058 An Interview with an LDS Freemason

Welcome to our special bonus episode where Casey and I interview a friend of our show Lon Tibbitts. In our previous episode we discussed at length the relationship between masonry and the development of the temple endowment in Nauvoo—a topic a lot of people have questions about. So we thought you might enjoy hearing from Lon Tibbitts who has served both as an LDS ward bishop and as a Master of his Masonic lodge in Utah. Lon is a keen student of both masonic and LDS history, and in this interview he sheds light on the origins of freemasonry; on why so many Nauvoo Latter-day Saints joined the fraternity; on connections between masonry and the endowment, the Relief Society, and the martyrdom of Joseph Smith; as well as the later fraught relationship between freemasons and Latter-day Saints in Utah. We hope you enjoy it. 

For show notes and transcript for this and other episodes go to https://doctrineandcovenantscentral.org/church-history-matters-podcast/   

Episode Transcript

Scott Woodward (00:05):
Welcome to our special bonus episode, where Casey and I interview
a friend of our show, Lon Tibbitts.
In our previous episode we discussedat length the relationship between
Masonry and the development of thetemple endowment in Nauvoo, a topic
people have a lot of questions about.
So we thought you might enjoy hearingfrom Lon Tibbitts, who has served
both as an LDS ward bishop and as amaster of his Masonic Lodge in Utah.

(00:29):
Lon is a keen student of both Masonicand LDS history, and in this interview
he sheds light on the origins ofFreemasonry; on why so many Nauvoo
Latter-day Saints joined the fraternity;on connections between Masonry and the
endowment, the Relief Society, and themartyrdom of Joseph Smith; as well as
the later fraught relationship betweenFreemasons and Latter-day Saints in Utah.

(00:52):
We hope you enjoy it.
I'm Scott Woodward, and my co-hostis Casey Griffiths, and today Casey
and I dive into this bonus episodein our series about the development
of Latter-day Saint temple worship.
Now, let's get into it.
Hi, Casey.

Casey Griffiths (01:10):
Hi, Scott.
How are we doing?

Scott Woodward (01:11):
We're doing so good and excited for a special episode today.

Casey Griffiths (01:15):
Yeah!
This is kind of like our, youknow, network special surprise.
I don't know exactly how to describeit, but we are pausing in the middle
of our series on temple worshipto do a special episode because
we have a special guest with us.

Scott Woodward (01:29):
Yes.

Casey Griffiths (01:30):
Lon, do you want to say hi to the good
people out there in podcast land?

Lon Tibbitts (01:33):
Love to.
Hello.

Scott Woodward (01:36):
Perfect.
Yes, we're excited to have with usLon Tibbitts, who is both a practicing
Latter-day Saint and a practicingMason, and we look forward to
hearing a lot from you today, Lon.
Casey, do you want to tee him up?
Tell us a little about Lon Tibbitts.

Casey Griffiths (01:51):
Yeah.
Let me share a little bitabout Lon's biography.
2018, while serving as the Grand Master ofMasons in Utah, Lon retired from American
Express after nineteen years in rolesin marketing and operations management
of traveler's checks and prepaid cards.
Lon grew up traveling the westernUnited States, France, and England

(02:11):
as an Air Force military brat.
His parents were natives of Salt LakeCity, and his family goes back through
five generations of Mormon pioneers.
He spent less than a year living in SaltLake while his father flew night missions
out of Thailand during the Vietnam War.
Prior to serving a mission in thelate ’70s, he started his education
at the University of Maryland.
Served a full-time mission in Scotland andIreland, and then continued his education

(02:35):
at LDS Business College, the Universityof Utah, and Brigham Young University.
Lon and his wife, Lana, are theparents of three daughters and a son.
They have twenty delightfulgrandchildren and three and a half
great-grandchildren, and Lon has alsoserved continuously in his wards in Utah.
He's served as an elders quorum presidentthree times, Gospel Doctrine instructor,
bishop and branch president's counselor,executive secretary, and high councilor.

(02:58):
Now, for our interests, Lon has been aFreemason in Utah for the last seventeen
years and has served as Master ofhis Lodge three times, grand steward,
deacon, and orator, junior grand warden,senior grand warden, deputy Grand
Master, and Grand Master of Masons.
He's in his sixth term as grand secretary.
He's also served as presidentof the Rocky Mountain Masonic

(03:20):
Conference and vice chairman ofthe Conference of Grand Masters of
Masons in North America in 2018.
He is currently a member of theConference of Grand Secretaries of North
America and also serves as secretarygeneral of the Scottish Rite of Utah.
He has been published on a numberof Masonic topics and is routinely
asked to speak at National MasonicConferences on a variety of topics.

(03:42):
He enjoys the brotherhood he finds thereamong good men from various creeds,
occupations, backgrounds, and classes.
So, Lon, we are excited to have you withus, because we're interested in primary
sources, and we just did an episodewhere we talked about the connection
between Latter-day Saints and Masons.
You are both a Latter-day Saint andan active Mason, so we're excited to

(04:05):
have the opportunity to talk to you.

Lon Tibbitts (04:07):
Well, thank you.
It's good to be here with you.

Scott Woodward (04:09):
Yeah.
So great to have you here with us, Lon.
And now, Casey, you made thisinterview happen, so tell us how
you met Lon in the first place.

Casey Griffiths (04:17):
I had the opportunity to tour the Masonic Temple in Philadelphia
back in 2019, before the pandemic,and it was such a cool experience
that ever since then I've wanted totour the Masonic Temple in Salt Lake.
And so I had a few misfires
. . . Scott Woodward: Okay.
I've connected with the Masons in Provo, near where I work,

(04:37):
but I always wanted to go to the Templein Salt Lake, and a couple months ago
I emailed the Masonic Lodge of Utah.
Lon emailed me back.
A few weeks later ScriptureCentral team and I came up, and
we filmed in the Masonic Temple.
There's going to be a video up onScripture Central that shows you that.
And since then Lon has very graciouslytoured fifty of my students through

(04:58):
the temple, and just recently fiftymembers of the faculty, the religion
faculty from BYU, through the temple aswell, and he is a pretty knowledgeable
fellow, so I figured there's nobodybetter to answer our questions about
Latter-day Saints and Masons than Lon, so
. . . Scott Woodward: That's wonderful.
That says a lot about Lon, thathe passed the Casey Griffiths
test and, so that's wonderful.

(05:22):
Well, Lon, tell us a little bitabout your background as both a
Freemason and a Latter-day Saint.

Lon Tibbitts (05:28):
So I think—let me start with as a Latter-day Saint because
that is probably the most importantrelationship, other than that with
my wife and my children, in my life.
But I greatly enjoy my experienceswith the fraternity and the fraternity
here in Utah, and as a Latter-day SaintI work very hard to be a good man.

(05:49):
I work very hard to overcome myweaknesses, my sins, my problems,
my issues, and do what it isthat the Lord would have me do.
And I will say, I think first andforemost, for those who ever wonder,
if push came to shove and one of thosethings, Freemasonry or the church had
to be chosen, it's a no-brainer for me.

