Introduction and Guest Welcome

John Dehlin [00:00:11] Hello, and welcome to this edition of the Mormon Stories podcast. My name is John Dehlin. I'm very excited to have you with us today. I'm happy to announce that Feedburner.com tells me that we have now 115 subscribers to the this podcast, which I'm kind of proud of, seeing that it's only been around for a few weeks. You may be interested in knowing that I now have a blog associated with the podcast. So if you go to www.mormonstories.org, you'll be able to see a blog where this podcast that you're listening to will be posted. You'll be able to give your feedback, you know, what you liked, what you didn't like, et cetera. You can now go up to that blog and participate in the conversation. All past podcasts as well have been put on that blog. So we're hoping to try and form a little community here around this podcast. I'd like to encourage all of you to send us your email and feedback either on the blog itself or@mormonstoriesmail.com but most importantly, we're just excited to have you with us today. Today's topic is one that we hope you'll find really interesting. I think I'll tell you a personal story as an introduction, and then we'll introduce our guest. When I was in the mtc, I received a letter from a good friend named Tina. And while I was in the, you know, I started reading the letter, and I was surprised to tell you a little bit about Tina. Tina. I grew up with Tina in Katy, Texas. Her family was of much prominence in the Houston area in the church. Her grandfather had been stake president. Many of her uncles had been bishops in various wards throughout the stake. And her father, at the time that she wrote me, had been recently the second counselor in the stake presidency. And Tina, if you could ever call someone a goody goody or Molly Moorman or someone who was just really devout to the church, that was Tina. We never knew of Tina ever getting into trouble. She was very devout in seminary attendance and church attendance, just sort of the perfect, sweet, nice girl, and very devout in the church and her family. And my family went sort of way back in Katy. Well, I was in the mtc, all excited to go on my mission to Guatemala. And I get this letter from Tina, and Tina basically says, hey, John, I've left the church, and I just wanted you to know that I don't believe in the church anymore. And I was stunned because at the time, you know, leaving the church was the furthest thing from my mind. And hearing about Tina leave the church was just totally dumbfounding to me. So, you know, in correspondence, I talked to Tina and I said, hey, you know, why have you left? What's going on? And her basic answer was, well, John, I got ahold of this book that talked about the connections between the Masonic Lodge and the Masonic Temple and the Church and the LDS Temple. And as I dug deeper and deeper and deeper, you know, to me this signified that the Church wasn't true and it wasn't something I wanted to be a part of anymore. And not only did that happen, but in subsequent correspondence, she told me that her father, who was second counselor in the Stake Presidency, was so concerned about her leaving that he started digging into this issue as well. And as he dug deeper and deeper and deeper, he left the church. His wife left the church, several of the members of the family left the church. And it was like this huge domino effect. And that was sort of my introduction into the issue of Mormons and Masonry. So with that, I wanted to welcome my guest today. Who? His name is Greg Kearney. Is that how you pronounce it?

Greg Kearney [00:04:25] Greg Kearney.

John Dehlin [00:04:26] Kearney. All right. Greg Kearney was born and raised in Maine. He attended boarding schools in New England from the age of 12 until graduating from the Quaker run Oak Grove Coburn School. He is a lifelong member of the LDS Church, having attended up in the Farmington Ward, which is one of the oldest LDS congregations in the world. He's a graduate of BYU with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in design and and completed graduate work in American Studies, focusing his research on Freemasonry and its influence on American history. You'll also be interested to know that he is a life member of Franklin Lodge number 123 in New Sharon, Maine, as well as several lodges of research in the United States and Europe. He also serves as the Rocky Mountain reporter for the French news agency afp. He lives in Casper, Wyoming with his wife Tamara. They are the proud parents of three children, Sean, 24, Shannon, 20, and Nathaniel, 6. It also says that he has traveled extensively, including posting to Atlantic Canada, Quebec and Sweden. So with that, Greg, I just want to thank you for coming on Mormon Stories.

Greg Kearney [00:05:49] Well, thank you. It's an irony that your friend's experience could have easily been dissuaded had they known a little bit of the real history.

