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COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. Its members are male, mostly conservative and many retired. They advocate living a moral life and doing charitable work.
So why would anyone label the Freemasons a cult?
Maybe it has to do with members' mystery-shrouded rituals that include secret passwords and initiations, their use of arcane symbols and their penchant for bestowing such exotic titles as "Entered Apprentice" upon its members.
Maybe it's because of a historically rocky relationship with the Catholic Church, which reinforced a prohibition against the faithful becoming Masons with this 1983 declaration from then-Cardinal John Ratzinger: "Catholics who join the Masons are in the state of grave sin and may not receive Holy Communion."
Whatever the reason, Masons simply want people to know that there is nothing nefarious going on, that they are not a cult or even a religious organization, and that most of their 2 million or so brethren worldwide are law-abiding people with conservative values who have given tens of thousands of dollars to charities over the years, particularly to optometry and speech pathology causes.
It is said that Freemasonry started with the building of King Solomon's Temple as recounted in the Old Testament. But most historians say it actually began in the late Middle Ages among itinerant stoneworkers building the great castles and cathedrals of Europe.
Medieval stoneworkers formed fraternal groups that included initiation rites, and as the building of the great stone structures of Europe waned, workers allowed nonmasons into their men's group.
In time, the organizations morphed into fraternities dedicated to teaching moral principles.
Masons in the U.S. have included George Washington, Gerald Ford, Clark Gable, Benjamin Franklin, Harry Truman and Thurgood Marshall.
Yet those high-powered names weren't enough to keep membership steady. In 1960, there were about 4.1 million members in the U.S., according to the Masonic Service Association. By 2005, the number had dropped to about 1.6 million.
A former Mason, William Schnoebelen of Dubuque, Iowa, blames the decline, in part, on continued skepticism about the organization, and says the Freemasons are not what they claim to be.
The organization is based on ancient fertility cults, not stoneworkers' groups and spiritual knowledge, he says. A born-again Christian, he also says it's anti-Christian because it doesn't require belief in the God of the Bible, and demands that members swear oaths despite the Bible's proscription against such practices.
"They have their own agenda, and their agenda is not friendly to Christianity," said Schnoebelen, author of "Masonry: Beyond the Light," a book critical of the organization.
Ernie Pyle, secretary of the Most Worshipful Grand Lodge of Ancient Free and Accepted Masons of Colorado, however, disputes such claims.
"It has helped me solidify my (Christian) faith," he said.
Despite critics such as Schnoebelen, interest in the Masons has been on the rebound. That's due, in part, to Hollywood movies, such as "National Treasure," "The Da Vinci Code" and, most recently, "Angels & Demons," that touch on the hidden mysteries within Christianity that Masons and other esotericists explore.
"There has been an obvious bump to the point of being dramatic," said Brian Cotter, the most worshipful grand master of the Most Worshipful Grand Lodge of Ancient Free and Accepted Masons of Colorado. "But it's also because people recognize that we can fulfill a need. The lessons we teach in the esoteric work are life lessons you can't learn anywhere else. They make people better, well-rounded individuals."
Worldwide, there are more than 12,000 lodges. No overarching entity governs Masonry, so rituals and rules differ in European countries from lodge to lodge and, in America, from state to state.
The one thing they share are the three degrees of the secret initiation rites: Entered Apprentice, Fellowcraft and Master Mason. The rites can sound bizarre to outsiders; for example, the Entered Apprentice rite in some lodges requires the initiate to wear a white gown, a blindfold and to have a cable tow - which resembles a hangman's noose - around his neck.
While the initiations are veiled in secrecy, Masonic symbols are part of popular culture, incorporated in designs on the U.S. dollar bill (the pyramid and all-seeing eye) to famous paintings by Englishman William Blake of God holding a compass and square. Indeed, the best-known symbols are the compass and square - tools used by stonemasons that came to signify the limiting of human passions and living in a right relationship to moral law, respectively.
