Lets Go Out And Sell Freemasonry!

Now if that title does not get your attention, I do not know what will. Freemasonry should be sold with all the expertise and all of the ability, which we can bring to the sales effort.

If you keep reading after those first two sentences, you are the man I am looking for. I am not advocating that we should go out and sell Freemasonry to the general public. I certainly am not proposing that we continue the insipid newspaper advertisements which I see far too many of in my own state. I don't think that many of the brochures and the television spots supposedly informing the public of "what Freemasonry really is help us."

Not at all. What I suggest is that we sell Freemasonry to the people who really need to be sold on Freemasonry. Let's sell Freemasonry to those who have been Freemasons for some thirty or forty years and have never bothered to learn about the Fraternity. In Missouri, we used to call the "button Masons." A friend of mine, who shall be nameless, as it might hurt him professionally, states: "How do you know yourself to be a Mason?" and he answers with: "By all the pot-metal pins which I wear on my lapel."

We don't really need advertising. We don't need so much press-agentry. What we need to do is sell Freemasonry to our own members. With some 3,000,000 salesmen out working for the fraternity, we could be a working organization once again. We need to sell Masonry to our members and we need to educate those members.

Before someone comes up with the brilliant statement that his particular lodge has the entire membership already sold on Freemasonry, let me ask a few questions. How many lodges, in the United States, can state that ten percent of their membership attend on a regular basis? How many members does your lodge have that haven't attended since they took the third degree? How dedicated can some person be who joins an order and never takes the slightest interest in the working of that order?

Am I proposing that all members become active in the ritualistic work of the Lodge? No, I am not. I am proposing that each and every member know enough about the fraternity that he can intelligently discuss Freemasonry with anyone who might ask him about the order. I would think that we should not only educate and inspire our membership about Freemasonry but that we should continue to communicate with our entire membership and see that this membership is kept informed about current developments within the fraternity.

A man who knows nothing about the orders to which he belongs is a man who, through ignorancy and apathy, casts a negative rather than a positive vote toward that survival of Freemasonry.