly men and women that are like that. But just in general, it tends to be this civic organization that is, and it's a fraternal organization, meaning only men are allowed, although they do create multiple offshoot groups that are related to Freemasonry, but for women and for children actually too. But it tends to attract that group. So in England, we're looking at the middle class and the upper class, but that aren't in any way affiliated with royalty. Now, the United States doesn't have to really worry about royalty once it's founded. You know, royalty is not our thing. But Masonry is going to continue to expand from where it was in its colonial days in America.
Gerrit And you might think, what do you mean? What are you even talking about? Well, so cities would create a lodge. Now, there are different types of Masonry, right? There's Scottish, right? York, right? There's different types. We're not going to get into all that. But essentially in your city, you would have a Masonic lodge that would be established. Generally, there'd be some pretty good funding that would go into building that building that in many places would become one of the bigger or at least nicer meeting places in your community or your town because there were some fairly well-off people contributing to its construction, right? And then the other requirement to be a Mason was that you had to believe in God, essentially. And so it's designed from its inception to be this kind of ecumenical movement. When I use the term ecumenical, what I mean is bringing together people of different religious backgrounds.
Gerrit And that's a pretty big deal in the 18th and 19th century when people are virulent in their antagonism. I mean, look, Joseph Smith is telling you that these parties are so hotly contesting one another, right? And screaming at each other. You have people that, you know, you have Calvinist preachers condemning those with Arminian philosophies as leading people to hell by not accepting the absolute sovereignty of God. So in this incredibly divisive religious and political world, I mean, this is going to come as a huge surprise to everyone, but in the 19th century, people were also divided over politics. I know it seems like it's only happened in the past five, 10 years, whatever. But in fact, people hated each other over politics in the 19th century too. So you have these things pulling the nation apart, whether it's arguments over things like slavery or terrorists or political parties.
Gerrit You also have all of these religious arguments, you know, anti Catholicism, things like that. Masonry was seen as this way of kind of creating a, on a local level, an ecumenical charitable organization for men. That would bring together men from different religious faiths, right? So we have a Methodist who's a part of this Masonic Lodge. And, you know, he might be all day, you know, all week arguing against that hyper Calvinist Presbyterian that's his neighbor, but they both are members of the same Masonic Lodge. And the Lodge itself will then, at least usually, dedicate itself to doing some type of good things in the community, not just providing a space for people to have meetings in the Lodge itself, but then also, you know, Masons start orphanages, they contribute money to poor relief, things like that.
Gerrit And they can come from different backgrounds, right? So you have a, you know, a super rich, you know, millionaire, early American who's a member of a Lodge, and another person in the Lodge might just be, you know, a carpenter who's barely making it. In general, Masons tend to be middle to upper class people, because those are the ones that have time for leisure. But there are poor people that are Masons, and there's rich people there. You have incredibly educated people that are Masons, and less educated people that are Masons. So you can see, like any good civic group, one of the appeals to Masonry is that it appeals to a broad spectrum of people. And it brings people together who wouldn't normally be together otherwise. In the 19th century, as there was more and more partisan divide politically, as there's more and more arguments about things in the early republic, Masonry becomes increasingly attractive to people as this kind of means of creating a community unity out of these people that had such different political, philosophical and religious beliefs.
Gerrit So Masonry is on the move in early America. It's growing pretty rapidly. As any Mason will be very proud to tell you, George Washington was a Mason, right? In fact, many early presidents were. I mean, Richard, did you have a list?
Richard There was a list of like 20 some. It was a twist.
Gerrit What's the twist? Actually, the twist is none of them are amazing. This whole thing's been a lie. That's the twist.
Richard That was the twist.
Gerrit The twist was we shouldn't have recorded this episode.
Richard From Rutherford B. Hayes to James Madison.
Gerrit I feel like if any of the presidents we name, you then have to explain to people who they are, then this is going to be a very unhelpful list.
Richard Well, if you have to explain James Madison, then you're worse at history than me.
Gerrit Right, right.
Richard Who is James Madison?
