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How organised Freemasonry grew up inside the Anglican establishment: the clergy who helped found it, its respectability among the gentry, an Archbishop of Canterbury in the craft, and the Church of England's later doubts about it.
How organised Freemasonry grew up inside the Anglican establishment: the clergy who helped found it, its respectability among the gentry, an Archbishop of Canterbury in the craft, and the Church of England's later doubts about it.
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also in Freemasonry: the craft and its history
Four London lodges met at the Goose and Gridiron alehouse and formed the first Grand Lodge, traditionally dated to 24 June 1717. This is usually taken as the birth of organized Freemasonry, though some scholars argue for 1721.
When the Premier Grand Lodge drew up its Constitutions, the Anglican clergyman John Desaguliers was a leading figure and the minister James Anderson wrote the text. English Freemasonry grew up inside a Protestant establishment, and churchmen were among its early members.
Through the 18th and 19th centuries lodges spread among the Anglican gentry and clergy, and church, state and lodge overlapped in the English establishment. Being a Freemason carried no bar for an Anglican, unlike in the Catholic Church, which forbade it.
Geoffrey Fisher, Archbishop of Canterbury from 1945, was a Freemason, one of several senior Anglicans in the lodges. The overlap of the church’s leadership and the craft was open rather than secret.
The General Synod's report Freemasonry and Christianity found serious difficulties in reconciling the two, and some members judged them incompatible on grounds of the Masonic understanding of God. The Church did not forbid membership, but the relationship cooled.
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