Fast and Loose Freemasonry | Mervin B. Hogan, Mormonism and Freemasonry: The Illinois Episode, and Mervin B. Hogan, The Involvement of Freemasonry with Mormonism on the American Midwestern Frontier

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Mervin B. Hogan, a prolific expositor on the subject of Mormonism and Freemasonry, is apparently gaining some reputation among Mormons and Freemasons alike for “impeccable” and “peerless” scholar ship. (See Jerry Marsengill, Introduction, The Official Minutes of Nauvoo Lodge U.D., [Under Dispensation], edited by Hogan (Des Moines: Research Lodge No. 2, 1974). G. Homer Durham, then Man aging Director of the LDS Church’s Historical Department, in a letter to Hogan dated 11 March 1981, praised Mormonism and Freemasonry: The Illinois Episode: “I believe your summary . . . throws more light on this subject than anything yet produced in or out of the Church” (“Book News on Mormon History,” No. 1 [1981] p. 3, issued by Deseret Book Company). 

Much of Hogan’s effort has consisted of republishing documents or articles of others with a short introduction of his own. For example Freemasonry and Civil Con frontation on the Illinois Frontier (Salt Lake City: Privately printed, 1981) is a reprint of Sheriff Jacob Backenstos’s 1845 proclamations; Mormonism Viewed by a Masonic Adept (Salt Lake City: Privately printed, 1982) is a previously unpublished paper on Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon by Manly P. Hall, a thirty-third degree Mason and author of numerous books on the esoteric aspects of Freemasonry. Hogan has also attempted his own exegesis of the interrelationship of Mor monism and Freemasonry. This review will focus on two works that inquire into that relationship during the Illinois period: Mormonism and Freemasonry: The Illinois Episode (originally published in 1977 as pages 267-324 of Volume 2 of the five volume Little Masonic Library (Richmond, Va.: Macoy Publishing and Masonic Sup ply Co., Inc., 1977)—hence the strange page numbering of the Campus Graphics edition) and The Involvement of Freemasonry with Mormonism on the American Midwestern Frontier. 

Hogan begins his Illinois Episode by attacking as “unscholarly” Kenneth Godfrey’s 1967 BYU Ph.D. dissertation, Causes of Mormon Non-Mormon Conflict in Han cock County, Illinois, 1839-1846, which de voted a chapter to “Masonry in Nauvoo.” The chapter was subsequently distilled into an article, “Joseph Smith and the Masons,” Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society 64 (Spring 1971): 79-90. Hogan criticizes Godfrey’s use of James Cummings’s assertion, as recalled by his grand son Horace Cummings, that Joseph Smith seemed “to understand some of the features of the [Masonic] ceremony better than any Mason and that he made explanations that rendered the rites much more beautiful and full of meaning” (p. 275). (Cummings, a Nauvoo Mason, was, according to Hogan, “one of the Prophet’s intimate friends.”) Hogan says this is impossible because the minutes of Joseph’s initiation, passing, and raising on 15 and 16 March 1842, say nothing about any oration by the Prophet (pp.276-77). Had Hogan carefully checked the “Autobiography of Horace Cummings” at BYU, he would have found that Cummings made no claim that the explanations Joseph Smith gave occurred at the time of his affiliation. Godfrey’s statement can be read either way. 

Further, Hogan relies too heavily on the accuracy of the minutes of the Nauvoo Lodge in his repudiation of Cummings’s recollections. From Hogan’s own editing of those minutes for publication, he should know that they were doctored when expediency dictated, as is shown by duplicate sets of some minutes. For example, the History of the Church records that on 26 May 1842 John C. Bennett admitted “licentious conduct toward certain females in Nauvoo” and “cried like a child” before a meeting of the lodge (5:18). The min utes for that meeting, however, describe nothing out of the ordinary. (Ms. Minutes of Nauvoo Lodge, U.D. [Under Dispensation] LDS Historical Department Archives).

