Talk:Christianity and Freemasonry/Archive 2

New Religion section

I have had a serious problem with this section for a while, and keep hoping that someone would clean it up. At the moment, the list of "reasons why freemasonry is a religion" is one massive WP:SYNT violation. Who makes these claims? Does anyone tie them all together into one source? If not, it is essentially original research, and as such should be deleted. I have tagged it. Blueboar (talk) 03:23, 28 November 2008 (UTC)

Are you saying that no one alleges that freemasonry is not a seperate religion, or that it is not an important critique for Christian critics of Freemasaonry or that these illustrations are not tied to that critique? (I don't think that you do say the first two, but just checking my ground here). JASpencer (talk) 10:45, 29 November 2008 (UTC)

Of course I am not saying that no one alleges that freemasonry is a seperate religion, nor am I saying that it is not an important critique. The issue certainly needs to be discussed. My problem is with how we currently discuss it.

I am saying that all these illustrations are not tied to any single critique. Thus, listing all of the "reasons why Freemasonry is a religion" the way we currently do constitutes a synthesis. As currently written, we are taking arguments made by several disperate sources and tieing them together in a novel way. There is no single source that lists all of the items we inlcude in our list and states "these make Freemasonry a new religion", so by our doing so we violate WP:SYNT.

I see several solutions to this... 1) we can discuss the fact that many religious critics of Freemasonry feel that freemasonry constitutes a seperate religion, without listing the "reasons", or 2) We can more clearly attribute who says what ... by stating that A has argued that Freemasonry is a new religion because of B and C, and that X has stated that Freemasonry is a new religion because of Y and Z.

My point is simply that our saying, "Critics (unspecified) claim that Freemasonry is a new religion... here is a list of reasons: B, C, Y and Z" is a WP:SYNT violation. Blueboar (talk) 14:54, 29 November 2008 (UTC)

OK... over half a year is more than long enough for someone to have fixed the problem if it could be fixed. I have trimmed out the SYNT. Blueboar (talk) 14:57, 26 July 2009 (UTC)

Freemasonry and the occult

I note that J. Gordon Melton has said that Freemasonry played an important role in the development of the occult in the west, although the subject has not yet been made the subject of a formal study. That probably isn't directly relevant to the subject of Christianity and Freemasonry, but it can be seen as being one of the reasons Christianity has objected to it. Unfortunately, Melton didn't really spend much more space making his statement than I did in repeating it, so there's not a lot to add on the topic from there. Does anyone think it might be relevant enough for inclusion, even at rather short length? John Carter (talk) 21:27, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

I think we need to be very careful here. It is all too tempting to make the leap of logic from "Freemasonry played an important role in the development of the Occult"... to saying "The Occult played an important role in the development of Freemasonry" (and, with another leap of logic, to accusations that "Freemasonry is Occult").

Also... I would disagree with Melton. I don't think Freemasonry played a role in the development of the occult... I do, however, think that individual Freemasons played an important role in the development of the occult. Non-Masonic scholars often assume that Freemasonry forms men's opinions. In fact, this is rarely the case. Usually men come to Freemasonry with opinions already formed. People like Alester Crowley (as the prime example) already have an interest in the Occult before they join Freemasonry... in fact they join the fraternity because of this interest. They join with a misconception about what they are joining... they thought Freemasonry would give them mystical and occult secrets of the universe. When they discover their error, they then attempt to make it into what they want... by forming their own fraternal groups, patterned after Freemasonry (and frequently claiming to be a form of Freemasonry) but diverging significantly from it. The Grand Lodge of BC&Y has some excellent articles that discuss this phemominon. Blueboar (talk) 22:01, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

Straw man

My problem with this article, the Catholic section especially, is that it consistently presents straw man arguments. In the Catholic section, for example, there are five or six repetitions of allegations made in the 1913 edition of the Catholic Encyclopedia with a note that none of these allegations appear in the more modern editions. If these allegations no longer appear, why are they relevant as current critiques? I'm sure you could peruse several encyclicals, papal bulls, more recent encyclopedias, and the code of cannon law for more contemporary criticisms and then respond to those. Additionally, this whole article takes a tack of defending Freemasonry against the untrue attacks against it. While that is a great topic for research, discussion, etc., that is not the job of an encyclopedia. An article in an encyclopedia should present facts -- opposing facts if necessary -- but not a one-sided argument. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.61.174.253 (talk) 20:45, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

I agree... but any attemp to remove references to the 1913 CE tends to be met with accusations of POV. What you see here is compromise language. Blueboar (talk) 22:25, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

Disagree. Would you remove Heliocentrism because the dispute is not current? At present, the past is the most interesting part of the subject. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.206.162.148 (talk) 09:51, 8 September 2010 (UTC)

Ecclesiastical masonry

I have read the term ecclesiastical masonry used in certain polemical contexts. It might be a good thing if an article or stub could be written about the notion. It is often alleged to be a specialized department with the lodges whose goal is to gain political influence within te various Christian Churches of the world. For instance, many people have attempted to explain the Masonic affiliation of several Anglican archbishops of Canterbury by pointing to the role of ecclesiastical masonry in gaining influence within the Church of England. [1][2][[3][][4][5] ADM (talk) 11:04, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

Nope... there is no reason to give fringe conspiracy theroies more weight than they deserve. Blueboar (talk) 15:25, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

