Many people know that there are similarities between Mormon temple ceremonies and Masonic ceremonies. What are the similarities and differences in the Momron-mason connection? Cheryl Bruno will answer these questions. Check out our conversation….
Don’t miss our other episodes with Cheryl Bruno! https://gospeltangents.com/people/cheryl-bruno/
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Mormon-Mason Connections
GT 28:22 What else can you can you tell us as far as these similarities without breaking anything that we’re not supposed to talk about?
Cheryl 28:30 Well, I like to talk about the five points of fellowship because this is no longer a part of the temple ceremony. But it used to be part of the temple ceremony when I first went through, and it is a Masonic ritual. One thing I noticed when I started learning about Freemasonry is it gave meaning to that symbol, which I never understood as a Mormon. Masons are able to tell you what each symbol means, each of the five points has a specific meaning to the Masons. When I learned those meanings, it made my Mormonism suddenly come alive for me.
GT 29:09 And then they took it away.
Cheryl 29:10 Yeah, darn! (Chuckling.) I find that in a lot of different things in the temple is that if you understand Freemasonry, it’s not exactly borrowed from Freemasonry, but Freemasonry gives it a meaning that is broader, and that helps you understand why it’s there, a little bit more.
GT 29:31 Well, since we mentioned that, I know, in fact, I just had a conversation with somebody, and he says, “Do you know why they made these changes in 1990?” I know there was some big differences there. It sounds like there are different beliefs in that. My response was, “Well, it was due to The Godmakers,[1] and that the church has tried to kind of sever some of the Masonic elements to make it more different. Is that is that a fair characterization?
Cheryl 30:05 I have a little different view and I am a believing Mormon, so that’s where I’m coming from. But I feel that the changes that they make in the temple ceremony make them more meaningful for people today. Symbolism is really important to me and sometimes I think it’s a real shame that some of those symbols are lost, but when it no longer means the same thing to people that are going through the temple, it needs to be removed. One of these [symbols] is women veiling their faces. That used to have a very different meaning to women than it does today. Today, it’s very oppressive. So it needs to be taken out of the ceremony, because it’s seen by women now as being oppressive. That’s not what the symbol was meant to convey, so it’s appropriate to change things so that the ritual now conveys something that it’s meant to convey. Because society has changed, and because people change, we need to also keep up with that in our [ceremonies].
GT 31:05 That’s interesting that you mentioned that. Tell me if this is a true statement. I believe in Joseph Smith’s day, in order to be a Mason, you had to be a man, you could not be a woman. So I’ve heard that when Joseph introduced the endowment ceremony, and he allowed women to participate, that that made a lot of Masons angry because women weren’t supposed to be part of this. Is that true?
Cheryl 31:36 No, and I wonder where that comes from, because I’ve tried to track down where that idea is coming from. First of all, there were women Masons in Joseph Smith’s time.
GT 31:46 Oh, really?
Cheryl 31:47 There were and we believe that some of the women in Nauvoo actually were part of, maybe the Heroines of Jericho. There’s a little bit of evidence there, which will be in my book, but I don’t think it had a lot to do with anything. But the Grand Lodge of Illinois had a lot of different problems with things that Joseph Smith was doing or that Masons were doing in Nauvoo. They come out with it quite clearly. “We’re having a problem with this or we’re having a problem with that,” and never was it ever said contemporaneously, that they had a problem with women being brought into ritual. That was never said. It was simply not a problem for other Masons. I don’t know when this idea started that Masons were upset.
GT 32:40 That’s interesting.
Cheryl 32:41 I don’t know when that started, but I’d like to track that down because I think it’s quite recently. It’s not within the last 50 years or something, but it’s a more recent idea.
GT 32:53 Another thing that I wanted to ask you about was, I know Michael Homer has written the book, Joseph’s Temples. I need to get Michael on. He’s agreed, and I just haven’t gotten to him. But I know in his book he has said that he thinks that the ban on black church members was also due to Masonic influences.
Cheryl 33:17 Yes. I really enjoyed his chapter in his book where he writes about that. It’s kind of breaking new ground. I don’t have exactly the same ideas that he does. You’ll have to compare our two books to see the differences, because it’s quite involved. I admire his argument. I just don’t see it the same way. I don’t think that the influence [is there.] The black lodges didn’t come into play in the United States until much later after Joseph Smith died. So, I don’t think it had so much of an influence in the priesthood ban.