Hogan further chastises Godfrey for not doing “the requisite basic research and homework” (p. 277) in reviewing the Nauvoo Lodge minutes at the Church Archives, unfairly failing to mention that those minutes were not available to scholars when Godfrey was researching his dissertation in the mid-1960s. 

Hogan rambles disorganizedly for the next fifty pages, engaging in extensive ir relevant quotation, speculation, digression, and unsubstantiated conclusion. He accepts uncritically Henry G. Sherwood’s account of the October 1843 Grand Annual Communication of the Illinois Grand Lodge, which suggests that the only reason the Mormon lodges were disenfranchised was prejudice against Mormonism. Such a conclusion ignores the influence of John C. Bennett’s disclosures in the Springfield, Illinois Sangamo Journal, one of two major papers in Springfield (8, 15, 22 July 1842), charging the Mormon-dominated Nauvoo Lodge with irregularities, including Joseph Smith’s being made a Master Mason before the Lodge was installed and having sexual intercourse with the wives of other Master Masons. His 1842 History of the Saints (Boston: Leland & Whiting, 1842) added fuel to the fire with his description of the Order Lodge, Joseph Smith’s own personal lodge, now known as the Holy Order (participants in endowments) and his charge that Joseph suspended a member of the lodge for blackballing another — permitted in Masonry. 

Next, Hogan explicates why the Book of Mormon was not influenced by anti-Masonry, which was rampant in upstate New York in the late 1820s. He defines “secret society” in such a way that Free masonry falls outside his definition and concludes, therefore, that “the secret society of the Book of Mormon cannot be mistaken as, or construed to be, Freemasonry by anyone other than a totally uninformed person. . . .” Such a statement is bewildering. Consider, for example, Hogan’s quotation from Helaman 6:21-22: 

. . . [the Nephites] did enter into their convenants and their oaths, that they would protect and preserve one another in whatever difficult circumstances they should be placed, that they should not suffer for their murders, and their plunderings, and their stealings. And it came to pass that they did have their signs, yea, their secret signs, and their secret words; and this that they might distinguish a brother who had entered into the covenant, that, whatsoever wicked- ness his brother should do he should not be injured by his brother, nor by those who did belong to his band. 

Can Hogan really tell us that these characteristics could not apply to Freemasonry? To the contrary, they constitute the precise criticisms that anti-Masons were levying against Masonry in western New York in the late 1820s. The best recent scholarly treatment of political anti-Masonry is William Preston Vaughn, The Anti-Masonic Party in the United States 1826-1843 (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1983), esp. pp. 16-20. 

In this same section of his book, Hogan notes that Hyrum Smith was a member of Mount Moriah Lodge No. 112 in Palmyra before the anti-Masonic excitement, and concludes: “Hyrum Smith’s membership in that Lodge does more than anything else to identify and establish both his and the Smith family’s status and standing in Palmyra prior to the announced founding of the Church. The later detractions and impugnations of Pomeroy Tucker and other Palmyra neighbors can be largely questioned or disregarded due to the simple fact of Hyrum Smith’s Masonic member ship in his hometown lodge” (p. 288). A few pages later, Hogan contradicts himself: “There are no few sister Grand Lodges which were founded by known scalawags and scamps about whom the less is said the better it is for the implied reputation of the Masonic Order” (p. 299). Whatever the merits of Pomeroy Tucker’s reminiscences of the Smith family in Palmyra, this assertion is silly. 

After digressing into “The True Hall marks of Freemasonry,” Hogan sets forth his theory of how Freemasonry came to Nauvoo: John C. Bennett, without Joseph Smith’s knowledge or consent, induced a few Nauvoo cronies to join him in petitioning nearby Bodley Lodge to recommend that a lodge be founded in Nauvoo. Bodley Lodge demurred because Bennett had been previously expelled from an Ohio lodge. James Adams of Springfield, a close friend of Joseph Smith along with Grand Master Abraham Jonas, then begged Joseph to sanction Masonry in Nauvoo. Reluctantly, Joseph agreed on condition that every Mormon priesthood holder might affiliate. Bennett, disappointed, had to settle for the office of Secretary of the Lodge instead of Worshipful Master. 