Gerrit Father of the Constitution. Anyway, so many early, 13 signers of the Declaration of the Constitution are Masons. So sometimes you'll hear people say things like, oh yeah, every founding father was a Mason. That's not true either, right? So yeah, is John Hancock a Mason? Absolutely, right? And I'm sure he wrote it in giant letters. But it's not accurate to say that nearly every founding father was a Mason. But it is accurate to say that Masonry is fairly common, especially among upper class Americans. It just is. I mean, one thing that John Hancock and George Washington have in common is they aren't poor, right? They are, they are, and in fact, they will be on opposite sides of the political divide. They might be together on the idea of independence, but John Hancock is absolutely opposed to the Constitution of the United States.
Gerrit Well, as you might imagine, George Washington isn't, right? So, so here's an example of two Virginians, both of them wealthy, one of them certainly from a more landed property like Washington was, Hancock more of an up and coming. I mean, some people might refer to him as a smuggler of sorts, but the reality is they come from two different histories in their background. They agree very much on independence from Britain, but disagree very much on how strong the new American federal government should be, even though they're both from Virginia, right? Well, so the reality is Masonry is something that would actually unite those two, right? We may not agree politically, but we can still go to the lodge. Now, Masonic ritual is one of the things that I think bothers people who are asking the question.
Gerrit Again, I'm not a Mason. And in fact, Masons hold their rituals, their initiation rights to be secret. And so, again, a Mason might say to you, anyone who's telling you exactly what we do inside a Masonic lodge is obviously not an actual Mason, because no Mason's doing that. A Latter-day Saint might be able to feel a little bit of empathy for that, right? The person who's trying to tell you exactly what's going on inside the temple may not be the most religious Latter-day Saint that you've met, given the fact that they're doing that, right? So, in early America, Masonry is rapidly expanding, but then there starts to be this kind of pushback against it. There starts to be a problem. Masonry is seen as this elitist group, and because the members know each other outside of their average everyday lives, it was very easy, especially for lower class people, to feel that Masons were conspiring to help each other.
Gerrit Oh, we both went in for a bid on the contract to build that bridge, and I didn't get the bid, but it just so happens the guy who did is a Mason in the Masonic Lodge with this guy. There's some pushback from American religions. Several Christian sects in America actually bar their members from joining Masonry. Again, because it has these kind of quasi-religious overtones. In these Masonic Lodges, part of what they would do is reenact scenes from the Old Testament. And so it has this kind of religious overview. And again, because Masons are claiming that their rituals are dating back to Solomon's Temple. That's some of what their rituals and rites were doing. Being a Mason itself was more of this kind of fraternal organization, but the way that someone progressed through the stages of Masonry was these various rituals that they would do.
Gerrit Again, this sounds incredibly crazy to someone today. Although I'm guessing that there's at least a few people listening who are members of sororities or fraternities who went through some initiation rituals who would say, okay, I kind of understand. By the time Joseph Smith is asking his questions in 1820, there is actually a pretty solid movement in the Northeast against masonry from people in the lower classes who see masonry as this kind of rich people's guild where they're constantly scratching one another's back. And then, of course, there's religious zealots who are totally opposed to masonry because it's using religious terminologies, but it's not itself a religion or it's simply because it's secret. Any secret oath bound organization must be evil is what the cry is going to be.
Gerrit The hotbed of this anti-masonic sentiment in America, the place where it burns the hottest, is actually in upstate New York in the late 1820s, in 1828, 29 and 30. So there's actually a party that's formed called the anti-masonic party, anti-masonic party, and they will actually win multiple local elections. This will intersect with Joseph Smith very directly. The people who are most opposed to Masons, the people who regarded them the most suspectly, were generally people who were rural, and generally people who were less well off. Well, I just described Joseph Smith's family, right? I mean, they're rural farmers, and they are less well off.
Gerrit It's a very kind way of saying that, isn't it?
Richard So Joseph Smith's like, all right, so this restoring this church, this is going really well for me, so what I'm going to do, I'm going to align to another organization.
Gerrit Well, no. So what I'm saying is actually the opposite in Joseph's survey life. In Palmyra, the people who were aligned with the Masonic group, well, who are those people? Well, you know from our translation of the Book of Mormon series that you never listened to, but if you did, that you also forgot. But you should go back and listen to it. And if you go back and listen to it, that was back before we were using microphones that worked. The information was still just as poor, but Joseph was trying to get the Book of Mormon published between two separate competing Palmyra printers who hated one another. And what did they hate each other over? Aside from their economic differences, well, Egbert Grandin was pro-Masonic. He was not someone opposed to the Masonic movement. And Jonathan Hadley was adamantly opposed to Masonry.
