"The Paradox of Loyalty and Rebellion"

From the July/August 2025 edition of The Scottish Rite Journal.  Any accompanying photographs or citations for this article can be found in the corresponding print edition.


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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to the Scottish Right Journal Podcast, an audio presentation
of the Scottish Right Journal, brought to you by the
Supreme Council of the Scottish Right Southern Jurisdiction Mother Supreme
Council of the World. This week's article is the Paradox
of Loyalty and Rebellion by Brother Charles Edward Andrew Lincoln
the fourth thirty second degree, Brother Andre Antonescu thirty second

(00:24):
degree and Brother Andrew Allman thirty second degree, and comes
from the July August twenty twenty five issue of the
Scottish Right Journal. To speak of rebellion in the same
breath as loyalty is to court paradox. The American War
of Independence was a time of great upheaval, and at
its heart were men who not only shaped the nation,

(00:46):
but also followed a set of guiding principles, many of
them rooted in freemasonry. The craft, particularly in its first degree,
prescribes obedience as both civil duty and sacred command. The
initial it is bound by solemn obligation to uphold the
laws of the land, to respect civil authority, and to

(01:06):
preserve peace and order, unless crucially these violate the higher
moral law that masonry itself presupposes. The obligation of a
Mason includes loyalty to one's country. Yet many of those
who gathered in Philadelphia in seventeen seventy six, those whose
quills inscribed the Declaration of Independence, were Masons, not merely

(01:29):
nominally so, but deeply committed to the craft. George Washington,
Benjamin Franklin, Paul Revere, and others who took obligations in
darkened lodges and later took up arms against the sovereign
to whom those same oaths seem to bind them. At
first glance, it is contradiction. On deeper examination, it is

(01:50):
something closer to alchemical resolution. The Masonic oath does not
bind the soul to tyranny. Rather, it pledges the initiate
to a principle of ordered liberty, a civic virtue illuminated
not by the will of kings, but by the light
of reason, fraternity, and moral discernment. Masonic loyalty is loyalty
to justice itself, not merely to institutions that may at

(02:13):
times depart from her path. When justice is perverted. The
oath does not command silence, it compels the opposite. John Locke,
in his Second Treatise of Government, declared that when the
government is dissolved, the people are at liberty to provide
for themselves by erecting a new legislative to secure the

(02:35):
ends of liberty and justice. The point for Locke, and
later for the Founders was not rebellion for its own sake,
but resistance when lawful authority becomes lawless. The end of law,
he continues, is not to abolish or restrain, but to
preserve and enlarge freedom. This Enlightenment idea that justice and

(02:57):
moral law supersede even sovereign command, finds the esoteric expression
not only in the Blue Lodge degrees, but also in
the teachings of the Scottish Rite. The degree of Knight
Rose Croy, for example, emphasizes fidelity to truth over obedience
to despotism. The Perfect eleud degrees, particularly the tenth, eleventh,

(03:19):
and twelfth degrees, stressed the necessity of moral discernment, holding
rulers accountable, and exalting integrity over submission. In these higher degrees,
one is reminded that to stand against tyranny may not
be treason, it may be initiation. Thus, the Masons, among
the founding fathers did not so much break their oaths

(03:39):
as elevate them. They interpreted the sacred obligation of the
first degree not as a leash to passive submission, but
as a call to active justice. The Masonic principle of
obedience to law assumes that law itself is just where
it is not, the Mason must, in Locke's words, which
he uses repeatedly, appeal to Heaven, that is to say,

(04:01):
to a higher tribunal of moral truth. One is left
to ponder, as Albert Pike so poetically frames it, in
morals and Dogma, man has natural empire over all institutions.
They are for him according to his development, not he
for them. This seems to be a very simple statement
to which all of men everywhere ought to assent lecture

(04:24):
to second degree fellowcraft. The Masonic founders did not respond
to the philosophical issue with words. They responded with a
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Any accompanying photographs or citations for this article can be

(04:47):
found in the corresponding print edition The Scottish Right Journal
is published by the Supreme Council of the Scottish Right
Southern Jurisdiction Mother Supreme Council of the World. Mark Dreisenstock,
thirty third degree Managing an Editor. I'm your host, Matt
Bowers h m hm