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You are here: Home / News / New Book Explores the American Masonic System, its Strengths and Failings

New Book Explores the American Masonic System, its Strengths and Failings

September 10, 2017 by Greg Stewart

American Freemasonry
Its Revolutionary History and Challenging Future
By Alain De Keghel.

New book coming in October, American Freemasonry: Its Revolutionary History and Challenging Future, by Alain de Keghel with forwards by Arturo De Hoyos and Margaret C. Jacob.

Freemasonry bears the imprint of the society in which it exists, and Freemasonry in North America is no exception. While keeping close ties to French lodges until 1913, American Freemasonry was also deeply influenced by the experiences of many early American political leaders, leading to distinctive differences from European lodges.

Offering an unobstructed view of the American system and its strengths and failings, Alain de Keghel, an elder of the Grand Orient de France and, since 1999, a lifetime member of the Scottish Rite Research Society (Southern U.S. jurisdiction), examines the history of Freemasonry in the United States from the colonial era to the Revolutionary War to the rise of the Scottish branch onward. He reveals the special relationship between the French Masonic hero, the Marquis de Lafayette, and the Founding Fathers, especially George Washington and Benjamin Franklin, including French Freemasonry’s role in the American Revolution. He also explores Franklin’s Masonic membership, including how he was Elder of the lodge of the Nine Sisters in Paris.

The author investigates the racial split in American Freemasonry between black lodges and white and how, unlike French lodges, women are ineligible to become Masons in the U.S. He examines how American Freemasonry has remained deeply religious across the centuries and forbids discussion of religious or social issues in its lodges, unlike some branches of French Freemasonry, which removed belief in God as a prerequisite for membership in 1877 and whose lodges operate in some respects as philosophical debating societies. Revealing the factors that have resulted in shrinking Masonic enrollment in America, the author explores the revitalization work done by the Grand Lodge of California and sounds the call to make Freemasonry and its principles relevant to America once again.

Alain de Keghel served as chair of the Supreme Council of the Grand Orient of France from 2002 to 2008. In 1994 he became a lifetime member of the Scottish Rite Research Society (Southern U.S. jurisdiction). The chair of an independent European Masonic Research Society, he has worked with the Philalethes Society in North America and with the research lodge Quatuor Coronati no. 8 in Germany. He is the former Consul General of France in Tokyo and Washington, D.C., and lives in Paris.

American Freemasonry: Its Revolutionary History and Challenging Future is published by Inner Traditions – Bear & Company. More on American Freemasonry, on the web.


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Filed Under: News Tagged With: Book, History, United States of America

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About Greg Stewart

A devoted student of the Western Mystery Traditions, Greg is a firm believer in the Masonic connections to the Hermetic traditions of antiquity, its evolution through the ages and into its present configuration as the antecedent to all contemporary esoteric and occult traditions. He is a self-called searcher for that which was lost, a Hermetic Hermit and a believer in “that which is above is so too below.” Read more about Greg Stewart.

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Comments

  1. Kenneth L. Miles says

    September 10, 2017 at 6:05 pm

    Hey family, wow, let me start off by saying do see what going on down south at the same time they come together, why do we come together in crisis but as Mason u must stay together if u don’t what’s left for the group u fade away and wiped out, Moving Forward.

Trackbacks

  1. American Freemasonry in context with Alain de Keghel | Freemason Information says:
    October 1, 2021 at 4:32 am

    […] Its Revolutionary History and Challenging Future (you can read the press release on the book here) and help shed some light on Freemasonry in North […]

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