(06:09):
It would always be The Church ofJesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
As a Freemason, I'll tell you that Ihad an interest since I was a young man.
Growing up as a military brat, Isaw Masons quite a bit in my life.
I don't know that I have the sameobservation skills that Mormon
might have had and is talkedabout in the Book of Mormon, but—

Scott Woodward (06:29):
Quick to observe.

Lon Tibbitts (06:30):
Yeah, I was always an observant child, and I kind of noticed
that the officers, the flyers, the NCOsthat I met as a child growing up and
living almost all of my first nineteenyears on a military base, an Air Force
base, I noticed that a lot of them worea ring with a square and compass on it,

(06:51):
so I was always a little bit fascinatedby that and fascinated by the connection
between good men and that, and serving amission in Scotland and Ireland, Scotland
is really—for those who try to studythe real history of Freemasonry, most
of us come back to Scotland eventuallyand believe that's where it all started.
That's where it began.

(07:11):
What we would call Grand Lodge Freemasonrybegan in 1717 in London, but before
that, lodge Masonry, that is groupsof Masons who gathered together in
a lodge, was alive and well and hadbeen for several hundred years in
Scotland, so there I was, not reallyrealizing it, but in the birthplace, if
you will, and saw an awful lot of it.

(07:34):
One of my companions during the pandemicwho caught up with us on Facebook and
started to build a group of us fromthe Scotland Glasgow Mission together
into what's become about 400 people ona page these days, he made a comment
when somebody commented on my Facebookpage and the fact that it showed
my experience with the fraternity.
His comment to me was, “Well,we all knew you were going to

(07:55):
be a Mason sooner or later.
It always fascinated you.” So Ididn't think I'd been that overt
about it, but apparently I had.

Scott Woodward (08:02):
Yeah.

Lon Tibbitts (08:03):
My first attempt to join the fraternity was actually in about
the mid-’80s, and I approached a friendwho I found out had—was a Mason, and
I had been on active duty with the AirForce myself just prior to that and
had thought about joining a lodge inanother state but decided to wait, and

(08:23):
when I approached him, he told me thathe would be happy to sign my petition.
However, “They won't take you.”And I pointed out to him that I
knew members of the church who wereMasons in California and in England,
and that that was just not true.
And he said, well,yeah, anywhere but Utah.

Scott Woodward (08:41):
Uh-oh.

Lon Tibbitts (08:42):
And sure enough, there had actually been a ban in place.
It had been unofficial from 1872 untilabout 1924, and it had been official and
in our constitution from 1924 to 1984.
It was rolled back out of theConstitution in a series of
two votes over 1983 and 1984.
The first official, if youwill, successful vote to admit

(09:07):
a man happened in about 1989.

Scott Woodward (09:10):
Wow.
In Utah, you're saying?

Lon Tibbitts (09:11):
In Utah.

Scott Woodward (09:12):
So—

Lon Tibbitts (09:12):
Yeah.

Scott Woodward (09:13):
—1989 is the first successful Latter-day
Saint since the 1800s.

Lon Tibbitts (09:17):
Yep.
There have been members of The Churchof Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
who've been Masons in other places,going all the way back to before Nauvoo.

Scott Woodward (09:25):
Yeah.

Lon Tibbitts (09:25):
So this was groundbreaking for us in Utah, but it wasn't
groundbreaking anywhere else.
So my second attempt happened in 2006,and it came after a period I had some
time to do some pretty extensive study.
By then I'd served as a bishop, andI'd served as a elders quorum president
and other things at that point, andI wanted to make sure that I wasn't

(09:47):
joining the Gadianton robbers, thatthis wasn't a secret combination.

Scott Woodward (09:50):
Yeah.

Lon Tibbitts (09:51):
All you have to do with some people is to say it's got secrets,
and immediately they jump to nefarious.
I have not found it to be that way.
My Masonic resume, I guess if you wantto call it that, my Masonic resume
allows people to see that I've seen thesecrets that we have and been admitted
to the echelons that would allow me tosee whether or not we were nefarious

(10:14):
and hiding things, and we are not.

Scott Woodward (10:16):
And so what drew you to Freemasonry?
Like, why did you want toapply and then reapply?
What was it about it that called to you?

Lon Tibbitts (10:24):
I am not sure.
I would love to say that therewas something definitive.
Other than, I think, the respect I heldfor those men that I saw who wore that
ring when I was growing up, I'm not surewhat it was that drew me to begin with.
I know that after I got involved, what'sdrawn me to stay involved has been the

(10:46):
quality and caliber of men that I getto rub shoulders with, both members
of the church and those who are not.
The thing that keeps me, I think, morethan anything else, are the friendships.
I feel very much at home.
I will say first of all that notbeing a Utah Mormon, although I grew
up with parents who were, havingmoved here after my mission, I have

(11:09):
never really felt like I completelyfit because I didn't grow up here.
This has been one of those things thathas allowed me to feel like I really
fit in Utah, maybe for the first time.

Casey Griffiths (11:19):
And Lon, that's one of the advantages of Freemasonry, right?
Is it kind of creates this brotherhoodthat allows you to feel like you belong.

Lon Tibbitts (11:27):
Yep.
Exactly.

Casey Griffiths (11:40):
Well, let's back up a little bit, because I think our
listeners are pretty well informed,but most people don't know that
much about Masonry to begin with.
You know, they've watched NationalTreasure with Nicolas Cage, which is
an excellent movie, but they probablyhaven't heard very much directly from
a Mason about what Masonry actually is.

(12:00):
Give us a little background on whatFreemasonry is and where it comes from.

Lon Tibbitts (12:06):
I think the right place to start with that is kind of our
origin stories, and there's a veryserious writer, as opposed to somebody
who's just a Mason who sat downand wrote what he thought was where
we came from, but there's a fairlyserious Mason and author, Alan E.
Roberts, who has actually identifiedthe possibility of twenty-four
different origin stories for us.

Scott Woodward (12:28):
Wow.
Wow.

Lon Tibbitts (12:29):
He does note that they really shake out into three.
There's three real categories.
So the first one is that we're thedescendants, the modern and, if
you will—we call them speculative.
I'll explain that in a moment,but—speculative Masonic child, if you
will, of the medieval stonemasons guilds.
So that would be the firstchannel, and I'll come back and

(12:51):
tell you a little bit about howwe think that unfolded over time.
The second one is that there's a directconnection between the Freemasons
of today with the Freemasons or thestonemasons at Solomon's Temple.
I'll tell you right now, wejust, we have not—you know, it's
entirely possible that's true.
It's entirely possible, as at leastone theory has it, that the medieval

(13:12):
stonemason guilds were the connectorbetween that and modernity, but the fact
is we can't find a historical connection.
We can't see where thetwo of them came together.
The last big one is that we weredescendants of the Knights Templar,
that when they were suppressedback in medieval times, that

(13:32):
they—that some of them escaped.
We—and we know from a historicalpoint of view, some of them escaped.
Some of them reached Scotland.
They're blamed for the buildingof Rosslyn Chapel—blamed or

given credit for (13:43):
whichever.
And there are some grave sites of menwho had served as Knights Templar with
the Catholic Church and that particularorganization, but again, we can find no
evidence that they started the fraternityin any form as we would view it today,
and that they shared their secrets andit carried on as a result, so when we

(14:06):
get to the bottom of those three majororigin stories, we find that only one
has any real credence going forward, andthat one is the medieval stone guilds.
The evolution of those over time startedin about the 15th or 16th century,
when stonemason guilds began to inviteleading men in their community to join

(14:31):
their fraternity, their guild, or assome might put it today, their union,
in order to give them a little leg upover the plasterers and the carpenters
and the others, and sometime betweenbeginning the first initiation of what
we would call today a speculative Masonryas opposed to an operative Masonry,

(14:52):
between then and about 1717, when thefirst Grand Lodge was formed by four
lodges in London, we went from where whatwe call Freemasonry today was operative
stonemasons to where there was nothingbut speculative Freemasons, and it's very
rare today for us to have an operativeMason in a lodge, at least in Utah.

