Society; and the organizers of the Philadelphia Library Company. These were men not unlike Gridley, whose “extensive Acquaintance with Classical and almost every other part of Literature, gave him the first Rank among Men of Learning.”141 Within a religious discourse that embraced rational communication as the basis for moral behavior and the ordering of society, the colonial fraternity taught men how to create a society based on Enlightenment principles. As the public sphere rapidly expanded in the 1760s, these habits came to characterize the civic workings of the emerging American society.
“MYSTERIES AND HIEROGLYPHICKS”
Despite Freemasonry’s contributions to colonial society, some continued to question whether it really was Christian. The Reverend John Rodgers pointed to the “strong prejudices . . . against your fraternity” that were “charged to the . . . excesses [of intemperance and profanity] said to be committed” at lodge meetings. He went on to say that there are “those among you, who indulge yourselves in the habitual neglect of the known and great duties of religion.”142 Others worried over the Masons’ adulteration of the Gospel with “foreign mixtures.”143 Zabdiel Adams said, “The very notion of your dealing in mysteries and hieroglyphicks is enough to raise cruel suspicions in many persons.”144 These suspicions were warranted.
On June 24, 1734, for example, the Reverend Charles Brockwell argued that not only did Freemasonry predate Christianity but the Christian story veiled Freemasonry’s deeper meaning. He began his oration by informing the members of Boston’s Saint John’s Lodge that Saint Paul was a Mason. This fact, he argued, was clear to the brotherhood but not to “the learned . . . interpreters of Scripture” who were not Masons and therefore “could not possibly conceive the apostle’s true meaning.” In Corinthians, for example, when Paul mentions his experiences “in the Body or out of the Body” and of the “third heaven or paradise,” he is speaking elliptically about the Masonic degree ceremonies. Rather than reveal the deeper Masonic secrets to outsiders, Brockwell asserted, Paul spoke to his fellow Masons in code through the Christian story. This hidden language of Masonry, moreover, “remain’d unaffected and Intire” when “God confounded the common language of mankind, at the Building of Babel.” This is “a language which none but Masons are capable of learning, a happiness which none but Brethren are capable of enjoying.”145
Most Saint John’s sermons stressed polite Christianity, yet Brockwell’s oration suggests a divergence between it and Freemasonry. Though few outsiders seemed concerned about this at the time, the fraternity had not only its own myth of origin but also its own calendar, which marked time from the creation of the world rather than Christ’s birth. Lodge minutes were dated 5750 rather than 1750, for example, to mark the imagined date, four thousand years prior to Christianity, when the world began.146 Secret words, symbols, and rituals enshrouded the lodge in an aura of mystery. The three rituals of initiation—Entered Apprentice, Fellow Craft, and Master Mason—had little to do with Christianity and continued to be the primary business of lodge meetings. “Working the craft” through these rites gave the assembled brotherhood a common experience that deepened their commitment to one another and to the fraternity’s ideals but perhaps not to the Christian Church. Margaret C. Jacob has suggested that the apparent contradiction between the fraternity’s enlightened Christianity and the emphasis it placed on its pre-Christian past might best be seen as evidence that it was “living” the rise of Enlightenment thought and practice in the colonial religious world. In her view, these heterogenous elements indicate the less than straightforward manner in which Freemasonry, and for that matter the whole of society, became modern.147
By the late eighteenth century, such heterodoxy was more the exception than the rule in the American religious landscape. As David D. Hall has demonstrated, in the seventeenth century, European immigrants lived in a broader, older “world of wonder,” laced with the debris of other systems of thought, some older than Christianity. Witchcraft, apparitions, other unearthly phenomena, and supernatural explanations of natural occurrences such as comets, hailstorms, earthquakes, sudden deaths, and monster births pervaded colonial culture.148 By the beginning of the eighteenth century, this expansive, eclectic early modern view began to give way, especially in the upper classes, to denominational institutions that worked to expand their reach in colonial society while separating Christianity from other magical beliefs and practices.149 The trend toward social consolidation, Patricia U. Bonomi has shown, resulted everywhere in the emergence of religious organizations “as significant centers of stability and influence” and in the enhancement of religious authority.150 The number of churches in the seven largest Protestant denominations increased more than sevenfold between 1700 and 1780, resulting in a widespread sacralization of the colonial landscape.151 Amid this growing Christian consolidation, pluralism, eclectic beliefs, and occult practices persisted.
Given the complexity of the eighteenth-century religious world, it is not clear what hold the rituals and beliefs of the lodge had on colonial Masons. Following the Revolution, a number of new religions did emerge that claimed Masonic origins. As early as 1788, a society of Druids formed within one Masonic lodge by rejecting all forms of Christianity and embracing the sun worship of the ancient Druids.152 Later on, the Mormons appropriated Masonic elements.153 Yet it was not until the early nineteenth century that Masonic ritual life in either England or America was standardized. As one Masonic historian wrote, “The ritual was in a more or less fluid condition during this period.”154 In Boston, for example, it was common for members to complete only one or two of the three degree rituals.155 After examining the minutes of several colonial lodges, another Masonic historian concluded that “the ceremonies were brief and possibly not overly impressive.”156 For colonial brothers, consistent procedures and meaningful ceremonies appear to have been less significant than the members’ participation in polite society.
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On the eve of the American Revolution, Catalina Schuyler, the doyenne of Albany’s polite society, was increasingly melancholy. Her hopes of a “golden age” in her country now “grew weaker.” Though she shared in the joy of the community on the repeal of the Stamp Act, she noted that this action “produced little gratitude” toward the British authorities. She was chagrined over the behavior of the town’s young people, who had “abandoned their wonted sports” and instead “amuse[d] themselves with breaking the windows and destroying the furniture of . . . suspected . . . stamp-masters.” Even more disruptive of her mannered world was the decline in “polite” visits to her home by the provincial gentry, who were now “succeeded by Obadiah or Zephaniah, from Hampshire or Connecticut, who came in without knocking; sat down without invitation; and lighted their pipe without ceremony; then talked of buying land.”157 Because Mrs. Schuyler firmly believed that “increase of wealth should be accompanied with a proportionate progress in refinement and intelligence,” she refused her table to these “petulant upstarts.” As the revolution approached, she saw “nothing on all hands but a choice of evils.”158
By the 1760s, an expanding public sphere characterized by rational communication carried on in print had eclipsed America’s colonial polite society. Balls, plays, and other entertainments now gave way to republican discipline. Private meetings in elegant homes and taverns became less frequent than public gatherings that brought together a broad expanse of the rising generation who would lead the coming war effort. The new print media engaged a progressively larger and more literate population in public dialogue on momentous questions concerning the future of the social order.159 Though some, such as Catalina Schuyler, believed that the colonists “had not cohesion nor subordination enough among them to form, or to submit to any salutary plan of government,” others, such as the Freemasons who joined the Albany Committee of Correspondence, created republican organizations devoted to the war effort.160 Masons could be found on both sides of the war question, but all came from an organization that encouraged a new civic awareness. In the revolutionary period, growing numbers of ambitious and politically active men entered the fraternity and worked to identify it with