John Dehlin [00:06:04] Yeah, and that's exactly the exact reason that I wanted to have you on today, other than just to tell your story. Here at Mormon Stories, we Try and let people tell their story. But we start from the standpoint of wanting to let people who come across history or challenges that that makes them uncomfortable or that's different from what they were taught. Let them know, hey, you don't have to leave. Don't make a rash decision. There are people who have traveled down these paths before. There are things that you can learn that can keep you from. From losing your faith. So that's exactly where we are today. If you don't mind, why don't you tell us just a little bit about your childhood. Tell us about growing up. Tell us. Tell us about your involvement in the church at an early age and what led you to want to study masonry at byu. I believe that's where you studied it.

Greg Kearney's Background and Upbringing

Greg Kearney [00:07:01] Yeah, I studied fine art. Yes, I was. I am the product of a typical northern New England upbringing. My father was the only doctor in town of a small town of about 750 people. Three churches in town, Methodist, Congregationalist, and Latter Day Saint.

John Dehlin [00:07:24] Wow. And you say that this is one of the earliest congregations. Do you know?

Greg Kearney [00:07:29] Yeah. Farmington Ward traces its origins back to about 1840 or so. David Whitmer established the first congregations in Farmington. And for quite a long time in church history, Farmington was the headquarters of what was called the main district, Farmington. At the time of the martyrdom, the saints in Farmington really didn't know what path to follow, and so they decided to follow none of them. Essentially just kind of stand and wait. Periodically, various member groups of members in Farmington would go either to Utah or into the Midwest, depending on, you know, what flavor of Mormonism they favored.

John Dehlin [00:08:26] Right.

Greg Kearney [00:08:28] Farmington, Utah, was named for, because settlers from Farmington, Maine, came and lived there.

John Dehlin [00:08:34] Oh, wow, that's interesting.

Greg Kearney [00:08:37] So. But others just kind of stayed behind. In the early 20th century, missionaries from the Salt Lake Church were sent back into the area, and they found this kind of remnant congregation meeting in a great big old church in downtown Farmington.

John Dehlin [00:08:56] So they had not been formally associated with any head church, but had just continued practicing their flavor of Mormonism, huh?

Greg Kearney [00:09:03] Yeah, they just kind of stood apart and waited, essentially. Because Farmington was an inland community in the mountainous regions of western Maine, the earliest missionaries that went up the coast and converted over all the other local congregations never got there. And so hence Farmington. And it is from Farmington that almost all the other wards and branches in Maine today trace their origins from. You get people leaving from Farmington and going to Skowhegan and setting up a little branch there and stuff like that.

John Dehlin [00:09:43] That's fascinating.

Greg Kearney [00:09:44] Even today, the Farmington Ward is by far the largest ward in Maine, larger than even the ones in Portland or Bangor.

John Dehlin [00:09:54] Wow.

Greg Kearney [00:09:56] It's kind of this little, you know, little tiny community. My wife said. My wife who's from California says, geez, Greg, it's like going to Utah. You know, all you Mormons here are so into bread with each other.

John Dehlin [00:10:13] Right? Right. Yeah, sure.

Greg Kearney [00:10:16] You know, we might be in some small town in southern Utah.

John Dehlin [00:10:20] That's great. So tell us how your. Tell us your early years.

Greg Kearney [00:10:27] So my early years were, you know, a typical kind of New England upbringing, you know, local elementary school. I went to a Jewish run junior high boarding junior high school in Massachusetts and a Quaker run high school in Maine, Oak Grove, Coburn, and then a Mormon college. So I didn't get a whole lot of chance to act up, I guess.

John Dehlin [00:10:55] Very ecumenical upbringing, I'd say, you know,

Greg Kearney [00:10:59] the Quakers aren't big into smoke and drink.

John Dehlin [00:11:02] Right. That's fascinating.

Greg Kearney [00:11:06] So I probably had a fairly sheltered education.

John Dehlin [00:11:10] Yes.

