Grand Lodge of Tennessee to roll out new educational program

Gomorrah, TN -- Good news for Masonic scholars and researchers in Tennessee this week, as the Grand Lodge released a list of approved topics for study and discussion.

“We want to encourage the study of all aspects of Freemasonary,” said RWB Gavin Mavity. “So, the Grand Historian, the Grand Orator, and the other Grand Lodge officers got together and wrote up a list of topic categories  that we think are important for Freemasons to learn about.”

We asked why the Grand Lodge thought that there was a need to publish a study list.

“Well, we know that there’s a lot of nonsense and such about Freemasonary, so we decided that it would be helpful to give our members some guidance so that they didn’t study the wrong sorts of things,” said RWB Mavity.

Our preview of the list included items such as:

• Anything George Washington related
• Masonic aprons in America
• Masonic ring design
• Freemasonry in the Colonial era
• Freemasonry in the Civil War era
• Albert Pike
• Famous Masons in US history
• Famous Masonic actors
• Red Skelton’s “Pledge of Allegiance”
• John Glenn: First Freemason on the Moon
• Albert Pike

When asked why the list was so short, WB Mavity responded, “Well, first of all, we don’t want to have our members study the wrong kinds of things. That’s how you end up with those egghead types, and the next thing you know we’ll have that whole Traditional Observance thing happening here.”

Brother Red Skelton's "Pledge of Allegiance" is one
of the most popular study topics in lodges.

But won’t the members get bored with such a short topic list?

“Well, whenever I’ve been to a lodge meeting and they have somebody presenting some kind of Masonic topic, it’s almost always something interesting like aprons, rings, George Washington, or Freemasonry in history, like around the Civil War,” he said. “We figured that those must be the most interesting topics to Masons, since they come up so often. No point in having the members study things that nobody’s heard about, is there?”

The list will be available this week to the lodges around the state by the end of the week.

-- Conte Calvino Gliostro