Scott Woodward (15:14):
Okay, and what's the difference between
speculative and operative?

Lon Tibbitts (15:17):
Okay, so an operative Freemason is the guy who works in stone or
who works in bricks and builds buildings.

Scott Woodward (15:24):
Like what you think of if you think of Masonry work, if you go
to Home Depot and get Masonry blocks.

Lon Tibbitts (15:30):
Exactly.

Scott Woodward (15:30):
That's operative.

Lon Tibbitts (15:31):
That's operative.

Scott Woodward (15:32):
Okay.

Lon Tibbitts (15:32):
Speculative is the gentleman, or at least supposed gentleman,
who is now a member of a lodge anduses the implements and the practices
of operative Freemasonry as a practiceupon which to build a good life, build
a life that is good, moral, and upright.

Scott Woodward (15:53):
Is that the connection with speculative Masonry and, like,
the idea of operative Masonry?
It's almost a metaphorof building a good life?
It's brick by brick, block by block,creating this life of goodness
and virtue and contribution?

Lon Tibbitts (16:07):
It is.

Scott Woodward (16:07):
Okay.

Lon Tibbitts (16:08):
And there are in every lodge, at least in Utah—I
get careful about speaking aboutthe whole of the United States
or even the whole of the world,because there are various practices.

Scott Woodward (16:19):
Sure.

Lon Tibbitts (16:19):
But in every lodge in Utah there are two stones.
One we've called—we call themashlars, and those ashlars, one
is rough, and one is perfect.
They sit in the front of the lodge atthe feet of the worshipful master or
honorable master of the lodge, and theyare emblematic of our building our life

(16:41):
with the rough or rude stone, transformingthat into the perfect stone, one that can
be shown to be perfect by using implementsthat stonemasons would use to determine
whether or not that stone went well.

Casey Griffiths (16:55):
Yeah, and having toured through the lodge, in your
ceremonial rooms there's a symbolthat I think a lot of our listeners
would probably be surprised thatthey've seen in public several times
of a compass and a square and a G.
Can you explain that symbolism and how itrelates to the practice of Freemasonry?

Lon Tibbitts (17:12):
Yes.
So we try to live our life on the square.
That is a good life.
We try to live it uprightly, and wetry as Masons to meet on the level.
So when we talk about squares andcompasses, they have to do with morality.
They have to do with goodness.
They have to do with tryingto be those kinds of things.

(17:33):
I think the fact that the stone—westart with this rough ashlar.
I think that is an admission thatwe know we are all coming short.
Honestly, some of us may neverget to perfectly square, perfectly
upright, and we may have a difficulttime from time to time meeting on a
level with everybody that we meet.
Pride and other things enter in.

(17:54):
Sin enters in.
Mistakes and the rest of it enter in.
So I think we recognize that the mensitting in our lodge with us together
are just like we are, with roughedges that need to be knocked off.
So each of the symbols that we use, thatan operative Mason would use, each of the
tools, has some meaning to us in how itis that we fashion and fix and repair and

(18:18):
bring our lives closer to the perfect.

Scott Woodward (18:21):
Lon, that's super interesting.
It makes me think of that Joseph Smithquote where he says, “I am like a huge,
rough stone rolling down from a highmountain, and the only polishing I get is
when some corner gets rubbed off by comingin contact with something else, striking
with accelerated force against religiousbigotry or priestcraft or lawyercraft or

(18:42):
doctorcraft.” He goes on—there's a list ofreally tough stuff that he's experienced.
He says, “all hell knocking off acorner here and a corner there, and
thus I will become a smooth and polishedshaft in the quiver of the Almighty.”
And I've never thought about that asa Masonic metaphor, but I just looked
at the date on that quote, and hesaid that on May 21, 1843, a year and

(19:05):
two months after becoming a Mason.
So I wonder if he got thatmetaphor from Masonry.

Lon Tibbitts (19:10):
Very easily could have.

Scott Woodward (19:11):
That's super cool.

Casey Griffiths (19:12):
Yeah.
Sounds very Masonic.
I'm going to press a little bitharder the G in the Masonic symbol.
Do you have to be religious to be a Mason?

(19:33):
“Is Masonry a religion?” is thequestion that gets asked a lot.

Lon Tibbitts (19:37):
It's a good question.
It's a good—it's a very good question.

So the G has two meanings for us: they are not a Masonic secret. (19:40):
undefined
So one of them is God,and the other is geometry.
So is it a religion?
And the answer to that is no.
Do we have men who treat it as a religion?
And the answer to that is yes, we do.
We do have some men who would treatMasonry as their substitute for a religion

(20:04):
because they haven't been able to findone that meets their requirements,
and this comes close enough for them.
Does it have some spiritual elements?
Yes.
Does it teach some veryimportant spiritual lessons?
It does.
Does it have a system of salvation?
No, it does not.
And if you were to take that asone of the more important ways to

(20:26):
differentiate a church from anotherorganization, then you would have to
say that it fails miserably on thatone very, very important principle.
We call ourselves a moral society.
In one of our very first lectures,there is, early on, and it's—I will
tell you, we call it clear text.
I'm going to explainthat real quickly to you.

(20:47):
Our secrets are ciphered.
When I say ciphered, I'm sayingsomething that we're not allowed to
share with the rest of the world.
When I say clear text, that means thatit's something that's written out, and
we can speak those words in public.
So one of the first lectures that aman ever gets is in the preparation
room when he's getting ready to gothrough as an entered apprentice.

(21:09):
That lecture is called the—in Utah,it's called the Senior Steward's
Lecture, and that's because the seniorsteward is the officer in the lodge
who would deliver that lecture tohim, or them, if there's more than one
that's going to go through that day.
That lecture is the first opportunityfor us to introduce ourself to the
potential Mason, the candidate.