Greg Kearney [00:11:13] But, you know, I believe I was. I was the alumni president for Okoro Colburn for a while and I tried to find some other Latter Day Saint who went there. Who was latterly saint? When he went there, he or she went there. And I never could find anybody. I found people who converted after they graduated.

John Dehlin [00:11:34] Now, did the topic of Masonry ever come up through your high school years or was that even.

Greg Kearney [00:11:40] Oh, my father and my uncle, the Carneys have been Masons for probably at least a millennia.

John Dehlin [00:11:52] Oh my goodness.

Greg Kearney [00:11:52] It's an old family tradition. It goes way, way, way back. When I gave the. When I gave my presentation at the fair conference in August, I brought along because I predicted somebody was going to ask me, well, why did you become a Mason? And I had with me what I call the ciphers. It's the Masonic ritual in code form. And I said, I pulled up mine, I said, here's mine, here's my father's, here's my grandfather's, here's my great grandfather's. And there's five more of these in my uncle's possession.

John Dehlin [00:12:28] Oh my goodness.

Greg Kearney [00:12:31] It's an old, old carnic tradition. It dates back. My grandfather, my father's father, was practicing an actual. He actually cut stone in quarries.

John Dehlin [00:12:44] Oh my goodness.

Greg Kearney [00:12:45] That's what he did for work. And so it's a family tradition. It's also very, very common in small New England towns and villages. Nearly every adult man I knew growing up was a Mason.

John Dehlin [00:13:03] Right.

Greg Kearney [00:13:04] You know, the bishop, you know everybody.

John Dehlin [00:13:10] Wow.

Greg Kearney [00:13:10] You Know that that's just, you know, the social institution, kind of the social glue of the community. That and the grange, you know.

John Dehlin [00:13:20] So it's just part of your heritage.

Greg Kearney [00:13:23] Yeah, it's part of, you know, it's part of what I grew up with. It's, you know, I am, you know, the only male child of. Of my generation in my family. And it would just assume that, of course, when I, you know, reach the age of 21, I would, you know, following the family tradition.

John Dehlin [00:13:46] So your family's participation in Masonry predates its membership in the church even?

Greg Kearney [00:13:52] Oh, yeah. Masonry predates the church by millennia, at least.

John Dehlin [00:13:57] The modern church.

Greg Kearney [00:13:59] Yeah, the modern restored church, yes.

John Dehlin [00:14:01] Okay. Okay. So college. Tell us about college.

Discovering Masonry and Joining BYU

Greg Kearney [00:14:06] Got out of Oak Grove Coburn, did the usual prep school thing where you applied to three colleges, got accepted at all three, but could only really afford byu. This was before BYU got so pricey. And had a fine program. And so my sister had gone there, so I went to byu and I studied design, specializing in theater design, television, motion picture and stage design.

John Dehlin [00:14:48] And did you participate in Masonry while you were at BYU then?

Greg Kearney [00:14:54] Yeah, I did some study when I was taking my church history classes. I wrote some, you know, kind of, you know, basic papers. Reed Durham had just done his no Hope for the Widow's Son paper at the Mormon History association association meeting.

John Dehlin [00:15:17] Give us a sense for the. Give us a sense for the time frame, the year, approximately.

Greg Kearney [00:15:22] Yeah, he had done that about two years before I graduated from high school, I believe.

John Dehlin [00:15:26] So is this. I'll start. I'll start off kind. Is this in the 80s and the mid-80s?

Greg Kearney [00:15:31] This was 70. He gave that in 74. I graduated high school in 76.

John Dehlin [00:15:37] So this is during the Leonard Arrington era of church history. Okay.

Greg Kearney [00:15:44] And I gave, you know, I gave it kind of a cursory example. I knew pretty much what to expect. But by the time the endowment. I had taken out my endowments, I was pretty well prepared. My father had kind of sat me down and gone through the whole, you know. Okay, Greg, you know, this is what you're about to see things in the temple that you've seen in the Masonic Lodge and, you know, that sort of thing.

