Is Freemasonry Religious? The Honest Answer

The honest answer is that Freemasonry is religious in its language and its furniture, and is not a religion. Those two statements sit uncomfortably together for many enquirers, so it is worth taking them apart carefully, with the documentary record rather than assertion.

§What the constitutions actually require

The requirement, in most regular jurisdictions, is a profession of belief in a Supreme Being. Anderson's Constitutions of 1723, the foundational text of organised Freemasonry, obliges a Mason to obey the moral law and states that he will never be a stupid atheist nor an irreligious libertine, while explicitly leaving particular opinions to himself. The full text is available through the Wikipedia article on Anderson's Constitutions and in facsimile from most Grand Lodge libraries.

That single clause does a great deal of work. It sets a floor, requiring belief. It sets a ceiling, forbidding the craft from specifying which belief. And it establishes the old prohibition, still enforced at every meeting I have attended in thirty years, on religious and political discussion within the lodge.

§Why it looks religious

Because it borrows the grammar of religion. There is a Volume of the Sacred Law open upon the altar, there are prayers at opening and closing, there is a legend drawn from the building of Solomon's Temple, and there is moral instruction delivered in solemn form. To a visitor at the door, this looks like a service.

But note what is absent. There is no sacrament, no clergy, no claim of salvation, no theology of the afterlife beyond a general hope, no doctrine to which assent is required, and no worship of any deity named by the craft itself. The Volume upon the altar is the candidate's own scripture, which in a mixed lodge may mean several volumes open at once.

§The friction with the churches

It is dishonest to pretend this does not exist, so let me set it out.

• The Roman Catholic Church has objected since Clement XII's bull In eminenti apostolatus of 1738, and the 1983 declaration of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith holds that Catholics who enrol in Masonic associations are in a state of grave sin. Many Catholics are nonetheless Masons; that is between a man and his conscience and his priest.
• Some evangelical and Baptist bodies object on the grounds of the oaths and the non specific reference to deity.
• The Church of England conducted a review in 1987 that raised concerns without prohibition, and Anglican clergy are Masons in considerable numbers.
• Most mainstream Protestant, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu and Sikh bodies raise no formal objection at all, and lodges in many countries reflect exactly that mixture.

If you are a practising Catholic, do not take a blog's word for your own position. Read the 1983 declaration and speak to your priest before petitioning. I would rather a man decline on informed grounds than join and carry a private guilt for twenty years.

If the question you are really weighing is whether this fits your life, your faith and your family, the Readiness Quiz puts it to you directly, and The First Step Roadmap gives you the language to discuss it with the people who will ask.

§Can a Christian be a Freemason?

In most denominations, plainly yes, and historically in very large numbers. Cathedral chapters, parish churches and Masonic halls have shared the same membership for three centuries in Britain and North America. The Catholic case is the significant exception, and a few conservative Protestant bodies join it.

What a Christian will not find in lodge is any attempt to dilute his Christianity. He will not be asked to name his God generically outside the lodge, to conceal his faith, or to place any obligation above the one he owes to God. That precedence is stated in the ritual itself, and is one of the few things about the obligations that Masons are free to say aloud.

The craft asks where you stand. It never asks you to move.

§Answering the question at home

The version that works at a kitchen table, in my experience, is short and unapologetic. Something close to this.

It is not a religion and it does not replace mine. It asks that I believe in God and then refuses to discuss which one, because the whole point is that men of different faiths can sit together without arguing. There is a Bible on the altar. There are prayers. There is no worship of anything else and nothing I promise conflicts with my faith.

That answer holds up to follow up questions because it is true. If the person opposite you has heard something darker, the calmest response is a neutral source rather than a defence, which is the approach I take throughout Six Myths About Freemasonry.

§Where that leaves you

If you believe in a Supreme Being and your own tradition raises no bar you are unwilling to cross, this question is settled and you may move on to the practical ones: eligibility in Can Anyone Become a Freemason, and cost in How Much Does It Cost to Become a Freemason. If you do not believe, decline honourably. The craft will think no less of you, and a false declaration is a poor foundation for a life of moral instruction.