(21:29):
So in that lecture he is told thatFreemasonry is far removed from all
that is trivial, selfish, and ungodly;that it's a beautiful system of morals
veiled in allegory and illustratedby symbols; that its tenets are
brotherly love, relief, and truth;and that it is builded upon an abiding
foundation of an unfeigned belief in thefatherhood of God, the brotherhood of

(21:52):
man, and the immortality of the soul.
It goes on to say that Freemasonrywelcomes to its doors and admits to its
privileges worthy men of various creedsand classes, but it insists that all
men should stand upon an exact equality.
So that is about a paragraph's worthof the very first time we ever identify

(22:13):
ourself to anybody officially as to whowe are, and you'll notice in there that
there are three tenets, and they arebrotherly love and relief—and relief as we
would understand it in the Relief Society.

Scott Woodward (22:24):
Like being a benefit to those around you.

Lon Tibbitts (22:26):
Being a benefit to those around, yes.

Scott Woodward (22:29):
Okay.

Lon Tibbitts (22:29):
And often people think of this only in terms of monetary
value or feeding and clothing, butsometimes it's as simple as just being
a friend when a friend is needed.
It's being a listening ear.
And in this time that we live in wherethere's so much loneliness, and we
know that one of the great benefits ofbelonging to an organization like the

(22:51):
Freemasons is that you've got a wholeroom full of friends and that you develop
great friendships and that those greatfriendships then carry on from there.
So brotherly love, relief, and truth.
The truth part of that threetenets is that we are always
to be looking for truth.
I would say that most of the Masons I knowdon't have much respect for the thoughts

(23:15):
that have become very political in a partof our society these days where we worry
about “my truth” and “your truth.” Weactually believe that there are things
that are truths and that we ought to beseeking to learn them and understand them.
And that—so that's really a part ofwhere we come from and what we believe.
All of those things are moral, butwe have no system of salvation.

(23:37):
We would like to think that Masons areliving the kind of life that would make
them acceptable to God, but we don'tpromise them that they're going to end
up in heaven as a result of living theprinciples they learned in Masonry.

Scott Woodward (23:50):
One analogy that has been helpful for me, and I'd love your
critique on it, is that Masonry is forgrown men what Boy Scouts is for young
men, that it's about doing your duty toGod, your country, being virtuous, honest,
you know, trustworthy, loyal, helpful.
There's these wonderful virtues, andit's based in this idea of respect for

(24:12):
God, doing my duty to God, but it'snot religious in that you would have
to be a Christian to be a Boy Scout.
How do you feel about the comparisonbetween Masonry as an adult, more
developed version of Boy Scouts?

Lon Tibbitts (24:24):
I can agree with that.
There are some who would say that thatdoesn't make us serious enough, if
you will, but I don't agree with that.
There have been connections to Masonryand to the Boy Scouts over the decades.
We have a scouter award, actually,that we give to those who've
been part of scouting, andit's a Masonic scouter award.
So I think it's an aptcomparison, if you ask me.

Scott Woodward (24:47):
For me that just takes away the mystery of, like,
what kind of an organization is this?
Because there's so much familiarityin the church with Boy Scouts that
all the mystery sort of drains awayfor me and I think, okay, it's about
helping men become good and have, likeyou said, fraternity and belonging and
to do the kind of good you can do asan organization that maybe we can't

(25:07):
do as effectively as an individual.

Lon Tibbitts (25:09):
Yeah.

Casey Griffiths (25:10):
And I want to chime in and say there's a lot of
complicated feelings about Boy Scoutsin the church, but I love Boy Scouts.
Like, I thought it was the best.

(25:31):
Well, Lon, let's shift gears a little bit,because this is a church history podcast,
and Masons are entwined with the historyof the church, and so we want to explore
a little bit about the connection betweenthe early Latter-day Saints and Masons.
So start us down that road and wheresome of those connections come from.

Lon Tibbitts (25:51):
So I don't know that the connections are always overt, but we
do know that, for example, Heber C.
Kimball, and there are others amongthe leading brethren in the early
stages of the church, who were Masonswhen they came into the church.
We also know, if you take a look at W.
W.
Phelps, who had been an editor of a paperthat was an anti-Masonic paper, he was

(26:16):
never reconciled to the fraternity andrailed against it on a regular basis.
So there were both the Heber C.
Kimballs and there were the W.
W.
Phelpses in the early days of thechurch, and so you saw both of them.
There was some tension there,especially when Brother Phelps would
get up and spend some time talkingabout what was wrong with them.
It could be offensive to others, and I'msure that there were some things Heber C.

(26:38):
Kimball said that probably were the same.
There were those who wereFreemasons: Hyrum, Joseph's brother.
There are those of us who believe butcannot prove, and so I say it that way
exactly—there are some of us who believethat Alvin was also a member of that lodge
in Palmyra that Hyrum was a member of.
There are some who would like tobelieve that Joseph Smith, Sr.

(26:58):
was a member of a lodge in Canandigua.
We can only believe that, becausewe can't prove it, and no one's
been able to definitively showthat either one of those fit that.
Some have posited that there would—hadbeen a fire in Palmyra that had
destroyed the records, and thereforethey could never get around to
proving it, but they were quite sure.
Well, like I say, there's some of us whowould like to believe that, but there

(27:22):
were people on both sides of that divide,and the country had gone through the
Morgan Affair, which I'm not going togo into that because that is a rabbit's
hole all by itself, but the country hadjust gone through the Morgan Affair.
It had had a tremendous impacton Masonry and its membership.
For a period of time around the timethat Joseph joined the fraternity, it

(27:46):
was on a rebound from the Morgan Affair.
So was Masonry a topic?
Was it something that would have beenfront and center for many members
of the early church, whether theybelonged to the fraternity or not?
Yes, it would have been.
And they would have been very, veryfamiliar with the Morgan Affair.
When the members of the church really gotinterested in it, of course, happened in

(28:08):
Nauvoo, and a lot of that had to do withJoseph Smith’s joining the fraternity
at that point, and he was what we call“raised on site” by a Grand Master.
What that means is he didn't haveto go through a petitioning process.
He didn't have to go through aninvestigative process where the lodge
investigated him to make sure he wasokay, and then he didn't have to stand

(28:30):
for an election where white ballsor black balls were used to decide
whether he entered or didn't enter.
The Grand Master said, “This guy is goingto be a Mason, and I'm going to make
him one.” He did have to go through thedegrees, but he didn't have to do what we
call “returning a catechism.” So Masons,after the entered apprentice degree, they

(28:51):
go through a memorization process, andthen they return that catechism to their
lodge, and after that then they are ableto go to the fellow craft degree, and they
do the same thing there before they goto the master Mason degree, and when they
have returned their catechism as a masterMason, they become a full member of that
lodge with a single vote, like everybodyelse in there, and with the rights and

(29:14):
responsibilities that come along with it.
So when Joseph went through hisprocess, because the Grand Master
of Illinois, Abraham Jonas, actuallycame down to Nauvoo, did this piece,
which is called making a Mason onsite, told him, “You're a Mason,” on
Saturday morning following that, hetook his entered apprentice degree.
Saturday afternoon he took his fellowcraft—excuse me, Friday morning and

(29:37):
afternoon, and then Saturday morninghe took his master Mason degree.

Scott Woodward (29:41):
And that's unusually fast, correct?