John Dehlin [00:16:16] Right. So you had taken out.

Greg Kearney [00:16:18] And that's one of the critical things that you. Particularly for men who are Masons, who are not coming into the church. That's one of the groups that really can be taken aback by this if they're not properly prepared.

John Dehlin [00:16:34] Yeah, I've never thought of it in that direction of a Mason struggling with Things as they come into the church or get the endowments.

Greg Kearney [00:16:47] I did some graduate work in American Studies and I, at that point, because I was married, I was endowed, and I was a Mason, you know, I had. I decided that the problem, the basic problem with the issue had been that everybody had been writing from it from a standpoint of a disadvantage.

John Dehlin [00:17:10] Yeah.

Greg Kearney [00:17:10] They either were Masons, they either were Masons writing about a temple ritual they had never participated in, or there were Latter Day Saints who weren't Masons writing about a Masonic ritual they had never seen and been in. And so I thought, well, I'm kind of uniquely suited, you know, to pick up Brother Durham's challenge to study this. And look at this.

John Dehlin [00:17:36] How many of you do you think there are? How many of you do you think there are in the church? Can you even speculate how many?

Greg Kearney [00:17:40] I can't even speculate, though. There is a joke in Masonry that there are more Norman Masons in California than there are Masons in Utah.

John Dehlin [00:17:50] Interesting.

Greg Kearney [00:17:51] And that's probably true, actually.

John Dehlin [00:17:54] Right.

Greg Kearney [00:17:56] You know, I mean, in my experience, they all were. You know, that's why, you know, when I came to Utah, when I first came to Utah as an undergraduate and was told. And this was before the Utah Masonic lord changed their rules about visitation.

John Dehlin [00:18:12] Yes.

Greg Kearney [00:18:12] And members of the church being Masons.

John Dehlin [00:18:15] Right.

Greg Kearney [00:18:16] You know. You know, my uncle was like, fit to be tied when he discovered that, you know, they were going to admit Latter Day Saint Freemasons into the lodges in Utah.

John Dehlin [00:18:27] Right.

Greg Kearney [00:18:28] You know, it's totally unmasonic. It violates the ancient landmarks. Fortunately, it's water under the bridge.

John Dehlin [00:18:36] Yeah.

Greg Kearney [00:18:37] You know, they changed the policy and they don't do that anymore. And so, you know, okay, I'll get a chance to repent.

John Dehlin [00:18:45] Yeah, sure. So let me. Yeah, well, let me. Let me do something that's a little bit. Maybe an orthodox in an interview. What I want to do is pause your personal story and go back and give the listener. Let's say that. Let's assume that the listener has only heard Mason and Mormon and heard that it's somewhat associated with the temple ceremony. But let's assume that the average listener really doesn't know much about this whole issue. What I'd like to do is to ask you some questions about the history of Masonry and then how it sort of came into Mormonism, and then we can bring it back up to your story and then talk about how that affected you and then how you've worked it through. Does that make sense?

Greg Kearney [00:19:31] Okay.

John Dehlin [00:19:32] So the typical thing that an LDS person or someone who studied this has heard is that Masonry started in Solomon's Temple. It was some society that was built up when they were building Solomon's Temple, that maybe some of those people who are on the construction work got privy to whatever ceremonies were going on within the Temple then, and that that society continued long after that temple was destroyed and sort of persisted through the 1800s. Such that when Joseph Smith became a Mason in Nauvoo and learned about the temple ceremony, the Masonic ceremony there, he recognized parts of it as being inspired. And then when he was developing the endowment, he took the parts that he felt was inspired and of God and used them as inspiration for the temple ceremony that was developed through him. So that's sort of. I'm just telling you what I've heard. And then the only other counter to that that I've heard is that some people have claimed, I think I've read that Masonry really didn't start until the 1600s. And so anyone that claims that it, you know, predates Christ or whatever, that's just not historical. So I'm just giving you my 22nd version of all I know about the history of Masonry as it relates to the LDS Church. Now disabuse me of my misperceptions.

