I read an article the other day that talked about the declining membership in the Masonic Fraternity. This article pointed to this decline as evidence that the Fraternity is dying and included a call to action for our current membership to reverse the trend by focusing on the self-development and Masonic education aspects of the Order.
I agree with many of the points this author made. Indeed, we have seen an historic number of Lodges having to close down or merge with other Lodges because of a lack of membership. I concur that, if we are to have a healthy Fraternity, we must provide a reason for folks to join the Order and we must continue to provide value in our meeting after someone has taken the step to join.
Where I diverge from the article slightly, and from most membership discussions is the focus on numbers. According to the Masonic Services Association of North America (U.S. Membership Statistics – Masonic Service Association of North America), the 1940’s and the 1950’s showed a huge uptick in membership numbers. We went from 2,457,263 members in 1940 to 4,103,161 in 1959 – almost doubling our membership. This was the highest our membership has ever been and likely the highest it ever will be. It has consistently dropped over the decades. In 2023, there were only 869,429 Masons in North America.
While I agree that this is a sharp decline, I heartily disagree with the conversations being had in Lodges that look longingly at the high membership numbers of the ‘40s and ‘50s and have a desire to see those numbers again in the future. In my mind, it is this numbers-driven attitude that has caused the failure of dozens of membership campaigns throughout the years. I believe that the massive decline of membership in recent decades in unhealthy for the Fraternity, but I think that having 4 million Masons in North America might be equally as unhealthy. For us to have a thriving, healthy Fraternity, we need to remember what Masonry is, why people join and why people should join.
For some reason, the ‘40’s and ‘50’s was a time for joiners. Not only for Freemasonry but for the Odd Fellows, Eagles, and any other Fraternal organization saw their membership grow substantially during this time. Perhaps it was the need for community. Perhaps, in a period of war and uncertainty, people joined these orders for the security they provide. Masons for one, promise to take care of a member’s widows and orphans – something very appealing to someone going overseas to fight in a World War. Anyhow, across the board, members in various Fraternal organizations and clubs skyrocketed during this time. The massive jump in membership might have been good for the Order financially, but the declining numbers in future decades lead me to believe that a lot of these Masons didn’t join the Order for the right reasons. The extreme membership decline in the past few decades should be could be equally alarming.
Freemasonry is not the Odd Fellows, or the Moose Lodge, or the Knights of Pythias. While it contributes a lot to charitable causes, it is not a service organization. It is not a place to network with other businessmen and improve your station in life. The aims and goals of our Fraternity transcend just charity and networking opportunities. In our drive for membership, we must never forget this.
Freemasonry is the place you go when you want to learn how to become a better person. It is for those who are interested in making the world a better place. It is for those who wish to be initiated into the Western Esoteric Mystery Tradition and learn about Hermeticism, Gnosticism, Qaballa, and other occult traditions. It is for those who wish to understand their own chosen religion better, and to more closely live by its tenets. It is for those who want to learn tolerance, and strive for Universal Brotherhood.
This necessarily means that Freemasonry is not for everyone. In fact, it’s probably not for most people. There are a lot of people interested in improving their financial situation, or having a place merely for fellowship, or to find others of like mind that they can depend on. Freemasonry can help with those things. Even though we aren’t really a networking organization, the self-development lessons taught in Freemasonry often leave members in a better financial position than when they started it. There is plenty of opportunity for fellowship in the Lodge, and it is the social aspects of the Fraternity that helps make it enjoyable. Certainly, we share oaths with each other that encourage us to support one another.
Yet there is much more to Freemasonry than this. There is a deep philosophy that goes back centuries. There are obligations that members take to constantly challenge ourselves to become better, and we take the moral lessons of the Fraternity very seriously. The connection to the Western Mystery Tradition is very real, and while it is not necessary that every Mason become a Hermetic Mystic, it is important that each Mason understands the esoteric aspect of the Fraternity to some extent and have members of their lodge who can talk intelligently about it with prospective members. These are the aspects of Freemasonry that make us stand out from other Fraternal organizations. A person who shows no interest in self-improvement, the study of morality or philosophy, or a desire to learn more about themselves, should never join the Fraternity. In our quest to increase our membership and save the order, we must never risk losing the identity of Freemasonry.
I think that’s exactly what happened in the mid-20th century. Many of the new Masons were joining for the wrong reasons. Politically, many in the Fraternity were downplaying the esoteric and occult aspects of the Order, to counter a fundamentalist anti-Masonic movement. Fundamentalist religion has often demonized Freemasonry, alleging that it is anything from anti-Christian to outright Satanic. It is neither of these things. However, as the fundamentalist movement grew, Freemasonry began to downplay its more esoteric, philosophical and occult aspects and focus more on its charity work and social activities. Likely, many Masons who joined the Fraternity in the mid-20th century were unaware of these hidden aspects of the Fraternity, or thought them to be just something to that a few of the more eccentric Masons were interested in. As a result, the last couple of generations of Masonic membership had very few members who were interested in the core philosophy of the Fraternity.