Lon Tibbitts (29:43):
Unusually fast, and went along with that principle
of raising a Mason on site.
So one of the writers of books on Masonicjurisprudence starts off by saying that
the first power of a Grand Master isthe right to raise a Mason on site.
But not all Grand Lodges allowthat at this point in time anymore.

(30:04):
That's when it really took off.

Scott Woodward (30:07):
Once Joseph becomes a Mason then Latter-day Saints pile on.

Lon Tibbitts (30:11):
Latter-day Saints pile on.
And there were about—I've seen a numberas big as 2,400, but there were about
2,000 men who joined the fraternity orwere already members of the fraternity
and joined those lodges in Nauvoo thatwere predominantly members of The Church
of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

(30:32):
That created other issues, by the way.
There was a lodge in Quincy, Illinois,that was not happy, very annoyed,
the fact that the Grand Masterof Illinois would have done this.
It quickly became a politicalissue for them as well.
There were only about 1,500 Masons inall of Illinois before that happened,
and so you add about 2,000 Masons thatare now all members of the church,

(30:57):
and you can begin to see that itstarted to worry and scare and bother.

Scott Woodward (31:02):
Because they would have voting rights within
Masonry to be able to influence.

Lon Tibbitts (31:07):
To sway and influence, yeah.
So in that it became alittle bit of an issue.
It had something to do with thetrouble that happened and the
eventual expulsion of the membersof the church from Illinois.

Scott Woodward (31:20):
Wow.
And the appeal, ironically, for JosephSmith and other Latter-day Saints
to join Masonry seemed, at leastin part, to get friends that were
not members of the church, right?

Lon Tibbitts (31:31):
Right.

Scott Woodward (31:31):
We'd just experienced Missouri.
We'd just come off that persecution.
We were seen as too insular.
We were seen as too groupish.
And we wanted to get friendsoutside of our own circles,
to be more well connected.

Lon Tibbitts (31:44):
Right.

Scott Woodward (31:44):
And that seems to backfire a little bit because so many
of us become Masons, that actuallystokes the jealousies of other Masons.

Lon Tibbitts (31:53):
Oh, yeah.

Scott Woodward (31:54):
Dang.

Casey Griffiths (32:09):
For most of our listeners, the primary connection
that they still see as havingresonance is in the development
of the temple ordinances, in thedevelopment of the temple endowment.
So, Lon, you are an endowed member of theChurch, and you're an active Freemason.
Having seen both ceremonies,what do you see as the connection
between them, or lack of connection?

Lon Tibbitts (32:30):
So the whole, wide world of Mormons and Masons may not agree with me,
just so that you know, but for me, whenI take a look at this, I believe that the
symbolism in teaching is one of the greatthings that both systems have in common.
I think the interactive way that weparticipate in both the degrees and

(32:54):
the ceremonies in the temple areanother one of those, and I think
that we have some symbols in common.
I don't believe that the meaningsof those symbols line up.
And I would say that we're talking aboutdifferences in morality behind Masonic
symbols, but we're looking at principlesand elements of salvation and exaltation

(33:18):
when we talk about them in the temple.
But those are really the ones thatI find to be the same, if you will.
I always hate to go down the rabbithole of talking about penalties,
because they evoke some tremendousvisceral reactions from people.
I believe that if we wanted to talk aboutthings as being literal or symbolic,

(33:40):
when we get to penalties, we get tosymbolism, and while the obligation
that we take or the oath that we takeis not symbolic, the penalty that
is there or used to be there in ourtemples is still in Masonic circles.
Not everywhere, by the way.
The Grand Lodge of England decadesago rolled back and removed all

(34:04):
the penalties from their ritual.

Scott Woodward (34:06):
And these are penalties that would be incurred
for violating the secrecy?

Lon Tibbitts (34:10):
Yes.
Yes.

Scott Woodward (34:12):
Okay.

Lon Tibbitts (34:12):
Most since the—about the same period of time, the 1980s,
added wording to make sure thateverybody understood that the
penalties were just symbolic in nature.
I think serious Masons, if I cansay it that way, understood them
to be symbolic to begin with.
I will add just a personal thing, andthat is I always used to struggle with

(34:36):
what was symbolic and what was literalwhen I went through the endowment.
If there's been a personal benefitfor me, it has been this, and that is
that I now approach most of the templeendowment and other rituals in the
temple as symbolic, and it has openedup a world of understanding for me

(34:58):
that I don't think I had previously.
In that way, I would have to thankFreemasonry for helping me to have a
better understanding of those things.
But that's very personal with me, andI'm not sure that every endowed member
of the church who was a member of thefraternity would say the same things.

Scott Woodward (35:14):
Let me ask you a two-part question about this, because connection
between the endowment and Freemasonry isobviously a point of criticism for those
who are critical of the church, and it'salso a point that sometimes gets avoided
by those who are faithful in the churchwho just don't want to talk about it or
see it, and so here's my two-part questionfor you: Lon, in what ways do you think

(35:35):
the LDS temple-Freemasonry connectionhas been overdramatized by critics?
Okay, that's part one.
And in what ways do you thinkthis connection has been
underappreciated by LDS membership?

Lon Tibbitts (35:46):
So let me take on the first part of it.
I've had an opportunity over the lastseventeen years to think pretty deeply
about these things and to read andto study, and let me begin by saying
that Freemasonry has never in anyway caused me to doubt anything about
what it is that we do in The Churchof Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

(36:06):
It has been another one of thoselittle, teeny building blocks that
has strengthened my testimony asopposed to create a doubt for me.

But I'll start with this: What has been overblown? (36:15):
undefined
So the stolen—“Joseph stole allthis stuff and turned it into a
religious ritual” is way overblown.
Are there similarities?
Yes, there are.
But Freemasonry itself, when you getto some of its serious writers, when

(36:35):
you get to serious writers aboutour history, when you get to men who
understand Freemasonry well, you hearthem say things like that we have
stolen from every initiatic, symbolicritual out there: that if the Egyptians
had some, we've stolen some of that.
If the Greeks had something,we've stolen some of that.

(36:56):
If the Zoroastrians had something,we've stolen some of that, and we've
built it into what we have today.

Scott Woodward (37:03):
So stolen is such a charged word, right?

Lon Tibbitts (37:05):
It is, right?
So they talk about it in thoseterms, and when we hear somebody
say, yeah, but Joseph stole it, myanswer to that is, well, didn't we
appropriate it from others as well?
Isn't that part of the history,and isn't that part of what we talk
about and what it is that we do?
So if I think of anythingas overblown, it's that.

(37:27):
There are similarities.

Scott Woodward (37:28):
You used the word appropriated instead of stolen, and
I think that's a more gentle word.
Are you okay with that, thisadopting and adapting and
recontextualizing of Masonic symbols?
That doesn't bother you at all.
Is that correct, what I'm hearing?

Lon Tibbitts (37:44):
No.
It doesn't bother me at all.
And the other part of that, I think thatthe part that I think the members of
the church don't get is to think thatJoseph was not influenced by everything
around him in what he did is just silly.
That's probably a wordthat's charged as well.
I probably just offendedsomebody with what I just said.