Greg Kearney [00:21:11] Okay. Masonry cannot be traced in any historical thread to Solomon's Temple. We use the story of the building of Solomon's Temple and the master builder of Hiram Abiff as the framework for a clearly medieval origin ritual. The earliest reference we have to stonemason's guilds of any variety, which is the likely origin of freemasonry, is about 945 A.D. in the city of York in England. So the notion that it goes back to Solomon's Temple just cannot be proven through the historical record. I know that it's a real appealing idea for Latter Day Saints, but I don't believe that we have ever said that our ritual is the same ritual that was practiced in Solomon's Temple. We know what the ritual of Solomon's Temple was. It was the ritualistic slaughter of animals in similitude of Christ, the modern endowment. You know, neither modern Latter Day Saints nor modern Jews practice the ritualistic slaughter of animals. So I think we need to look to a more modern origin of the temple ritual than trying to thread the needle all the way back to Solomon's Temple.

John Dehlin [00:22:46] Yeah, I think that may come. I know there's been a line of thinking among some, I think prior members of the church hierarchy that tried to say everything that exists now in the Church existed, you know, from Adam on, and so baptism and temple, marriage. And I think they just kind of want to say there's continuity. The Lord doesn't change and his ordinances don't change. And maybe that's a strain of thought that's tried to force fit that back, I think.

Origins of the Endowment and Masonic Connections

Greg Kearney [00:23:15] Well, the central point of my thesis, of the one that I gave it fair, that I give it Masonic education lectures and anywhere else that I give my presentation is the ritual there. The endowment is two separate things. There is the endowment what we learn, the promises we make, that is fairly well fixed. I mean, the Laura Cassidy has applied since the time of Adam.

John Dehlin [00:23:45] Right.

Greg Kearney [00:23:46] It hasn't changed and it doesn't change now.

John Dehlin [00:23:48] Right.

Greg Kearney [00:23:49] The way that those lessons are presented changes all the time. It's changed in my lifetime at least twice.

John Dehlin [00:23:59] Right.

Greg Kearney [00:24:00] And so we have what I call the message, which is what we're learning, what we're taking away from our temple experience, and we have the messenger how that material is presented to us. It is my contention that many of the ritualistic elements of how we have taught the endowment have their origins in Freemasonry.

John Dehlin [00:24:27] Right.

Greg Kearney [00:24:29] And that Joseph Smith, who was a keen observer of people and who served as large chaplain of his Masonic lodge in Nauvoo, was able to sit there and watch how the Masonic ritual can teach very complex ideas of the Enlightenment to a bunch of uneducated, illiterate farmers. Centrally, we forget, you know, Welsh was probably heard as much in Nauvoo as English was.

John Dehlin [00:25:02] Ooh, I didn't know that.

Greg Kearney [00:25:04] I didn't know that, you know. Well, the Mormon Tabernacle Choir originally sung only in Welsh.

John Dehlin [00:25:09] I had no idea. Wow, that's fascinating.

Greg Kearney [00:25:10] And the second language of the Book of Mormon was translated into was Welch. And so the idea that all of these, you know, we had this great big city populated by, you know, nicely literate, you know, English literate people is probably a Myth. In the 19th century American frontier, reading and writing was a rare gift, usually only done by women because they had the advantage of time to learn to do it. Men and boys were expected to be out in the fields or in the shop or working. So he needed a means of communicating. Some of these are really new ideas. I mean, one of the geniuses of Joseph Smith was that he received by revelation a creation model which makes modern scientific sense, or at least can work in the modern scientific world. So he's teaching some pretty sophisticated ideas to a bunch of people, many of whom can't read and write.

John Dehlin [00:26:25] You mean stuff like that matter was not created out of.