GT 33:55 So you would reject that.
Cheryl 33:58 I think that started with Brigham Young and I don’t think it had anything to do with Masonry.
GT 34:02 Oh, that’s interesting.
GT 34:04 I believe that Walker Lewis, who was a Mason in Massachusetts and he was a black.
Cheryl 34:09 Yes, actually he was a Grand Master.
GT 34:11 Yeah. Did they have a special black lodge in Massachusetts?
Cheryl 34:16 Yes, and so he had helped start that as well.
Cheryl 34:19 Yes. Some people believe that might have been some of the tension he had with Brigham Young when he later went to Utah.
GT 34:25 Oh, really? Can you tell us more about that?
Cheryl 34:26 No, I don’t know much about it.
GT 34:32 That’s too bad. It seems like in the early days of the church, Mormon leaders didn’t hide the Masonic Temple ceremony connections. Can you talk a little bit more about that?
Cheryl 34:47 No, I think they were really proud of being Masons. The interesting thing to me is that after Joseph Smith died, they continued to make Masons at even faster a pace than when he was alive. So even though they now had the temple ceremony, the Nauvoo temple was up and running, they still continued to make Masons. It wasn’t even just a preparatory thing for the temple ceremony because several men that we know of had their temple endowments, and then were made Masons after that. So we end up with about 1,300 Masons in the Nauvoo lodge alone, and several other, maybe seven other Mormon lodges in the area. So who knows how many Mormon men were Masons? Maybe as many as one in four Mormon men were Masons, by the time they started going over to Utah.
GT 34:55 Okay. So it seems like I’ve heard that in Utah, especially, there was a little bit of animosity between Masons and Mormons.
Cheryl 35:48 Yes.
GT 35:49 Why?
Cheryl 35:50 Brigham Young was very upset at the martyrdom. He believed that Joseph Smith had been murdered by Masons or with Masonic influence.
GT 35:59 I understand Joseph Smith did put out the Masonic call of distress?
Cheryl 36:04 Well, whether he did or not, is kind of up for grabs. However, the Mormons of the period believed that that’s what he had been doing.
GT 36:12 So it’s not clear?
Cheryl 36:13 So we do have evidence. The evidence that we have is that several Mormons believed that’s what he was doing. So, I don’t think he came out with the entire Masonic call of distress, but he did do enough of it so that it was recognizable.
GT 36:31 Do you think that he recognized Masons in the mob and was trying to save himself?
Cheryl 36:36 There are several different [interpretations.] I’m not really sure what his motivation was for giving it. I believe he was giving the Masonic call of distress, but there are several reasons he could have been doing that. There could have been Masons in the mob that he thought might help him, or he could have known that they weren’t going to help him because the Masons in the mob would have been very against Mormon masonry. So maybe he was just reminding them what they were doing was not masonically correct. Or maybe he was just calling out to God with a Masonic call because Masons believed that that was an effective [call] even if there was no mortal ear to hear that call, that God would hear that. So, there are several reasons why he could have done that.
GT 37:25 So can Masonry be considered a religion, then?
Cheryl 37:32 Joe, my husband used to say, over and over again, Masonry is not a religion. They don’t want to be a religion. But to me, they seem very religious in what they do. It’s very symbolic and very esoteric, and, I believe, very religious. They do believe in God, in a higher being and they take pains not to join with any particular religious organization, but they do have a strong connection with God and the whole purpose behind being a Mason is to forge a connection with the Divine Being.
GT 38:09 I’ve heard you could be a Jew, you can be a Christian you could be Muslim, a Hindu. Your religion doesn’t matter, but whatever religion you are, you should believe in a higher being.
Cheryl 38:21 Right.
GT 38:22 Could you be an atheist and be a mason?
Cheryl 38:24 No.
GT 38:25 You have to believe in God. But whatever your religion is, the idea is to make you a better Jew, Christian, Mormon, whatever.
Cheryl 38:37 Yes.
GT 38:37 Is that fair?
Cheryl 38:39 Yes. You mentioned in Utah, there was a lot of animosity between Mormons and Mason.
GT 38:46 So this was more over the martyrdom of Joseph?