Scott Woodward (38:04):
But it's an important historical point to make, right?
That we need to read thesepeople seriously in the
context in which they lived.

Lon Tibbitts (38:11):
Right.

Scott Woodward (38:11):
And Joseph is such a sponge.
He's pulling from everything.
One of his mantras is that Mormonismbelieves all truth: that if it's
true, we believe it, that to be a trueLatter-day Saint, you need to take
truth from wherever you can find it.

Lon Tibbitts (38:23):
Right.

Scott Woodward (38:23):
And, I mean, this is his modus operandi.
This is Joseph Smith to a T.
He's a sponge.

Lon Tibbitts (38:28):
Oh, yeah.
I can't tell you how often I am readingin my Book of Mormon, a book that I love
and know to be true, but I can't tellyou how often I will read something that
I have read fifty, sixty, seventy timesbefore and suddenly see a word in there
that triggers something for me that allof a sudden becomes a sermon in my life.

(38:50):
So one word turns into a sermon aboutsomething that I need to do or something
that I need to learn or know at that pointin time, and I've never seen it before.
So the fact that Joseph—we call ita sponge, but the fact that he would
see things that would trigger forhim an open sermon, a new ritual, a
new way of thinking about the gospel,I just think that that is the Lord

(39:15):
using things around us to tell uswhat it is that we need to know.
I've come to believe that the Bookof Mormon, for example, is a Urim and
Thummim for each of us, or could bea Urim and Thummim for each of us.
And who's to say that the experiencesthat Joseph went through as a Mason,

or—let's be honest (39:30):
Joseph probably had heard enough about what was done inside
a Masonic temple at that point in hislife that he was very familiar with them.
By that I'm not saying that Hyrumtold him any of the secrets.
What I'm saying is he would have beenfamiliar with those things to begin with
because it was right there in his home.

(39:51):
And because of that, the fact thatthat might trigger things that needed
to be done, things that needed to beadded, lessons that he needed to learn
in order to incorporate them intothe things that were going forward.
And like I say, I'll come back.
I will use that nasty word, silly.
It's silly to think that he wasn'tinfluenced by the world around him

(40:11):
and the things that he saw and did.

Scott Woodward (40:13):
There's a theory of Joseph's translation
of the book of Abraham we callthe catalyst theory, right?
That he came across these papyrusscrolls, believed sincerely they were
about Abraham, and so he asked the Lordabout the story—asked for revelation,
and he actually got the book of Abraham.
Whether or not that's what was on thescrolls or not, you know, we don't
know, but it almost seems like ananalogy could be drawn there with

(40:35):
Masonry, that there's something here.
There's something good.
There's something true.
There's something beautiful inMasonry that acted as potentially a
catalyst for what then becomes theframework of the endowment, right?
I'm totally okay with that.

Casey Griffiths (40:48):
See, the example I was thinking of was the Word of Wisdom.

Lon Tibbitts (40:51):
Yeah, so am I.

Casey Griffiths (40:52):
When they started to find out that there were movements,
temperance movements, movements to getpeople to eat and drink more healthily,
and that may have influenced Joseph Smith.
Some people were like, oh no, the Wordof Wisdom was completely out of the blue.
No.
I mean, they were part of theconversation that was happening
when Joseph Smith inquired of theLord and received the revelations.

(41:14):
I'd say the temple sometimes occupiesa different space than us, but it
comes from the same environment, too.
It doesn't take place in a vacuum.
And so, yeah, it's a wonderfulinsight to say Joseph Smith was
influenced by the things around him.
It opens the doors for a lotof greater understanding.

Scott Woodward (41:31):
The Relief Society.
I mean, there's benevolentsocieties all around the U.
S.
at the time, and we wanted a women'ssociety in Nauvoo connected with the
temple to help prepare for that, andso they—there is a thing already out
there called a benevolent society,and they're going to adopt it and
adapt it and make it our own thing.
And so we see that happening all the time.

(41:52):
And that's totally okay.

Casey Griffiths (41:53):
In fact, Lon, isn't relief one of the
major principles of Masonry?
Because looking at the timeline, we noticeJoseph Smith is inducted into the Masonic
fraternity, and then it's, like, the nextday that he sets up the Relief Society.
Tell us that word andwhere it exists in there.

Lon Tibbitts (42:12):
Actually, I'll expand on that.
So I think that the very next day,Sunday, following his Saturday
being raised as a Master Mason, hereorganizes, I think at that point.
It had been organized beforewith a president earlier, and
then he expounds on some things.

Scott Woodward (42:28):
You're talking about the Masonic Fraternity or the Relief Society?

Lon Tibbitts (42:31):
The Relief Society.

Scott Woodward (42:32):
Okay.

Lon Tibbitts (42:33):
So he expounds on some of those things that
he’d learned the day before.
There are some Masons who read the speechas recorded in the history of the church,
read that speech that he gave the nextday, and say he's making female Masons.
There are just some elements ofthat that make them say that.
But there are many of those thingswhere he is laying out the Masonic

(42:55):
principle, if you will, of relief,which is that you're willing to go
out of your way to help a fellow Masonwith whatever it is that they need.
And a lot of times that, as I've saidbefore here, even, a lot of times
that comes back to just being thesounding board that they need and
just being there when they need that.

(43:16):
We need to have good male friends thatwe can talk to about things that men
experience and maybe experience differentthan what women do and maybe approach
it differently than what women do.
It's good to be able to have those kindsof relationships, and I will say that
some of the greatest relationships, malerelationships, that I have in the world

(43:38):
are in the fraternity, and that I don'talways get that from the brethren of the
elders quorum, just to say it that way.
That doesn't mean that there'sanything lacking in my elders quorum.
It may be lacking in me, by the way.

Scott Woodward (43:52):
Well, we can do better.
We can do better for sure.

Lon Tibbitts (43:55):
We can.

Scott Woodward (43:56):
Wow.
Amen to the need for male connection.

Casey Griffiths (43:59):
Yeah.

Scott Woodward (44:00):
Can we go back to the Relief Society for just a second?

Lon Tibbitts (44:02):
Yes.
Yes.

Scott Woodward (44:03):
This gets talked about as a point of major contention in Joseph
Smith's time, that there was this angstthat Joseph was sharing the Masonic
secrets with women, which would be amajor no-no in a fraternity, right?

Lon Tibbitts (44:13):
Right.

Scott Woodward (44:14):
Could you talk about how—I mean, how much do you know about
that, of the broader world of Masonry atthe time and their angst against that?
Talk about that.
I mean, how egregious would that befor him to be sharing that with women?
You know, kind of paint a picturefor us of the complexity of what
Joseph's doing with women in theRelief Society, with the temple, and

(44:34):
then the fact that he is a Mason.

Lon Tibbitts (44:36):
So the Lodge in Quincy, Illinois had heard about the speech
that Joseph gave to the women whenhe reorganized the Relief Society.
They immediately jumped to the conclusionthat he was making female Masons.
That was their belief at that point.
It's solely because he sharedsome framework, if you will,
with those sisters in the room.