Gerrit In fact, his paper's name is The Palmyra Freeman, meaning I'm free from Masonry and oathbound organizations. They attack each other constantly in the newspaper. Since the Wayne Sentinel is a much bigger paper, and Grandin's more established, he doesn't deign to attack Hadley as much as Hadley is attacking Grandin, but he's constantly attacking him. Hadley himself was trained by the leader of the anti-Masonic movement in the United States. He's trained by Thurlow Weed. Thurlow Weed is one of the people that Joseph will actually go to, to try to see if he will publish the Book of Mormon. And Weed's the head of this anti-Masonic party. So there's all kinds of rhetoric. And the rhetoric is surrounding things like that the Masons are, they are using their network of friends and their network of fraternities, how every town has a lodge to enrich themselves.
Gerrit You know, that everyone has an inside job. I mean, look, whatever you think about banking regulations today, well, there weren't any then. And there weren't any regulations of any kind. That someone could easily, you know, help someone else out who is a brother in their fraternity happened all the time. And so it led to people really protesting it. In Palmyra, there are people that are Masons, but Joseph Smith and his family are not only not Masons. There is early indication that at least some of their persecution is emanating from Masons. Joseph Smith writes a letter to the Colesville Saints on November 12th, 1830. And at the end of that letter, he is going to leave a postscript.
Gerrit Brother Hyrum, beware of the Freemasons. MacIntyre heard that you were in Manchester, and he got out a warrant and went to your fathers to distress the family. But Harrison, which we think is reference to Samuel Harrison Smith. But Harrison overheard their talk, and they said they cared not for the debt. If they could only obtain your body, they were there with carriages. Therefore, beware of the Freemasons. This from yours, Joseph Smith. So this is an 1830 document. This is the church is only seven or eight months old at this point, and they haven't even made the determination that they're going to leave New York for Ohio yet. That all of that's still in the offing. In fact, the missionaries have been sent, but Joseph doesn't know yet that they've been wildly successful in Ohio on their way to preach to the Native Americans. So you can kind of see that there's, that is certainly a negative sentiment towards Masonry there.
Gerrit At least the Masons in the Palmyra area seem to be kind of leading this kind of upper class attack on the Smiths on the basis of anti-Mormonism. Now, that is not the only area that anti-Mormonism, and look, if there's anything that's ecumenical in this world, it's not just Masonry. The most ecumenical thing of the 19th century is hating Mormons. Everybody does it. Everyone loves it. It's a great pastime. The reality is, this Masonic issue, though, is going to play a factor even in one of our, another earliest conversion. After the Saints moved to, after they moved to Ohio, Joseph is going to be visited by the strangest, one of the strangest converts he's ever talked to.
Gerrit And it happens to be WW. Phelps. Well, why is Phelps so strange? I mean, aside from the middle name is Wine. I mean, William Wine's Phelps. Phelps is going to describe his conversion this way, that he had started studying the Book of Mormon. He was a newspaper editor of the Ontario Phoenix, which was the Ontario County in New York, and that was in Canandaigua. So very nearby Palmyra, Phelps is one of these. He's a newspaper writer in Canandaigua. Like Jonathan Hadley, Phelps is an anti-Masonic writer. His newspaper is anti-Mason. It is part of this movement to say Masons are wrong. We need to make Masonry illegal. It's this growing civic group that is doing all kinds of dastardly things, or at the very least, not giving a level playing field to everyone else.
Gerrit So he is going to explain in his newspaper what happens to him regarding his investigation of the church. While I was in Palmyra comparing the Book of Mormon with the Bible, he writes, to find out the truth and investigate the matter for public good. And then he has four dashes in his paper, meaning there are four people who did this, but he's not going to put their names because then they could maybe file some kind of slander suit. So this is common to just put dashes for the people. But anyway, these four people, members of the Presbyterian Church and pretended anti-Masons sent for their foolish clerk from Canandaigua and took me for a warrant and obtained a judgment against me on a balance of their account. So you have Joseph warning Hyrum in November of 18, November of 1830, November 12th of 1830. Hey, the Masons are trying to use financial debts as an excuse to imprison you.
Gerrit So be careful. You have a kind of a demonstrated similarity here with, with, with WW Phelps and in the same place and only, I mean, look, the Canandaigua and the Palmyra Masons are going to be well known to one another. And it's really only in the space of another five months that the same thing is happening that as Phelps is investigating the church, he is arrested. Now, now he's an anti Masonic paper and he's claiming these people were supposedly also anti Mason. So on the one side you have Masons trying to arrest Hiram. And now on the other side, you have anti Masons are trying to arrest, trying to arrest Phelps. Anyway, let me go on with what he says. This was done after I had engaged a passage home and learning my family was sick. An execution was sworn out on the spot and I was hurried to jail in the course of a night.