This changed in the early 2000’s when more of the newer membership was interested in the esoteric aspects of Freemasonry. This gave rise to the Traditional Observance movement and other initiatives focused on the philosophical side of Freemasonry. Unfortunately, I feel that many Lodges did not take seriously the new members’ interests, or did not have Brothers available to support new members’ longing for a deeper Masonic experience. I personally know of several Brothers initiated during this time who did not progress all the way through the degrees because the deeper philosophy the expected were not there. These members came in after reading authors like Manly P Hall and Albert Pike, only to find that most of the members they met had done none of that reading. Many of them did not find what they expected to find and left the Fraternity.
Strangely, also in the early 2000’s, when the newer members were looking for something deeper, many Grand Lodges in the US were so numbers focused that they tried to get as many members initiated as quickly as possible. There were 3-day classes where one could go through all the degrees at one time, often without any of the memory work or 1:1 mentoring that is so valuable to new members. Many Lodges, caught up in the push for membership, started to soften their requirements and cut corners on membership requirements. This led to a few men being made Masons who never should have been in the Fraternity to begin with.
Regardless of the lessons we should have learned in regard to membership in the early 2000’s, many Grand Lodges still look to the ‘40’s and ‘50’s as the golden age of Freemasonry. Many would like to see membership numbers get back to the level they were back then – and so we promote Freemasonry in the watered down, cautious way that we did back then. This is a mistake. It could indeed lead us to higher membership, but those members are more likely to have joined for the wrong reasons and less likely to really understand what the Fraternity is all about.
Before we talk about membership numbers and recruitment efforts, there are two questions I think we need to answer: 1) Are our current members getting what they need from the Order? and 2) Are we being responsible custodians of the Masonic Tradition?
It should be obvious that, before we get too far in figuring out how to attract the right people to our Fraternity we must first make sure that what we are offering in Lodge is helpful to the advancement of our current members. It does nothing for us to head recruiting efforts if the members we currently have are not satisfied. It’s a waste. We will recruit a bunch of people who will not get what they expect and who will leave the Fraternity within 5 years. We first have a responsibility to our current members to make sure that they are, as the advertisements say, becoming better men. If we can’t do that, then how are we going to recruit and retain new members?
This means right-sizing in certain areas. I’ve heard a lot of lamenting about Lodges being forced to close or merge with other lodges due to low membership. I know for many who have put a lot of work into a lodge, it is sad to see that happen. However, it may be a necessary thing. I’ve seen situations where the same handful of Brothers are cycling through leadership positions repeatedly because there is no one else. Often, degree work cannot be done because there are not enough active members to fill all the roles. In these cases, doesn’t it make sense to merge or close and allow that small group of active members to contribute to a larger, more successful Lodge, then to have them keep filling leadership positions in a dying lodge until they burn out completely?
Over its history, Freemasonry has become quite an institution. Our Fraternity is responsible for a large amount of charitable works and has expanded to several appendant bodies and youth groups. These things are important, and it does require certain membership levels to be maintained to ensure our charities and appendant bodies are successful. However, our first and most important charge is to transmit the Tradition of Freemasonry to future generations.
This is something we have not consistently done well. When I was going through my Initiations, there were two or three members of my Lodge with whom I could converse about the mysteries of the Masonic Tradition. Many others were very well versed in the ritual. They had it memorized by rote and would even comment later if someone missed a line or a word. Yet the meaning of what they were saying was often lost.
This became more pronounced in the Scottish Rite, where the rituals blatantly tell you to study Qabala, Hermeticism and Alchemy – yet here again were a lot of Masons who memorized that ritual and said the right things, but only very few who actually studied those topics.
We, as a Fraternity are still stunted by the Anti-Masonic movement of the late 19th century and tend to downplay the esoteric aspects of the Fraternity out of fear that some may not want to join if they knew about them. The problem with downplaying the esoteric is that all of our Initiations, and the Mysteries that they communicate are esoteric in nature. We need to embrace and own those initiations, rituals, and lectures we have been charged to transmit to the next generation. We need to advertise specifically that Freemasonry is not for everyone, but for those few who wish to spend time on self-reflection and growth, for those who truly want to be better people who are more effective in the world, and who want to live by a spirituality and morality
Tony Hornsby 
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