(44:58):
So things like, if you go back andlook at that, it talks about them
needing to petition, needing to make anapplication, if you will, right, that
they needed to be investigated, right?
There's another one of those pieces.
Then they needed to be acceptedand be a part of that process.
The organization itself had some ofthe hallmarks of a lodge, if you will.

(45:21):
The Masons in that lodge in Quincyjumped on this immediately and
immediately reached out to the GrandMaster of Illinois to say, “You blew it.
You did this all wrong.
What were you thinking of?” So, again,taking a look at the overreaction by the
lodge in Quincy, from my point of view,my opinion, and maybe the underreaction by
the members of the church, again, to thinkthat he hadn't been influenced by the

(45:44):
experiences of the two days prior to thisexperience is just untenable in my mind.
To think that he was making female Masonsat that point, also untenable in my mind.
So could be very much overblown orunderblown, whichever you like, by
whatever it is that someone wantedto prove, I think at that point.

(46:04):
The Masons in Quincy, Illinoisdidn't want to see Joseph and
the Mormons in the fraternity.
It's fair to say that.
And they spent a lot of time over the nextperiod of time before the martyrdom of the
prophet drumming up issues and problems.
You know, one of—the other one wasapparently the Lodge in Nauvoo had more

(46:24):
than one potential Mason at the altartaking his obligation at the same time.
This is a no-no in at least U.
S.
Freemasonry, where every man goes throughan entire degree by himself, entire pieces
of the degree, at least, by himself,and so this was one of those complaints
that was made about him at that point.

(46:46):
I don't know whether thatwas true or not, honestly.
I will say in a couple of years andin a short period of time, actually
it was closer to a year, putting2,000 men through the degrees in three
lodges, that's pretty amazing work.
That's a lot of work.
So I can see where someof that comes from.

Scott Woodward (47:04):
Okay, so it's clear that there were non-LDS Masons at the
time that were not pleased with JosephSmith for valid or rumored reasons.
But what do you want to say about theclaim that some Masons were actually in
on the conspiracy to kill Joseph Smith?
Like, weren't there Masonsin the mob at Carthage Jail?

Lon Tibbitts (47:20):
So were there Masons in the mob?
Yeah, there were.
When one in every five men at thetime in the United States was a member
of the fraternity, it's a littlehard to not have them in the mob.
But one of the points I'd like tomake is there was no lodge that
met as a lodge and got together andsaid, “Let's go kill Joseph Smith.”

(47:45):
There was no Masonic connection,if you want to put it that way.
Were there individualmembers of the fraternity?
Yeah.
So I draw that line pretty boldly tosay it was not a Masonic conspiracy, but
yes, there were Masons in the presence,in the mob that took part in that piece.

(48:06):
One of the scandals, if you will,afterwards was that the leader and rabble
rouser who put the mob together to beginwith fled to the lodge in Quincy to hide.
They accepted him as a Mason,and then that led to their losing
their charter as a Masonic lodge,at least for a period of time, and

(48:26):
until they had expelled that man.
So there—are there connections?
Yeah, there are connections.
Was it a Masonic conspiracy?
No.
It was not.

Casey Griffiths (48:34):
And Lon, I'm going to ask you something, because I'm
pretty sure our listeners are goingto be curious, but Joseph Smith's last
words, some members of the church saidthat that may have been a plea to the
Masons in the force attacking the jail.
What's your opinion about that?

Scott Woodward (48:51):
When he said, “Oh Lord, my God”?

Casey Griffiths (48:53):
“Oh, Lord, my God.” Yeah.

Lon Tibbitts (48:54):
Yeah.
I would agree that hemay have been appealing.

Scott Woodward (48:58):
So walk us through what that means.
Like, if you were a Mason outside oryou were in a position to help Joseph
Smith when he made that cry, what's theobligation of a Mason at that point?

Lon Tibbitts (49:08):
He's to do everything he can, really, short of giving his life
at that point, to help that man, yeah.

Scott Woodward (49:16):
So from that perspective, the Latter-day Saint Masons back in
Nauvoo felt completely let down by theirbrothers who would have been in that
mob or been in the vicinity to help.

Lon Tibbitts (49:28):
Yeah.

Casey Griffiths (49:41):
So the church's association with Freemasonry
doesn't end in Nauvoo.
One of our conversations, you mentionedthat there's a photograph of Brigham
Young in his advanced age, andhe's wearing a little Masonic pin.
What's the story after they leave Nauvoo?
Are they still considered Masons?
Are there Masons in Utah?
And how does that play out?

Lon Tibbitts (50:00):
So when they leave Nauvoo, their lodges have lost their charter.
The Grand Master of Masons in Illinoishas taken their charter, which is
the power by which a lodge operates.
A lodge has to have a charter froma Grand Master in order to operate.

Scott Woodward (50:17):
What were the grounds for taking that charter away?

Lon Tibbitts (50:20):
Well, the irregularities that would have been pointed out by
the lodge in Quincy and other Masonswere really what led to it, and the
Grand Master of Masons in Illinois atthat point kind of lost some of his
political power to begin with there.
Most of us believe that he was usinghis position as Grand Master of
Masons in Illinois to springboarda run for governor of the state of

(50:43):
Illinois, and that never happened.
That became an issue on the side.
But when they left, their officialposition would have been they
were Masons without a lodge.
So the lodges are now gone.
They don't—they no longer havea charter to operate, and they
are now traveling out to Utah.
There are Masons in those parties.

(51:06):
I've been working for years on a researchproject, and I'm not quite there, but I'm
close to being able to prove that—fromMasonic records, I'm close to being able
to prove that every member of the firstwagon train that came into the valley on
1847 was a Mason, except those who werewomen that were there with them as well.

(51:28):
I'm still missing the B—I can'tprove two of them, but that's
kind of where that piece is at.
So they come, and they've got no lodge,and what I'm about to tell you, I don't
know it exists anywhere in the history ofThe Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day
Saints, but it does exist in the history,they started to write that history in 1872

(51:51):
when the Grand Lodge of Utah was formed,but it does exist there, and that is that
there was a belief among the worshipfulmasters of Wasatch Lodge and Mount
Moriah Lodge here in the state of Utah in1872—they had been organized in 1866 and
were operating, one was operating with acharter from Montana and the other with

(52:16):
a charter from the Grand Lodge of Kansas.
And there were these two lodges.
They added a third one, ArgentaLodge, and they had a charter from the
Grand Lodge of Nevada at that point.
So these three lodges were there, andthe story that they had was that Heber C.
Kimball, specifically, had askedBrigham Young for permission—now,

(52:36):
how they knew these things, I don'tknow, but this is what the story says.
And so, whether or not this story istrue doesn't matter: The fact that they
had this belief at the time was theimpetus for taking these three lodges
and forming the Grand Lodge of Utah.
And in that history, one of thethings that's said is that Heber C.
Kimball was headed to England becausehe'd been unsuccessful at getting a U.

(53:00):
S.
Grand Lodge to give them chartersfor five lodges that he had asked for
permission, according to this story,to go to England and get a charter from
the Grand Lodge of England for a GrandLodge and five lodges and that then he
was going to then return so that theirMasons would have a place to meet.
Again, let me just emphasizeI don't know if this is true.