Gerrit Well, I shall stay 30 days for a double purpose. And then he's later going to explain that he was, he was in prison on the actions by a couple of Presbyterian traders. A trader as in they trade, not, not traitor, but trader. I trade goods. Presbyterian traders for a small debt for the purpose, as I was informed, of keeping me from joining the Mormons. So now you have in this early period of the church, both people trying to persecute the church on the one side, who are doing it from a Masonic position. And here you can see Phelps is so indignant, because many Presbyterians were actually fairly militant, opposed to Masonry, as seeing it as essentially a corruption of the Word of God. It's not a religion, but the fact that it was this secret and oath bound organization meant, no, that's not only God, the only person you ever offer an oath to.
Gerrit So you really see the churches on both sides of this. The churches on both sides of this. And really what I mean is the most ecumenical thing in the world is hating Mormons. And so one thing that brings anti-Masons and Masons together. So in the early church, we don't, I don't have, I mean, maybe someone does and I don't, but I don't have a count of how many members of the church were Masons. My guess is very few because many of them are hailing from relatively poor circumstances. Many others are fervent pastors and religionists. And look, pastors tended to not be Masons as much as as your average business person was much more likely to be a Mason. So that's the background of the early involvement in Kirtland and in Missouri. There isn't really an attempt made to create a Masonic Lodge in those towns, although there were existing Masonic Lodges.
Gerrit But you don't have the same kind of organizational, you know, fear of them. In fact, masonry kind of drops from the church's record until late 1841 and early 1842 in Nauvoo. And this is where I think Joseph Smith has made, like, I think they've made a very calculated decision. Well, we were in Kirtland and we got drove driven out. We were in Missouri and we got driven out. So we moved somewhere else in Missouri and we also got driven out. There seems to be a conscious decision made with Nauvoo that Nauvoo was going to try to integrate itself into the state and the surrounding community as much as it possibly could. Whereas, you know, in Jackson County, they're thinking of building the city of Zion. You know, they're planning on building the city of God there. In Nauvoo, there is a greater attempt to try to make Nauvoo look like other cities, meaning we're going to have a university in Nauvoo.
Gerrit We're going to have a group that does drama and plays. We're going to have a band organization where people can come join, be part of the brass band. One of the other things they determine that is an ecumenical step to kind of opening doors for Latter-day Saints in the wider community is we're going to establish a Masonic lodge. Now, by 1842, antagonism towards Masonry had died off a little bit. The anti-Masonic party had really just been a flash in the pan, 1828 through 1832 basically, and then just kind of dissolves after that and becomes more part of the Whig party eventually. But at any rate, the anti-Masonic movement has died, but there's still a lot of antagonism towards Masons. Still, in many American cities, people who are upper to middle class as a means of demonstrating that they were now in this new class, they would try to join these lodges.
Gerrit And Nauvoo is no different. They try to organize a lodge, they get permission temporarily and then eventually permanently, and they will build a Masonic hall in Nauvoo. And that's actually where a lot of the church's meetings are going to take place after that. I mean, if you go to the Joseph Smith Papers website and do a search for the Masonic hall, there's all kinds of meetings that take place there, not just Masonic meetings. The Latter-day Saints no sooner start their lodge that they start to elicit some complaints from fellow Masons. It's supposed to take essentially a lifetime to go from being a newly joined initiate Mason to becoming a grandmaster. I mean, a life, slow and steady, demonstrated devotion to Masonry and its causes over the course of your lifetime. And then when you're finally in your 70s, you're going to become a grandmaster or the next lowest, right?
Gerrit Well, in Nauvoo, Hyrum and Joseph are going to progress very rapidly through the ranks and essentially become masters in a day. So this is great because it places, you know, Joseph and Hyrum can be master masons, but it is not what other lodges think is appropriate for masonry. So these other local lodges of masons and other towns. Joseph once, you know, said, explaining masonry, he said, the great secret of masonry is that it is secret. OK, that's not very helpful in getting Joseph Smith's ideals behind it. So when someone asks, was Joseph Smith a mason, it really depends on when they're talking about early in life. Not only is he not a mason, he is telling Hyrum to avoid the masons because they're trying to hurt you. But by 1842, Joseph and most of the other prominent leaders in the church, most of the Quorum of the Twelve, they're all going to become masons.
Gerrit And again, I think the idea behind it is how can we have a kind of ecumenical footprint? How can we reach out to the wider community? How can we demonstrate to people in Carthage and in Warsaw and in Springfield that we're not a bunch of weirdos? Of course, we're weirdos because we're Mormons, but how can we prove to them that we're just like other people? Will Masonry is an accepted form of civic involvement in all these other cities? So if we have a Masonic Lodge, then will that be enough? Well, it obviously isn't because the Latter-day Saints, you know, Lodges have a lot of local control. And so Latter-day Saints, they move themselves up the ladder of Masonry much more quickly than other Masonic Lodges existed. Now, you might be wondering, if so many of the early Church members were Masons, how come it seems like I don't know anybody who's a Mason?