Greg Kearney [00:26:29] Matter was not created nor destroyed. It was organized in all these, that the earth isn't unique in the universe. Boy, you talk about an idea that must have just stunned people in the night in the mid 19th century. The idea that, hey, you know, the earth isn't special particularly, you know, so he has these ideas and he wants to communicate them. And what he sees in Masonry is by rope repetition, questions and answers, you know, and repeating it over back and forth. We don't do much of it anymore. They've cut a lot of that out of the endowment ritual to shorten down the endowment. But it used to be that, you know, everything was repeated three or four times. You know, Heavenly Father would give Jesus an instruction and Jesus will give it to, you know, the apostles and the apostles repeated back to them and back. It would go back and forth three or four times.

John Dehlin [00:27:35] Right.

Greg Kearney [00:27:36] That teaching that, that idea of a instructional drama was so powerful to Joseph because he saw what it could do by watching these men walk in and learn these. You know, essentially the modern speculative masonry is a product of the enlightenment.

John Dehlin [00:27:57] Let me just ask you about that real quick. Oh, sorry, I didn't mean to cut you off.

Greg Kearney [00:28:01] That's fine.

John Dehlin [00:28:02] So I know that I don't want to use the word secret or sacred, but, you know, keeping things in an appropriate way in Masonry is as important as it is in Mormonism. But given that, is there, is there anything that a non Mason that you can tell us about, you know, what the experience is without violating.

Greg Kearney [00:28:29] I can tell you almost everything.

John Dehlin [00:28:31] And then the second follow up question would be how much has that changed over time? But go ahead and just tell us what the experience is when you're inducted. That you can tell us and then we can compare that.

Greg Kearney [00:28:41] In Masonry there are three degrees that you go through and each degree you memorize essentially the ritual of that degree and then have to repeat it back before you can go on and do the next one. When I was made a Mason, it was over my summer holiday when I was in college and I had to do the whole thing in one summer. And that was like virtually unheard of. And a testimony to how well I could memorize stuff, I guess. But essentially there's the ended apprentice, the fellowcraft, the apprentice degree, the fellowcraft degree, and the Master Mason degree. Each one is more complex than the previous one. And so essentially the initiate is in the enter the Prince degree. The initiate is divested of all things metal on him. And it's to show that you come before the lodge, a poor blind candidate, you're blindfolded, you're divested of all metals, you know, essentially to indicate that you don't come with any alternative motives, that you don't come planning to gain wealth or power or influence or anything like that.

John Dehlin [00:29:58] Okay.

Greg Kearney [00:30:00] You're essentially conducted around the lodge, and a little moralistic story is told. You are then brought to the altar of the lodge, which is in the center of the room. There's. And this is another thing that would be important to Joseph. There is in Masonry the idea of a book of Holy Scripture. It doesn't necessarily need to be the Bible. It can be any Holy Scripture which the candidate holds to be the revealed word of God.

John Dehlin [00:30:38] It can be a Qur'.

Greg Kearney [00:30:38] An.

John Dehlin [00:30:39] It can be,

Greg Kearney [00:30:41] yeah. In my case, it was the Bible, the Book of Mormon, the Doctrine and Covenants, and the pearl of great price, the quad. Yeah, okay. Because that's what I consider to be the revealed word of God. You're brought to that position and you essentially, you make these promises not, you know, that you will help fellow Masons, that you will help your fellow man, that you won't abuse women. You know, there's various different kind of promises that you make. And then you are brought to further light in Masonry. The blindfold is removed and. And you receive this series of lectures that probably have their origin in the Enlightenment, and instruct you about the values of education, about the values of personal morality and so forth. You have to memorize essentially the entire ritual and repeat it back to an examiner before you're allowed to do the next degree. And the fellow craft degree is very similar, and an apprentice degree, similar kinds of things. Similar. The Master Mason degree is a little different. In the Master Mason degree, you play the part of Hiram Abiff, the master builder of Solomon's Temple, who is killed by three workmen attempting to obtain the secrets of a Master Mason that they might illegitimately work as such. It's in that way similar to the idea. It's the same sort of allegorical story of taking. You're to take upon yourself the part of this person in the same way that in the LDS Temple, we take upon ourselves the part of Adam and Eve. It's the same sort of teaching form, only it's a lot more dramatic. In the case of the Masons who blindfold you, they take you to the different ends of what's supposed to represent Solomon's Temple, where the three workmen assault the candidate and say, tell me the secrets or die. In the last one, candidate is Hit with. Supposed to represent the setting maw, which is really just a great big kind of sponge rubber thing they bop you on the head with. And. But the whole time you're listening to the story being told. You're playing the part of Hiram of death, right. You know, and at the end of it, you are raised as a Master Mason, usually in my case by my father. You are physically lifted up on some of your older or not over. Not that much older. Some of your listeners will remember the five points of fellowship is the same.

