The Lodge & the Church

Can a Mason also be a Christian? To the Rev. Walter Bauer, pastor of the Trinity Evangelical Lutheran Church in the Lake Erie village of Fisherville (pop. 2,200), the answer is no. Nowhere in their prayers or ritual, he told his congregation in a sermon, do Masons make mention of Jesus Christ.* Furthermore, he had come upon a passage in a Freemason lexicon that defined the Bible as a "symbol of the will of God." Pastor Bauer concluded that such teachings were unChristian. He challenged lodge members to disprove his charges.

The church's congregation knew that their pastor's words were aimed at three members who belonged to a Masonic lodge in nearby Hagersville. To the three Masons, Pastor Bauer gave an ultimatum: give up your lodge affiliation or leave the church. He refused to let them take Communion. He had, he claimed, the full backing of his twelve councilmen.*

The Masons refused to drop their lodge membership. Said one: "Mr. Bauer is 150 years behind the times . . . He'll take our money but he won't give us Communion or bury us." Retorted the pastor: "If a Mason wanted a lodge burial, I would refuse to officiate." A church council decided to put the issue to a vote.

Last week 109 men of the congregation gathered in a stormy meeting. By an overwhelming majority, they reinstated the three Masons in the Fisherville church for a one-year probationary period. Nobody bothered to explain what "probationary period" meant. Pastor Bauer announced that if a call came to serve another congregation, he would accept it.

* The Knights Templar, highest order within the Masonic York Rite, make use of the New Testament in their ritual. Other orders, within both the York and Scottish Rites, base their ritual on the Old Testament, affirm the existence of a Supreme Being, neither affirm nor deny the divinity of Jesus Christ.

* The Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, which includes the Fisherville congregation, has long condemned Freemasonry as a "religious cult diametrically opposed to Christianity." Its clergymen have "challenged" a Lutheran if they knew he was a Mason, and confronted him with a choice between lodge and church.

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