Freemasonry: A Very Short Introduction - Andreas Önnerfors 2017

A culture of self-governance
Organizational culture

Margaret C. Jacob has stated that masonic lodges ’set up governments in microcosm, complete with elections, officers and taxes’. Lodges function as ’schools for government’ and, more specifically, democratic government, involving complex forms of political organization. This culture of self-governance promotes a feeling of citizenship, with the right to participate in decision-making and governance. Within the lodges, freemasons throughout Europe and the world could experiment with and experience the benefits of parliamentarianism by voting, electing officers, collecting ’taxes’, practising public oratory, settling disputes, and creating superordinate (national) bodies to which representatives were delegated. In terms of charitable work, the lodges offered help to the needy in an age when public/state welfare was unknown.

Well-kept archives of masonic bodies around the world are treasure troves for studying the material culture of the organization over three centuries. In many cases, grand lodges were the first central non-governmental organizations to exist on a national level, and as such they fostered both an imagined and a real consciousness of nationhood as a whole. On an international level, grand lodges created foreign alliances and treaties in a self-structured system of masonic diplomacy. As a precursor to the voluntary associations (and civil society) of later times, masonic national umbrella organizations were formed with regional and local nodes, national membership records, collection of fees, and rules for correspondence. In this sense, Jacob argues, members of the educated elites could experience important virtues of state formation, of a reformatory rather than revolutionary sort. These qualities were particularly relevant in regions where the fabric of state governance was virtually absent or still in genesis. This is particularly seen during the Western expansion into the USA, such as in California, in 1845—50, where masonic lodges created spaces of mutual assistance, impacting society building at the same time as promoting constitutional culture. The establishment of national grand lodges frequently preceded the formation of independent nation states.

On a more individual level, a good number of individual freemasons since the 18th century have been provided with masonic passports (so-called ’certificates’), allowing them entry to lodges across the globe and also granting access to benefits (’masonic relief’) in foreign countries under certain circumstances. This social function of lodges became evident during the 19th-century mass migration from Europe to the USA. More importantly, it helped the members of masonic lodges to experience global solidarity in their practice.