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heterogenous elements indicate the less than straightforward manner in which Freemasonry, and for that matter the whole of society, became modern.¹⁴⁷

      By the late eighteenth century, such heterodoxy was more the exception than the rule in the American religious landscape. As David D. Hall has demonstrated, in the seventeenth century, European immigrants lived in a broader, older “world of wonder,” laced with the debris of other systems of thought, some older than Christianity. Witchcraft, apparitions, other unearthly phenomena, and supernatural explanations of natural occurrences such as comets, hailstorms, earthquakes, sudden deaths, and monster births pervaded colonial culture.¹⁴⁸ By the beginning of the eighteenth century, this expansive, eclectic early modern view began to give way, especially in the upper classes, to denominational institutions that worked to expand their reach in colonial society while separating Christianity from other magical beliefs and practices.¹⁴⁹ The trend toward social consolidation, Patricia U. Bonomi has shown, resulted everywhere in the emergence of religious organizations “as significant centers of stability and influence” and in the enhancement of religious authority.¹⁵⁰ The number of churches in the seven largest Protestant denominations increased more than sevenfold between 1700 and 1780, resulting in a widespread sacralization of the colonial landscape.¹⁵¹ Amid this growing Christian consolidation, pluralism, eclectic beliefs, and occult practices persisted.

      Given the complexity of the eighteenth-century religious world, it is not clear what hold the rituals and beliefs of the lodge had on colonial Masons. Following the Revolution, a number of new religions did emerge that claimed Masonic origins. As early as 1788, a society of Druids formed within one Masonic lodge by rejecting all forms of Christianity and embracing the sun worship of the ancient Druids.¹⁵² Later on, the Mormons appropriated Masonic elements.¹⁵³ Yet it was not until the early nineteenth century that Masonic ritual life in either England or America was standardized. As one Masonic historian wrote, “The ritual was in a more or less fluid condition during this period.”¹⁵⁴ In Boston, for example, it was common for members to complete only one or two of the three degree rituals.¹⁵⁵ After examining the minutes of several colonial lodges, another Masonic historian concluded that “the ceremonies were brief and possibly not overly impressive.”¹⁵⁶ For colonial brothers, consistent procedures and meaningful ceremonies appear to have been less significant than the members’ participation in polite society.

      • • •

      On the eve of the American Revolution, Catalina Schuyler, the doyenne of Albany’s polite society, was increasingly melancholy. Her hopes of a “golden age” in her country now “grew weaker.” Though she shared in the joy of the community on the repeal of the Stamp Act, she noted that this action “produced little gratitude” toward the British authorities. She was chagrined over the behavior of the town’s young people, who had “abandoned their wonted sports” and instead “amuse[d] themselves with breaking the windows and destroying the furniture of . . . suspected . . . stamp-masters.” Even more disruptive of her mannered world was the decline in “polite” visits to her home by the provincial gentry, who were now “succeeded by Obadiah or Zephaniah, from Hampshire or Connecticut, who came in without knocking; sat down without invitation; and lighted their pipe without ceremony; then talked of buying land.”¹⁵⁷ Because Mrs. Schuyler firmly believed that “increase of wealth should be accompanied with a proportionate progress in refinement and intelligence,” she refused her table to these “petulant upstarts.” As the revolution approached, she saw “nothing on all hands but a choice of evils.”¹⁵⁸

      By the 1760s, an expanding public sphere characterized by rational communication carried on in print had eclipsed America’s colonial polite society. Balls, plays, and other entertainments now gave way to republican discipline. Private meetings in elegant homes and taverns became less frequent than public gatherings that brought together a broad expanse of the rising generation who would lead the coming war effort. The new print media engaged a progressively larger and more literate population in public dialogue on momentous questions concerning the future of the social order.¹⁵⁹ Though some, such as Catalina Schuyler, believed that the colonists “had not cohesion nor subordination enough among them to form, or to submit to any salutary plan of government,” others, such as the Freemasons who joined the Albany Committee of Correspondence, created republican organizations devoted to the war effort.¹⁶⁰ Masons could be found on both sides of the war question, but all came from an organization that encouraged a new civic awareness. In the revolutionary period, growing numbers of ambitious and politically active men entered the fraternity and worked to identify it with the men and ideals of the newly emerging American society. For many brothers, the order’s old ideals of tolerance and benevolence provided a vision for the new American society. At the same time, new emphases on republican values, morality, education, and Christianity became hallmarks of a once again transformed fraternity.

      CHAPTER 2

      Revolutionary Masonry

      Republican and Christian, 1757–1825

      Historians of religion point to republicanism and democratization as central developments in American religious life in the revolutionary era. Beginning in the 1760s, a new republican ideology that incorporated both Christian and Enlightenment ideas into its hegemonic framework expanded Christian ideas of liberty and community to encompass not only the church but the nation as well. Though American Protestantism was not constitutionally connected to the legal structure of the state, it did come to align itself with the new American nation. At the same time, a host of evangelical populists led a religious revolt against the learned clergy, decorous congregations, and centralized authority of the dominant Anglican, Presbyterian, and Congregational churches, which resulted, by 1850, in the numerical triumph of Baptists and Methodists. The revivals that erupted in the 1790s were part of a tumultuous democratic revolution in American religion, coincident with a broader revolt against elite domination throughout the culture. Although the Protestantism that emerged from the Revolution was closely identified with the new American nation and its democratic spirit, so too—and perhaps even more so—was a more overtly Christian and republican Freemasonry.¹

      In the middle of the eighteenth century, changes in Freemasonry were closely related to transformations in American society. Beginning in the 1750s, a large number of mechanics, lesser merchants, and military men proposed a new form of Freemasonry, which they termed Ancient. These ambitious and politically active men transformed the fraternity. Embracing the ideals of virtue and merit, the brotherhood now proclaimed itself to be in the vanguard of new efforts to build a republican society. By the 1790s, as their order expanded rapidly throughout the interior, Masons described it as embodying the republican values of morality, education, and Christianity.

      A growing convergence of Christianity and Freemasonry around Enlightenment ideals marked the first quarter of the nineteenth century. In the Revolutionary War, military lodges were more effective than Christian churches in building ties among Continental Army officers. Avoiding the extremes of both sectarianism and nonbiblical rationalism, following the war Freemasonry attracted ministers and other members of liberal-leaning denominations, leading to a high incidence of Episcopalians, Congregationalists, and Unitarians among its leaders. At the same time, Bible readings and Christian prayers and rituals entered more overtly into lodge meetings. In contrast to the colonial period, when civic ritual had centered on the monarchy and the church, with Christian ministers blessing public institutions, in the postwar era, following the revolutionary shift to republican ideals and symbols, Masons were increasingly called on to solemnize public enterprises, even going so far as to lay the cornerstone at the foundations of Christian churches.

      As Alexis de Tocqueville has stated, intermediary institutions between the authority of the state and the will of the people stabilized the emerging American republic, by working to create and shape public culture.² Freemasonry was one of these organizations, which emerged from eighteenth-century polite societies that transformed following the revolution into institutions that played a significant role in shaping public opinion. Many of the leading advocates of American independence were attracted to the Masonic brotherhood, whose efforts to bring together men from different regions and backgrounds in an increasingly republican and Christian framework they saw as a harbinger

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