Unfortunately, Hogan’s analysis, which is speculative to begin with, rests on two suppositions, one doubtful and the other false. First, it is doubtful that Bennett would attempt to establish a lodge in Nauvoo without Joseph Smith’s knowledge or consent. Reed Durham in his 1974 Mormon History Association presidential ad dress, “Is There No Help for the Widow’s Son?” published without his permission in Mormon Miscellaneous 1 (Oct. 1975): 11- 16, concluded that Masonry was instituted at Nauvoo “certainly with the approval of the hierarchy of the Church” (p. 12). This conclusion is supported by contemporary diaries and letters which indicate Joseph sincerely believed Masonry to be an apostate endowment. For example, Joseph Fielding’s Nauvoo diary (22 Dec. 1843) states: “Many have joined the Masonic institution, this seems to have been a Stepping Stone or Preparation for something else, the true Origin of Masonry” (Andrew F. Ehat, ed., “The Nauvoo Journal of Joseph Fielding,” BYU Studies, 19 [Winter 1979]: 145, 147). Heber C. Kimball similarly wrote to Parley P. Pratt on 17 June 1842: “There is a simi larity of preast Hood in masonry. Bro. Joseph ses masonary was taken from preasthood but has become degenerated, but menny things are perfect” (Parley P. Pratt Papers, LDS Historical Department Archives). 

Second, Hogan’s analysis presumes that Bodley Lodge knew that John C. Bennett was an expelled Mason. On page 303, Hogan asserts that Bennett had been ex pelled from Pickaway Lodge No. 23, Circleville, Pickaway County, Ohio. Yet Ho gan himself obtained the proof that Bennett was not an expelled Mason by quoting the minutes of the Pickaway Lodge in Chapter 15 of his unpublished manuscript “Mormonism and Freemasonry on the Mid west Frontier” (n.d., copy in LDS Historical Department Library). He concludes there: “In all fairness to Bennett, it ap pears he had some justification to claim before Nauvoo Lodge that his status with Pickaway Lodge No. 23 was not clear to him” (p. 8). 

Hogan’s unqualified refusal to give any credence to Bennett has deprived him of important insights into the workings at Nauvoo. In his introduction to The Official Minutes of Nauvoo Lodge, U.D., Hogan speculates as to why two sets of minutes exist for the lodge yet ignores Bennett’s 15 July 1842 letter to the Sangamo Journal in which Bennett explained why there were up to four copies of the minutes. The day is long past when a scholar of Mormonism can summarily disregard John C. Bennett.

Hogan concludes his treatise with a section entitled “The Mormon Temple Endowment Ceremony.” After noting that an analysis of the similarities between the ceremonies of the two institutions is im possible because the details are secret (obviously untrue — the rites of each are readily accessible), he quotes from Ander son’s Constitutions, the foundation work of Freemasonry (London: Printed for William Hunter and John Senex at the Globe, 1723): 

According to Dr. Anderson, Free masonry claims descent from Adam and the responsibility of conveying the teachings he received from God in the Gar den of Eden. On the other hand, Mor- monism claims that its revelations from God include the design of the temple and its temple ceremonies. 

Confronted by these two premises, there should be no surprise to find a similarity or even identity between certain signs, tokens, oaths, costuming, paraphernalia, phraseology, etc., in some of the ceremonies practiced by each of these two universal institutions, (p. 321) 

Even though Hogan’s reluctance to discuss details of either ceremony may be appropriate, his explanation for the similarities is both unscholarly and unsound. In citing the legendary history of Freemasonry from Anderson’s Constitutions with apparent approval, Hogan engages in what must be considered at best gross disregard of fact. No serious Masonic scholar today contends that Freemasonry had its beginnings with either Adam or Solomon’s Temple. For example, in his Encyclopedia of Freemasonry (1902), Albert G. Mackey notes that ‘”no Masonic writer would now venture to quote Anderson as authority for the history of the Order anterior to the eighteenth century” (p. 68). The facts point to a be ginning of Freemasonry no earlier than the seventeenth century. The standard scholarly treatment is Douglas Knoop and G. P. Jones The Genesis of Freemasonry (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1949). The authors, on the faculty of the University of Sheffield, were Masons and members of the Quatutor Coronati Lodge, the premier lodge of Masonic research. 