Title needs to change - per WP:Article titles

Per WP:Article titles#Titles containing "and" we should probably think about retitling this article. To start the discussion off... what about Views on Freemasonry by various Christian Churches as a neutral descriptive title? Thoughts? Other suggestions? Blueboar (talk) 17:43, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

I don't see a need to retitle at this time. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 18:04, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

Conforming with WP policy isn't reason enough? Blueboar (talk) 18:37, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

I have always found the title a bit too neutral. The fact is the article is really about Christian criticism of Freemasonry. PeRshGo (talk) 03:12, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

Protestant churches references

Anyone else notice that nearly all the references in the Protestant churches section are dead, and never even linked to a central authority to begin with? Also some of the claims themselves seem a bit dubious. The Salvation Army opposes Freemasonry? I have a real hard time buying that. There is some contention over whether or not the founder was Freemason but none the less I see no signs of opposition. PeRshGo (talk) 03:22, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

That is one problem with relying on on-line sources... website dies or is moved, and unless frequently checked, it takes time before anyone notices. I can vouch for the fact that, at one time, the various sources did support what is said in the article (I was as skeptical as PeRshGo is, so I checked each one personally)... So I think we should see if we can find replacement citations before we remove anything. I doubt that there is a "central authority" on this, so we will probably need to find a source for each Protestant church separately (which may take a bit of time).

My call... we should remove the dead links... replace them with cn tags (so we know which ones need replacing), look for new sources ... and if no source can be found after a reasonable amount of time, then remove... with a scalpel instead of a meet cleaver. Blueboar (talk) 11:36, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

OK... I have tagged a few with non-working links (just to get us started)... stopped about half way through the paragraph. Blueboar (talk) 12:02, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

Sounds good. One thing to note though is what I ment by central authority is groups like the Independent Fundamental Churches of America for evangelicles, or the Southern Baptist Convention for southern baptits. Because it looks like some of these links weren't official positions as much as individual pastoral opinions. PeRshGo (talk) 12:43, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

Ah... I get what you mean... yes, one pastor with anti-masonic views is not reliable for a statement as to an entire denomination or Church. While I think we can accept primary source documents and websites for this... they do have to be "official". Blueboar (talk) 14:34, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

If possible, the working web references should be converted to the cite web template, which has an "accessed" field to indicate when the site was accessed, and therefore, when it was presumably working. I just tagged the article for expert attention, because some of these references are going to be very difficult to find and verify. Triona (talk) 20:19, 7 August 2010 (UTC)

Who would qualify as an expert in this situation? The only person I can think of is someone who sits on the board of a church central authority which I can't expect to find on here with any ease, and even then they can only speak for their individual denomination. PeRshGo (talk) 21:11, 7 August 2010 (UTC)

Since we are talking about the position held by people who are, in the main, opposed to any form of church central authority, you may have trouble finding even that.203.206.162.148 (talk) 09:57, 8 September 2010 (UTC)

Challenge to the article

This entire article is a mess from the very beginning sentence, and should be scrapped. Some lodges have people of several different faiths, and Christianity is singled out needlessly. The uneasy relationship between this fraternal organization and ALL the main religions is perhaps a worthy inclusion to the freemasonry article itself-- but that doesn't link here. This article wreaks of both solecism, bias, and ignorance.

Just a few reasons for it to be scrapped or moved.

• Its constant use of the passive voice "people have said" reads poorly and should set off alarm bells in anyone looking for unbiased information. They seem simply like randomly inserted sentences which exist to push the reader to some (usually obscure, biased, or unauthoratative)) source.

• None of the writing is authoratative. Freemasonry for dummies has an eloquent, succinct section about freemasonry vis a vis other religions and it is shorter and to the point.

Why would an encyclopedia glide over the most important basic information it should provide-- the long-standing uneasiness between the Catholic Church and masonry000 , and instead indulge in giving more than equal time to "criticisms" or "allegations" that basically make it seem like the article's intent is to put freemasonry is being put on trial? Wikipedia has had the same problem with those articles/section about actresses which include whole pages detailing tabloid allegations of private peccadillos, true or not. As is, this article does a disservice to the reader and to wikipedia. It's only fortunate that, as is made clear from the discussion board, some scrupulous editors have been debunking the passages that are written by fundamentalists and flat-earthers.

But I fear they've been wasting their time, since a piece that was objective would note how, in America, the vast majority of masons are Christian, as are/were America's most famous masons-- Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Franklin, etc. etc.. This page does little but serve the interests of those wanting to bash freemasonry like a pinata with a gamut of stupid claims that might as well include "people have charged all masons are pedophiles."

The use of the passive voice is not just bad writing, it's deliberately obfuscating. Most contributions are written by person/s who are not only sans bona fides, they have an agenda. Anyone scholarly enough to write about this subject would be able to mention problems masonry encountered with Christianity that are for more interesting than the tired "devil worship" mantra. If that much space is allowed for such accusations, then we might as well note in every political biography which government official is thought to be a reptile by best-selling writer David Icke.

It must be said up front that, even though efforts were made to make this article objective, the fundamental issue is that, having much knowledge on this subject I must say that most of it is written in bad faith. Some contributions are so below wikipedia's avowed standards that, at best, it should cut 90 percent, and the remaining parts could may be be included into the original article on freemasonry-- but only if it were expanded to also include the relations between masons and Muslims, Mormons, Pagans, etc.— Preceding unsigned comment added by Tyewolfe (talk • contribs) 22:47, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

so either fix it, or nominate it for deletion. Blueboar (talk) 00:30, 2 January 2011 (UTC)