Cheryl 38:50 I think that was Brigham’s problem with it. Now you have several people that came over, like Lucius Scoville, for example, wanted to continue masonry in Utah. But Brigham Young kind of shot that idea down because he thought that it would not work very well. I think it’s, in part, because he was so upset about the treatment, they had received from Masons back in Illinois. Where was I going with that?
GT 39:20 I know for a long time, if you were Mormon, you couldn’t become a Mason here in Utah.
Cheryl 39:26 Right. I know where I was going with that. So, it was quite strange to have that happen, because usually you will take any religion–Masonry should take any religion and make them a better Muslim, Mormon, whatever. So, for them to say, “No, we’re not going to have any Mormons,” particularly because your religion, we don’t agree with, was very un-Masonic. That’s one of the things that later on, many years later they said, “We can’t be doing this.” So now, there are Mormon Masons in Utah. In fact, the Grand Master of the Masonic lodge in Utah is now a Mormon.
GT 40:14 Interesting. I’m starting to run out of questions here. Is there anything else we’ve missed here that we should talk about with regards to Masonry?
Cheryl 40:27 Well, one thing I think is really interesting is that even though Brigham Young did not continue Masonry in Utah, we have a lot of the other break off groups that did continue Masonry. We look at the Strangites and they had a temple ceremony that was very Masonic.
GT 40:44 Oh, really?
Cheryl 40:44 Yes. The organization that they had was brought in from John Bennett, who had a great interest in Masonry.
GT 40:55 And to my knowledge, there’s no relation between me and John C. Bennett.[2]
Cheryl 41:00 (Chuckling) That’s good. So yeah, they had a really interesting Masonic connection, which you can read about in my book as well. Then you have Alpheus Cutler…
GT 41:10 I didn’t know the Strangites had a temple ceremony. That’s interesting. So, do we have any sense of how similar it was to the LDS?
Cheryl 41:18 We do. It was very different from the LDS, but it was closer to Masonry. They did a lot of things that remind you of the Council of the Fifty that were Masonic. The Council of Fifty was very Masonic as well. Then you have Alpheus Cutler. [His group] also had temples, a temple ritual, that was Masonic.[3] And then Lyman Wight, when he went to Texas, brought over some Masonic Elements.
GT 41:49 The Zodiac Temple.
Cheryl 41:50 Yeah, not necessarily an his temple ritual, but he brought some Masonic elements into his group. So you see the importance of Masonry was continued in many of these groups.
GT 42:03 Very interesting. I didn’t know anything about the Strangites. I didn’t even know they had a temple. Did they have a temple?
Cheryl 42:13 Yeah, they did.
GT 42:14 So they did endowments, sealings, everything the LDS do. Do you know?
Cheryl 42:19 They didn’t get very far along before he was killed. But they did crown him as the Imperial Primate and, he was crowned in much the same way as Joseph Smith was crowned in the Council of Fifty. Then they had a building that they were going to be using for temple. We don’t know too much about what their actual ritual would be.
GT 42:45 So did they build a temple, or they were planning to build a temple?
Cheryl 42:47 They were building a temple.
GT 42:48 They were building it when he died?
Cheryl 42:50 Yes.
GT 42:52 Very interesting. All right, well, is there anything else you have?
Cheryl 42:58 No, that’s good.
GT 43:00 Well, Cheryl Bruno, thanks again for participating here on Gospel Tangents.
Cheryl 43:04 Thank you.
[1] The Godmakers was a movie put together by former Mormon Ed Decker that tried to make temple endowment ceremonies look strange. It was very popular among evangelicals and anti-Mormons in the late 1980s. Jerald Tanner, a critic of Mormonism, was equally critical of the movie as an exaggeration of Mormon temple ceremonies.
[2] John C. Bennett served as the first mayor of Nauvoo and was in the First Presidency. He was excommunicated for adultery and became a fierce opponent of Joseph Smith and helped rally anti-Mormon sentiment against Joseph Smith (and later against James Strang.)
[3] The Cutlerites official name is The Church of Jesus Christ. There are less than a dozen members now, and most are in their 70s. The sole remaining congregation is in Independence, Missouri just a few blocks south of the Community of Christ Temple.
Don’t miss our other episodes with Cheryl Bruno! https://gospeltangents.com/people/cheryl-bruno/
Copyright © 2020
Gospel Tangents
All Rights Reserved
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