In The Involvement, Hogan ventures into even deeper speculation, primarily about Abraham Jonas and James Adams, the Grand Master and Deputy Grand Mas ter of the Illinois Grand Lodge in the early 1840s. Hogan assures us that James Adams was motivated by political ambitions to secretly join the Mormons; that he was “unquestionably” the driving force behind the organization of the second Grand Lodge of Illinois, and that he expected to be elected Grand Master—all of which Hogan fails to substantiate. Hogan further assures us that Abraham Jonas was not interested in being Grand Master because he’d already been Grand Master in Kentucky, that he conspired with Adams to manipulate Joseph Smith and the Mor mons to elect Jonas to the Illinois legislature (even though Jonas had already served four terms in the Kentucky legislature), and that the Mormons, in return, con fronted Jonas with “the Prophet’s demands,” specifically that all Mormons could join the craft. (Masonry requires that the membership be very selective.) Again, this is pure speculation, as are the motives Hogan imputes to George Miller, John D. Parker, and Lucius Scovil. Hogan says: “One surmises from the Minutes that Miller was annoyed by the subsequent manipulations of Jonas as dictated by the Prophet. Nevertheless, he played his as signed part. Parker was unquestionably a most willing cat’s-paw; he made no appearance in Nauvoo Lodge for several months. Scovil may not have been in formed as to what was planned since he was not involved.” These three were the first Worshipful Master, Senior Warden, and Junior Warden, respectively, of Nauvoo Lodge. Hogan’s reconstruction is all speculation. The minutes are silent. After creating his scenario, Hogan notes: “Obviously I am forced to present and discuss the known documented facts, and weigh the credible probabilities or possibilities which are intimated or implied by the available historical record” (p. 28). These “known documented facts” and “credible probabilities” are strikingly absent. The majority of his ten footnotes reference other papers of his own. 

Even so, there are two areas in which Hogan deserves credit for contributing to the question of Mormonism and Freemasonry. He has been responsible for getting into print some formerly unpublished manuscripts, most notably two versions of the minutes of the Nauvoo Lodge. Unfortunately, Hogan only published these Official Minutes up to 6 May 1842, while they continue into 1846. Similarly, perhaps the most valuable aspect of The Illinois Episode is Hogan’s verbatim inclusion of the previously unpublished Henry G. Sherwood statement noted above. 

Second, a Mason himself, Hogan offers insights into the practical workings of the craft. For example, he offers in The Illinois Episode background on the practice of making Masons at Sight (a rare honor, be stowed upon Joseph Smith and Sidney Rigdon, which permits the conferring of the first three degrees without waiting for the initiate to obtain proficiency in the preceding degree—usually at least a month), insight into the workings of presenting a petition, and the justifiable excuses for the absence of a Grand Master at his Grand Annual Communication. 

In conclusion, if you are interested in a discussion of anti-Masonry in the Book of Mormon or an accounting for the similarities in the sacred rites of the Mormons and Masons, you will be disappointed by Hogan’s work. Similarly, if you hope for a readable, scholarly overview of Mormon Freemasonry at Nauvoo, you will again be disappointed. Hogan promises much but delivers little. A definitive study on the subject of Freemasonry and Mormonism has yet to be written.

Mormonism and Freemasonry: The Illinois Episode, by Mervin B. Hogan (Salt Lake City: Third Century Graphics, 1980), 59 pp., $6.95, and The Involvement of Freemasonry with Mormonism on the American Midwestern Frontier, by Mervin B. Hogan (Salt Lake City: Privately printed, 1982), 39 pp., typescript, $3.25.