Gerrit I mean, that's a pretty, it's a pretty, you know, one of the reasons why it seems so weird to me is, yeah, I've met like three people that are Masons, and two of them were weird and one of them was a member. You know, I mean, they're just not very common. Well, there's a reason behind that. When the, first of all, while they're still in Nauvoo, amidst the other anti-Mormon things that are going on, like the repeal of the Nauvoo Charter, the violence against the Latter-day Saints, amidst all of that, the other Masonic lodges, the main lodge in Illinois, they decide that the Latter-day Saints are not using Masonic rights and privileges appropriately. Either they're advancing people too quickly, they are sharing these signs or things outside of Masonry like they're not supposed to, and so they actually have their lodge revoked from them. So their last experience with Masonry while they're in Nauvoo is less good.
Gerrit And then they will flee the country and go to Utah. So since their last experience with Masonry was negative, they don't immediately try to... In fact, one thing that I think is interesting is that because Masons are supposed to have this brotherhood, they're supposed to come to each other's defense. They're supposed to look out for one another. And that's what you pledged. And I think Latter-day Saints felt in some way very cheated by the fact that some of the people that were trying to kill them were fellow Masons. I mean, if part of what we pledge to one another is that we'll defend one another, and you're also burning my house down and shooting at me, it becomes less as though you're keeping your pledge. It seems maybe you're not as you burn my house down. So when they get to Utah Territory, well, when Utah Territory is established in 1850, they don't recreate a lodge, and there isn't any real Masonic movement until the Army is in Utah.
Gerrit When Johnson's Army invades during the Utah War, they get there in 1858, some of the soldiers want to create a temporary Masonic lodge, and they get permission to do that. Now, it's only going to be super temporary, because then they're going to leave with the outbreak of the Civil War. But at the end of the Civil War, again, the soldiers stationed in Utah are going to be part of propelling the creation of a lodge in Utah. Now, I said at the outset that one of the only requirements of being a Mason is you have to believe in God. You can be, you know, ostensibly, you can be Jewish and a Mason, although there was all kinds of anti-Semitic actions against Jews from Masonic lodges in the past. But again, ostensibly, you could be Muslim, you could be Catholic, anyone as long as you believe in God.
Gerrit And they're using the Old Testament as their template for their rites and their rituals. Except in Utah, when the Masonic Lodge is formed in Utah, it is formed with a very specific provision that no Mormons are allowed to join the lodge. They then later expand that prohibition to that no Mormons are even allowed to visit the lodge. In Utah, the Masonic Lodge in Salt Lake City is actually going to become the focus of the anti-Mormon political party that was created. I really need people to not read into this. I'm going to tell you the name of that party, but I need you to remember that I'm talking about something from the 19th century.
Richard I'm going to go ahead and say the Democratic Party.
Gerrit Nope, nope. It's actually worse than that. For overreactions of someone listening. They call their party the Liberal Party. Yeah. So if you've ever wondered why the term liberal is especially pejorative for some people in Utah, you have a long history of it. The Liberal Party is made up of almost entirely of excommunicated Latter-day Saints and the few non Latter-day Saints living in Utah territory. It's less than 10% of the population of the territory. But they are angling to control the whole territory on the basis that Mormons shouldn't have the right to serve on juries, they shouldn't have the right to vote, they shouldn't have the right, I mean, all kinds of stuff like that. And again, surrounding anti-polygamy stuff as well. So the Liberal Party will actually hold some of its party functions at the Masonic Hall in Salt Lake City.
Gerrit So Masonry and anti-Mormonism are actually merged together in Utah territory for decades. The Masonic Hall is seen as the headquarters of anti-Mormon work. Again, I'm not meaning to say this about any current Mason, okay? So if you're a Mason right now and you're really upset that that's the history of Masonry in Utah.
Richard Although if he's a Mason, he's really upset, maybe he's upset because you're nailing it.
Gerrit Yeah, maybe. I was like, why did you tell anyone that we hated Mormons the way we did? Of course we hated them, but we don't want people to know that we hate them. And what does that mean? Look, Masonry is a fraternal organization. It is passed down from father to son and father to son. That's often how it gets passed. Well, in Utah, you had essentially a 70 year gap where not only were you not passing Masonry down, father to son, Masons were seen as part of the wider, quote unquote, Gentile effort to destroy the church. And so, and look, it's, I'm not, you know, I'm not saying, you know what, it seems like they wouldn't allow any Mormons to join their group. No, it's in that they voted. Mormons can't be a part of the Masonic Lodge in Utah, so that they couldn't. That actually, by the way, was not actually repealed until 1986.
