On The Square

Newly-installed as Rector of Emwood, Cara has been somewhat discombobulated by the discovery that her 'most effective churchwarden' is also a Freemason. I know that one of our Swanvale Halt congregation is the spouse of a Mason, but not of any others and I'd be surprised if there were any - it's not the sort of church that has those sort of networks or that kind of status in local society. 

We discussed Freemasonry at a diocesan training day on deliverance and all associated issues a few months ago, when the co-ordinator of the deliverance advisory team related his own run-in with parish Masons years ago. He had refused to read one of their prayers going on about 'The Great Architect' at a funeral service in the church for a Lodge member, and good heavens, didn't he get some nasty letters as a result. But nasty letters were all he got. A couple of years ago I had reason to speak to the then deliverance advisor who handed me a leaflet detailing various spiritually doubtful things in which a person might have been involved, including Freemasonry: 'covertly Satanic in its lower degrees and overtly Satanic in its higher degrees', apparently. I thought this was a bit much. 1950s Archbishop of Canterbury Geoffrey Fisher had been a Mason: the mere thought of him cavorting naked around a benighted field invoking the Great Beast was something I was not pleased to have in my mind. 

It is the case that some of the more arcane rituals of some bits of Freemasonry once mentioned Jahbulon, a sort of composite word for God cobbled from Yahweh, Baal and On, all Old Testament words for deities of different sorts. It made the point that, in the syncretistic, freethinking system that underlies Masonry, all gods are one God and all roads lead to him. There was even some would-be spiritual language about the unity of God and the Devil, of light and dark. Probably all secret societies that grew up in rationalist opposition to established church life in the 18th century developed language of this kind: it should be seen in that light, rather than Satanic. I don't see every black-and-white chequered floor as evidence of devil-worship. That said, I can't see how any definite Christian could easily use such language, or want to be involved in this kind of spiritual system. 

My friend Comrade Tankengine believed that he was actively persecuted by a group of Freemasons at his workplace many years ago. Around that time I found a bottle in the collection of the museum where I worked labelled 'Masons Extract', which we both found most amusing. I suspect, realistically, that that's as diabolic as the influence of the Lodge gets.