"The Genesis of American Freemasonry" with Dr. Ric Berman
with Dr. Ric Berman
There was no England and no America. There was a greater Britain, and a few thousand people in London held most of the levers.
Dr. Ric Berman joins us to talk about his new book, The Genesis of American Freemasonry, published this June and timed for the semi quincentennial. It traces the craft in America from its earliest colonial footholds, through independence, to the creation of the state Grand Lodges, and it asks a question most American brethren have never had answered plainly: how did our ritual, our structure, and our lodges actually get here?
There was no England and no America. There was a greater Britain, and a few thousand people in London held most of the levers.
Dr. Ric Berman joins us to talk about his new book, The Genesis of American Freemasonry, published this June and timed for the semi quincentennial. It traces the craft in America from its earliest colonial footholds, through independence, to the creation of the state Grand Lodges, and it asks a question most American brethren have never had answered plainly: how did our ritual, our structure, and our lodges actually get here?
The answer runs through some remarkable people. Charles Delafaye, a Huguenot refugee who became undersecretary of state, a senior investigating magistrate, and head of the Secret Intelligence Service, sat at the heart of British government with correspondents across Europe and the Americas. The first Provincial Grand Master of New York was his nephew. The first Provincial Grand Master of South Carolina was a colleague from his own lodge. Trace the appointments and a network appears.
We also get into the split between the Antients and the Moderns as a social rupture rather than a ritual one, the role of Philadelphia in driving the Antient movement down the wagon trails and over the Blue Ridge, and what happened when the craft reached the frontier. In Lexington, Kentucky, forty percent or more of the male population belonged to Lodge Number One. Often the first act of a new lodge was to establish a burial ground, because no one wants to die unremembered thousands of miles from home. Every state but the original thirteen founded a Grand Lodge before it achieved statehood.
The conversation ranges into the Enlightenment machinery underneath all of it: religious tolerance and meritocracy as radical propositions, the 1738 papal encyclical In Eminenti, Desaguliers and Payne and the 1723 Constitutions, Locke, Newton, and Montesquieu, who was initiated in a London lodge before writing the political theory that echoes through the American constitutions. Ric is also candid about the parts that are harder to celebrate, including how thoroughly Southern Freemasonry was built on the wealth of a slave economy.
He closes on the future of the craft, and his answer as a historian is three words: relevance, leadership, aspiration.
About our guest
Dr. Ric Berman is a Masonic historian and a member of Quatuor Coronati Lodge No. 2076, the premier lodge of Masonic research, where he has served in the chair and now leads the Quatuor Coronati Correspondence Circle. Under his stewardship the Correspondence Circle has grown roughly fivefold. He is a past Prestonian Lecturer, and the author of some ten books across eighteen years of research in England, Ireland, and America, including The Foundations of Modern Freemasonry, Schism, and now The Genesis of American Freemasonry.
Initiated at twenty-one, he found the craft incomprehensible, drifted away for two decades, and came back only when a work colleague asked whether he was on the square. He has spent the years since writing the books he could not find when he needed them.
Referenced in this episode
The Genesis of American Freemasonry by Dr. Ric Berman, available through Lewis Masonic, Macoy, and Amazon
The Foundations of Modern Freemasonry, third edition, and Schism, second edition, both now reissued at reduced prices
Quatuor Coronati Lodge and Correspondence Circle: quatuorcoronati.com
Upcoming: Ric speaks in Sacramento on Saturday, August 8th alongside John Cooper and Susan Summers on the Declaration and the semiquincentennial, at the Scottish Rite building, 10:00 to 4:00. Details and tickets through the Quatuor Coronati website.
Looking ahead: a major Quatuor Coronati conference in Cambridge, England, in early September 2027, held in one of the colleges on the Cam.
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