Gerrit There were latterly saints who did join before then, but kind of like the extermination order in Missouri. We're just keeping them books just in case. Now, anyway, just in case, just in case we need to come back at you and burn your house down, maybe steal your farm. We're going to do eventually a podcast on the violence in Missouri, but we have to figure out how to do it.
Richard Yeah. It's going to be explicit in nature as you read the affidavit.
Gerrit Yeah. Our options are water it down so that you don't know what actually happened, and then we're fine.
Richard Some people did some things.
Gerrit Yeah. Some people did some things.
Richard Put an E.
Gerrit We might have to make an explicit podcast to describe all the horrors that took place. Or maybe we'll try to find a way to... Either way... No, no, no.
Richard Two options.
Gerrit Either way, it's not going to be a podcast you want your children listening to. Much like this one that you yourself wish you hadn't listened to. But there wasn't a marker. See, what if we had a marker?
Richard If you were so smart, make your own podcast.
Gerrit By the way, we're going to be talking about masons. You should stop listening right now. And so, Utah today has the fewest per capita masons of any state in the Union. Why? Because for 70 years, it was essentially this anti-Mormon group. even when they relax those issues, even when they're no longer actively barring Latter-day Saints from joining the Masonic Lodge, as you might imagine, the damage is kind of already done. Now, this is a very poor comparison, but I'm going to make it anyway because I do poor comparisons for a living. If tomorrow, the KKK were to come out and say, hey, guess what? We feel bad about how racist we've been against blacks and immigrants over the past two centuries.
Gerrit So from now on, we're good with it.
Richard We're just painting houses.
Gerrit Now we're building orphanages and David Duke is our best friend. I know that's ridiculous. The KKK is this horrendous hate group. My point is, if you were an African American and tomorrow the KKK announced that they were going to no longer hate black people, well, my guess is you wouldn't run out and join the KKK. You would still harbor some pretty negative sentiments towards this hate group that had slaughtered and persecuted black Americans for so many years. Obviously, what anti-Masons are doing to Mormons in Utah is not comparable in the sense of violence. Sorry, what Masons are doing in Utah, it's not comparable in the terms of violence, but it is comparable in the sense that generations of Latter-day Saints growing up in Utah, Masonry was synonymous with people who hate Mormons.
Gerrit So even when Masons decided, okay, we're finally going to it seems like it's hard for us to grow here. Our numbers aren't coming in very good on the top line, Jim. I'm wondering if maybe we allow the primary population to be a part of it. We could have a chance. Whatever the reason is behind it. I mean, hopefully they just came to the terms or like, you know what? I think it's wrong on an organization based on you can belong as long as you believe in God to say, except for these people who believe in the wrong God. Regardless of what that reason is, there was no rush of Latter-day Saints to join. Now again, I know multiple Latter-day Saints who are Masons. But there's not very many. And again, statistically, they're the fewest in the country. Well, because here, there was this active suppression of the majority of the population being a part of it, and it was affiliated with anti-Mormonism. So one of the things that's going to seem odd to you as we discuss Masonry, especially if you happen to be a Latter-day Saint with roots in Utah or living in Utah, is you don't know it, but you actually have about a century of cultural animosity built up towards Masonry.
Gerrit And I know your grandpa didn't sit you down and say, you should hate Masons, but you probably never heard any positive thing about Masons coming from your grandfather, coming from your great grandfather, because what did they learn from their father? That Masons were trying to destroy the church. And so that was kind of handed down culturally. So what I want to do on our next podcast is we're going to approach the topic that I think most people wonder about Masonry. Well, this is a nice, fascinating, not fascinating history that you've given. I've fallen asleep four times. I fell asleep actually giving the history. So that seems like that will be a big edit where all you hear is a snore in there. But I think the question that many people have is that you've heard people denigrate Joseph and things like Temple Ritual on the basis of its connection to Masonry. What do they mean by that?
Gerrit Obviously, there's only so many things I'm going to be able to really talk about with that. But we can at least approach the subject in a way that can help people understand or actually more likely, probably not help people understand. Just like all the other podcasts. So thank you so much for joining us. We'll see you next week.
Intro Thank you for listening to the Standard of Truth podcast, hosted by historian Dr. Gerrit Dirkmaat. If you know anybody that could benefit from the material in this episode, please share it with them. And for more resources, visit standardoftruth.com. Until next time.

