A really great and thought-provoking blog, The Burning Taper, has an entry today regarding an upcoming conference in England sponsored by the Grand Orient of France, titled, "Can Freemasonry Be Secular?" Of course, the Grand Orient of France long ago removed the requirement that their candidates hold a belief in a Supreme Being; for this reason, many Masonic Grand Jurisdictions have withdrawn fraternal recognition from them. Below is a reproduction of my comment on The Burning Taper.
This all touches on the issues, what exactly is central to Freemasonry? What is peripheral? It is a good thing for people to concern themselves with these issues: thoughtfulness in a Mason is to encouraged. It is only fair to expect me to make my own stance clear.
With regard to the question expressed in the title of the conference--and the post on which I am commenting--the crucial issue here is, what exactly is meant by the term "secular"? Although I am a long-standing supporter of Masonic scholarship and debate, I am somewhat disappointed that this conference's announcement does not include even a sentence defining what the organizers mean by this crucial term.
Depending on how one defines the term, one may see mainstream, 'regular,' 'Free & Accepted' Freemasonry as secular already. When Masonry functions as it should, no particular religious group (for example, a particular church) or category of religious groups (for example, Christianity) has any control in the lodge. That would be a healthy secularism.
However, if 'secular' means 'without a requirement to believe in a Supreme Being,' I would make the argument that regular or Free and Accepted Freemasonry cannot be 'secular' in this sense, and remain true to the core of Freemasonry.
The idea of a Supreme Being is deeply embedded in every aspect of Free and Accepted Freemasonry. It is an integral part of our symbolism (for example, the All-Seeing Eye, found on tracing boards, in books, and even on the very apron in which I was installed as an officer in my local lodge last month). The notion of the Supreme Being is embedded in our obligations and teachings, and in the very furnishings of the lodge room.
The notion of a Supreme Being is implicit in the very use of an Altar at the center of the Lodge room, and the requirement that the Volume of the Sacred Law be open on that altar at all times while the lodge is in session. It is only by some verbal and semantic gymnastics that the notion of an altar and a volume of 'sacred' law can be extended to an 'Altar of Reason' and so forth. Altars are for worship of the divine.
In my opinion, although certainly one could build a system that dispenses with the belief in God as a requisite, purge one's ritual of references to God, and still call that system a form of 'Freemasonry'--this would not be Freemasonry as anything remotely like Masonry was originally conceived. This would be a different sort of enterprise altogether.
On the other hand, I shall not demonize those who remove references to the Deity or requirements for belief in the Deity from their organization. These are not evil people. Rather, these are people who have taken a thoughtful position on the basis of principal. They are deserving of respect and reasoned discourse. However, their form of organization is not something I would care to consider as Freemasonry that was true to the spirit of Freemasonry, and I would not care to be involved in it, as Masonry