The High Road, the Narrow Path |
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1
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I believe that working within my home, my religion, my society, and my Encampment to promote the teachings of our Order is my main objective.
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2
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The meditations that became this letter came from efforts
to increase our membership.
When I speak about our Order to people
whose thoughts are similar to my own,
I come to the same comment.
“You seem like a good group of kind people,”
they would say,
“and I admire your charity and community service,
but I don’t know if I can take all that Bible stuff.”
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3
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What is the place of the Bible in our Lodges and Camps? Do we really avoid affinity with particular political and religious systems, or do some such really dominate our work? We should address this with the candor of Truth.
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4
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Some think nothing is political unless it involves a
candidate or a proposal facing a governmental entity, while other definitions are so broad that all human interactions are political. Most things can be done one way or another, or not done at all. Whenever humans interact with the aim that one such option be done and others not, it is an instance of politics. When members disagree about who goes out the door first after Lodge closes, that is political, but surely not what our Code and Ritual makes such a point for us to avoid. It is religious and political systems from which the Order is to be aloof.
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5
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Religion and politics being separate, or even different things, is a very modern opinion. To the classic (pre-modern) mind, religion, politics, and culture were not distinguished. In most cultures, East or West, religion was the framework and justification of politics. The classic forms held that Divine Power had established their political unit, most often with a primary human in special communication with the Deity. A select group assisted this primary representative, who usually came from their number. Together they held all power of decision. All other humans were considered merely their instruments and had no say. In most of these political structures (termed “class systems”), the “lower class” humans were considered to have value only in the aggregate and not as individuals.
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6
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Such systems predominate until the modern period (the last few centuries). Their structure and means of operation are so common that almost all humans are familiar with them. In the West, it is called “hierarchy”, a word whose roots mean “sacred rule”. Some things about it just seem to recur, despite vast difference in religious content and practice. For example, one classic conflict is whether the Monarch or the High Priest (or their equivalents) was closer to the Deity and thus more deserving of power.
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7
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Our Order does not believe in classes or other divisions between humans. It follows that our Order is modern in outlook and spirit. The Order is not hostile to pre-modern political forms, nor to any others. Yet the simple belief that the Deity vests no class of humans with decision power was enough to be considered treasonous in class systems. Our Order was illegal for many years in England. It was still so when Thomas Wildey went there to obtain our Charter {a facsimile of this is in the tab of Chapter I in the latest Code}. Our Order has always emphasized sympathy and relief, and never had plans against George III (whose laws these were). Nonetheless, if they had been caught, the Odd Fellows he met would have been heavily fined, and Wildey deported as an undesirable alien. This experience is why there is such an emphasis that Odd Fellows must be faithful to their country, and why “Loyal” is the first word in the name of most English Lodges.
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8
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Students of religion know the various sects do not agree on what constitutes the Holy Bible. (Most believe the “real” Bible is the version they first encountered as a child.) The one exception is the Pentateuch (or Torah), included by almost all. Beyond that, what writings (and which version of them) belong in the Bible is contested. Biblical content was not standardized until printing. Every manuscript source differs in some way. As an example, of the many hundreds of manuscripts and fragments on which versions of the New Testament are based, less than fifty contain all 27 “books” in widely-used versions, and not one of them has only those 27. The books of the Bible were not divided into chapters and verses until the Middle Ages, and the various sects don’t agree on this either.
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9
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One of the strengths of our Order (in my opinion) is that we
do not specify which version, King James, Peshitta, or other,
is the “real” Bible, or whether the Holy Bible should really
contain the Gospel of Timothy, the Shepherd of Hermas,
or the Prayer of Manesseh. These and other opinions about the Bible belong to the various sects, and the Order endorses none of them.
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10
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The founders of our Order were English Protestant Christians. No surprise then that their Holy Writ was the foundation of our Rituals. Odd Fellowship is “a science of symbols”, and the Holy Bible is a symbol of the Degree of Truth. There it is described as the source from which all our Rituals are drawn, and this is true is a general sense.
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11
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Those familiar with their Bibles will acknowledge that Lodge and Camp Degrees display a considerable license, so to emphasize the lessons to be taught. Biblical titles are used with this same license: the title Patriarch (Matriarch if female) signifies in Encampments not some despot claiming ‘natural’ entitlement, but a care-taking and responsible “grown-up” capable of anchoring a family. Perhaps what we mean by this Bible-derived title would now be called “Head of Household.”
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12
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Yet our emphasis on the Bible is distinctly political, and marks the Order as a modern entity. In the classic forms, what the Bible was and what it meant was something determined by those “authorized” to do so. Translating the Bible into common languages so people could own and read Bibles was long and strongly opposed. That ordinary literate people could form legitimate religious opinions from their own Bible study was as foreign to the classic mindset as the idea that masses of people could govern themselves. The Bible being portrayed as open is symbolic of its guidance being available to those who would seek it.
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13
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My study of our Order’s teaching was much advanced
when a
very old Odd Fellows Manual was presented to my
Lodge’s library. This is the Odd Fellowship of Wildey and
Entwisle (first half - 19th century). The visionary appeal of
Fraternity that Odd Fellowship posits resonated with the utopian
“New Jerusalem” hopes of pioneers at that time. The older “mystical” side of Odd Fellowship is particularly appealing to this student of religion and philosophies. I find the Odd Fellows Initiation and the Encampment Degrees to be the least changed from the really “old time” Odd Fellow thought.
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14
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The Lodge Degrees have changed several times since, most especially the 1880’s change that collapsed the upper degrees into the current three. About that same time, the opening and closing prayer to be used by every Chaplain was specified. At least by then, Lodges were using the Lord’s Prayer. Its mass recitation does look and sound like a sectarian exercise. So I conclude we have two major religious strains informing our Work. One is the older Symbolist millennial strain {largely grounded in Sweedenborg’s visions}; and the other is US Protestant church practice (the faith commitments of the majority of our membership).
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15
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The former strain is well represented in the Encampment Degrees. Those Degrees and Camp work use the Holy Bible very directly as a symbol (it is symbolically opened by the High Priest). The Holy Bible is treated with the greatest respect. Yet the Camp is the only branch where the Lord’s Prayer is not used, and its beautiful and poetic invocations of Divine Blessing do not employ ‘Lord’ as a title of Divinity.
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16
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The later strain truthfully does too often intrude into our practice: symbols of particular religions are forbidden by our Code, yet non-enforcement of this law allows crosses, last suppers, etc. to be seen in many Lodge Rooms. Curiously, the sections of Code specifying the presence of the Holy Bible and the absence of all other religious symbols (formerly IV.1.D. 20 &21) do NOT appear in the new Code’s Chapter V. Surely this is just an oversight.
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17
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The last person to whom I spoke about our Order is a Baha’i.
This peaceful faith, an offshoot of Islam, has a long history of
being persecuted. Just as some think their reading of the Holy
Koran justifies mass murder of innocents, quite a few sects have
used their reading of the Holy Bible to justify persecution of other
faiths, and often even other sects of their own faith.
Hence the concern: will a person of my faith really be accepted in
your Order? I had this same concern before joining.
My grounding religious writings are the Dhammapada and the
Vajracchedika. I can testify that not only has the Order accepted me, it has taught me how to accept more the value of other religions. Following our Order’s teachings, we can walk both the “narrow path” of our own religious ways and the High Road of Tolerance.
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Next Month -
Part Two: That Last Fly
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Our THREE PILLARS:FAITHOur many religious views, our Common Belief in DivinityHOPEfor more kind compassionate Familial actions between PeopleCHARITY hasten to relieve!
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