Quote board

Make a share card from any line

Literally almost all of the topics we cover on this podcast are because Richard said, hey, let's do this. And I say, I don't want to do that. And then there we are.

GerritBanter

Oh, you just made all the Kiwanis so angry.

RichardBanter

Oh yeah, no, I have several fewer digits than I should from Klondike Derby's Gone Poorly.

RichardBanter

When you find out something that you didn't know before that greatly conflicts with your current life, culture and ideas, it's human nature to push back on it and say, wait a minute, I'm not okay with that.

GerritInsight

Okay, so this is the most boring one we've ever done.

GerritBanter

No, townships.

RichardBanter

The most ecumenical thing of the 19th century is hating Mormons. Everybody does it.

GerritBanter

There seems to be a conscious decision made with Nauvoo that Nauvoo was going to try to integrate itself into the state and the surrounding community as much as it possibly could.

GerritInsight

If you were so smart, make your own podcast.

RichardBanter

More from this episode

Claim checkThings people say, and what the episode shows.

Claim check

What critics say, and what the episode found
Nearly every founding father was a Mason.
Joseph Smith was a Mason all along.
Take it to classReady to use in a lesson or a talk.

Take it to class

Ready to copy into a lesson or a text

Fraternal orders like Masonry were as ordinary in the 1800s as Scouting was for many of us, so don't assume something is sinister just because it's unfamiliar.

In 1830 Joseph warned Hyrum to beware of the Freemasons; by 1842 the Church had a Nauvoo lodge as part of an effort to fit in with its neighbors.

In Utah, Masonic lodges barred Latter-day Saints until 1986 and hosted the anti-Mormon Liberal Party, which is why few Utah members are Masons today.

Banter binThe funniest moments in this episode.

Banter bin

The running jokes, for people who skip ahead
George Mason's Final FourRichard's March Madness tangent about George Mason's 2006 run, though George Mason wasn't a Freemason (0:38, 1:20, 1:56).
Gerrit hates campingHe compares camping to Protestant hell: sleep on a rock, eat dirt, freeze to death (5:43).
Klondike Derby fingersRichard lost digits to Klondike Derbies gone poorly, and he already had fewer than he should (7:03).
IdahoIn western Idaho everyone was in Scouts, not just Latter-day Saints (9:56).
TownshipsNot the most boring episode they've ever done; that honor still goes to townships (16:18).
Start your own podcastThe new answer to every complaint, from Masons to the Kiwanis (10:07, callback 16:39, 55:22).
Unisom anti-MormonismGerrit fell asleep four times while giving the history, so expect a snore in the edit (58:55).
Episodes promised, never madeA future podcast on the Missouri violence, which may need an explicit marker (54:24).
The Phebe Draper Palmer Brown MailbagSend Gerrit and Richard your question.

The Phebe Draper Palmer Brown Mailbag

Your question could be next week’s episode
Questions from Litners drive a lot of episodes. Send yours. If it makes the show, Richard reads it on air.
Go deeperWhere to read more.

Go deeper

Deep dives the episode points toward
The anti-Masonic party of 1828-1832 and how it ran through Palmyra's rival printers (29:56).
W. W. Phelps's own account of being jailed while investigating the Book of Mormon (36:34).
Search the Joseph Smith Papers for the Nauvoo Masonic Hall to see how many meetings took place there (44:13).
Utah's Liberal Party and how anti-Mormon politics shaped Utah for decades (51:51).
SOT Litner · S2E13.