(53:22):
I just know that this is what thosemen in those three lodges thought at
the time, and their fear was that ifthe Mormons get Masonry in Utah, we'll
never be admitted to their lodges, andwe won't be able to practice Masonry.
That was their belief and their fear.
That was what was driving them.
And the fact is a geographic areacan only have one regular Grand Lodge

(53:46):
within it and be recognized by otherregular Grand Lodges around the world.
And so they had this very real fear.
Many of these men had come into theterritory as Masons to begin with and
now had formed these little lodgesand were meeting in these lodges.
So, they then, the threelodges, got together.

(54:07):
It takes three lodgesto form a Grand Lodge.
They got together and formedthe Grand Lodge of Utah in 1872.
And then they enacted their own law,which was—and I believe it comes
from their belief that had Heber C.
Kimball gone and done that and thencome back and formed a Grand Lodge in

(54:27):
Utah that they would not have allowedtheir lodges to join their Grand Lodge,
so they then said that members of thechurch could not join their lodges.
And as I mentioned earlier,that started in 1872.
It was fairly muchunofficial at that point.
It lasted until 1984.
Lodges did continue thereafterto drop black cubes against those

(54:51):
who were members of the church.
Now that said, there weresome exceptions before 1984.
There was at least one very famous onewhere it would have been almost death
to the Grand Lodge of Utah in order—ifthey had refused a California Mason
membership in the fraternity here.
They reasoned at the time that it wasall right because he was inactive.
He later on returned to activityand actually ended up serving

(55:14):
in the Salt Lake Temple.
They had kept that going for quitea long time based off of this story.
And it's an origin story thatmay or may not be true, right?
That's the thing we've got to understandis sometimes origin stories are stories,
and they cause action, but I have nodoubt that the men who told that story

(55:36):
believed it, and that they thereby acted.

Scott Woodward (55:39):
So the animosity between Latter-day Saints and Utah Masons
wasn't so much about what happenedback in Carthage or what happened in
Nauvoo as it was a fear-based storythat the Mormons were going to beat
the non-Mormons to creating a lodgein Utah and excluding all others.

(56:00):
And so they hurried and formed theirown grand lodge from those three
lodges and then turned the tablesand excluded the Latter-day Saints.

Lon Tibbitts (56:07):
Yes.
Yes.

Scott Woodward (56:08):
Wow.
Based on a story thatmay or may not be true.

Lon Tibbitts (56:11):
Right.
Right.

Scott Woodward (56:12):
Interesting.
Interesting.

Casey Griffiths (56:14):
Today there are Latter-day Saints that are
Freemasons, such as yourself.
I've asked you a couple times whatyou think the percentages are in Utah.
Can you give us an overview of that?

Lon Tibbitts (56:25):
Yes, I can.
So—and just for the record here, therewere Masons in other places, other
countries, other states, from 1872 on.
There were Masons who weremembers of the Church.
So it's not like it was bannedeverywhere or as seen as a bad thing
everywhere, but here in Utah, yes.

(56:47):
Today, since the ban was dropped,and since we started admitting
Masons into the lodges in Utah, Iwould estimate—we don't ask men what
their religion is, so it's sometimesdifficult to figure those things out.
Based on a rough number of the men thatI know are members of the church, I
would have to say that we are 10 to 15percent of the fraternity here in Utah.

(57:11):
So there are men who I know who arecompletely inactive or who would not
admit to their membership in the church,but I know that they grew up that way.
That number probably goes up a littlehigher, maybe as much as 20 or 25 percent.

Scott Woodward (57:26):
Wow.
Lon, this has been fantastic.
I've learned a ton, and I'm sure ourlisteners have picked up a thing or
two, and we just want to thank you somuch for your time here with us today,
and I just want to end with this finalquestion for you: Lon, could you share
with us what makes you a believer inthe truth claims of the Restoration?

(57:46):
We'd love to hear that.

Lon Tibbitts (57:47):
Well, you know, like most active, longtime members of the church,
there was a defining moment before Iserved a mission that allowed me to
know that these things are true aboutJoseph Smith, about the Book of Mormon,
about ongoing revelation, about thetransfer of power from Joseph to Brigham,

(58:08):
about the church as it stands today.
I'd actually put in my papersto serve a mission, and I think
at that point I thought, youknow, I've never really asked.
I've just gone along.
I've been a good seminary student.
I had read the scriptures all theway through, but I realized at some
point in there that I hadn't asked.
And I went off and hadmy own little experience.

(58:29):
And in comparison to Joseph's experience,it was a little experience, but it brought
me back to my home on that Sabbath dayabsolutely sure that serving a mission
was the right thing for me to do.
I've had my ups and downs, but it'salways been my north star, and I've
had some great experiences since then,so I'm not building at this point upon

(58:50):
one little, teeny thing that happened.
It wasn't teeny.
It was big to me.
It was huge to me.
But I'm, I've been—it's been buildingall of my life, and I know that The
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-daySaints is Jesus Christ's church on earth.
I know that because of theaccumulation of spiritual
experiences that I've had in my life.

(59:12):
Do I occasionally have doubts?
Do I have to deal with those doubts?
Do I have concerns?
Do I wonder sometimes?
Surely, I do.
But I read and read and reread andread over and read and try to read
every day, actually, no matterwhat else we're studying, I try
to read from the Book of Mormon.
I can tell you this.

(59:33):
I know without a shadow of a doubtthat that book is true and that the
principles that are there do lead meto become a better man, a better member
of the church, a better Christian, andto do the things that I ought to do.
So that's my answer.
That's how I know.
That's why I'm here.
That's why the church means more to methan any other earthly organization.

Scott Woodward (59:57):
Wow.
Thank you so much.
Lon, so wonderful to have you withus, and we appreciate your time.

Casey Griffiths (01:00:03):
Yeah, thanks very much.

Lon Tibbitts (01:00:04):
You're welcome.

Scott Woodward (01:00:09):
Thank you for listening to this bonus episode of Church
History Matters with Lon Tibbitts.
And by the way, Lon wanted us to note thatalthough he is currently grand secretary
of the Grand Lodge in Utah, he was notspeaking in any official capacity for
the Grand Lodge during this interview.
All of his comments were made onlyfrom his own personal perspective
as a member of the fraternity.

(01:00:30):
In our next episode Casey and I discussthe development of marriage sealings
in Nauvoo and the correspondingrich theological developments that
undergird and make sense of thiscrowning ritual in the church.
If you're enjoying Church HistoryMatters, we'd appreciate it if you
could take a moment to subscribe, rate,review, and comment on the podcast.
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(01:00:52):
Also, we'd love to hear your suggestionsfor future series on this podcast.
If there's a church history topic youthink would be worth exploring for
multiple episodes, send us your ideato [e-mail].
We promise to consider all suggestions.
Today's episode was produced byScott Woodward and edited by Nick
Galieti and Scott Woodward, with shownotes and transcript by Gabe Davis.

(01:01:14):
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