John Dehlin [00:33:38] Right?

Greg Kearney [00:33:39] Five points.

John Dehlin [00:33:40] So let, so let me just. Let me break in for a second here. The first reaction I have is you telling me this is that he's gonna get in trouble. I mean, I'm just thinking. I mean, I had this.

Greg Kearney [00:33:52] I haven't told you anything that is a secret in Masonry.

John Dehlin [00:33:56] Wow.

Greg Kearney [00:33:56] So nothing that you couldn't read about him. Numerous books published by Masonic authorities.

John Dehlin [00:34:04] So that's a. That's a huge. That's a huge thing for me. I had no idea that so much you were able to talk about. I thought almost the whole thing was completely. Is it. Is it only no longer an issue? Like, if you had told me this 200 years ago, would you have been in trouble? Or is it only because it's sort of been exposed that now they're less?

Greg Kearney [00:34:21] I don't think even 200 years ago, I think there are, you know, there is, as in the temple, there are specific things which I haven't told you.

John Dehlin [00:34:30] Right.

Greg Kearney [00:34:30] And which I won't tell you and I won't ask. And because I promise not to, it's not because I hold them, you know, that they are sacred in the same way that the temple is sacred. It's just that to my brother Masons, I have promised not. Not to reveal certain things. And I don't.

John Dehlin [00:34:46] Okay, so my second question about this is, you know, how much were you prepared for this from the Masonic standpoint? And then what were you feeling? Was this an spiritual experience for you? Was it emotional? Was it weird? You know, what as a teenager or as a young adult, were you feeling during this whole thing?

Greg Kearney [00:35:05] Well, I had read the whole Masonic ritual prior to having it done to me.

John Dehlin [00:35:10] Okay.

Greg Kearney [00:35:11] So because, you know, I had access to, you know, BYU library is very complete and it has, you know, books, you know, Duncan's Rituals of Freemasonry. And so I had then access. So I knew pretty much what was going to happen.

John Dehlin [00:35:27] Okay.

Greg Kearney [00:35:28] It was. It was a nice emotional experience to have my father and my uncle do it to Know, because I knew how important it was to them for me, as the only male member of my family, of my generation, to continue, you know, this thousand year old Carney tradition.

John Dehlin [00:35:49] Right.

Greg Kearney [00:35:50] Essentially.

John Dehlin [00:35:51] Right.

Greg Kearney [00:35:52] So.

John Dehlin [00:35:53] And was there any. Was there any reaction that some people have felt in the LDS ceremony, which is, this is weird, or I'm uncomfortable with this, or, you know.

Greg Kearney [00:36:01] Well, I didn't, you know, I knew that it was a medieval ritual and it had medieval, you know, there were lots of, you know, things that had medieval qualities to them.

John Dehlin [00:36:14] It makes me.

Greg Kearney [00:36:14] I didn't find. I didn't find it particularly weird because I knew the origin and I knew the material were going in. I suppose if you didn't know that. Yeah. It would probably seem kind of strange.

John Dehlin [00:36:24] So I'm kind of wondering.

Greg Kearney [00:36:25] The medieval world is very different from ours.

John Dehlin [00:36:27] Yeah. I'm kind of wondering if we were able to be a little more explicit about what an LDS person was to experience in the LDS temple. Whether that. Because I've rarely met someone who wasn't really shocked or taken back or even put off by the ceremony.

Greg Kearney [00:36:44] I wasn't. It didn't bother me because, of course, I had already experienced this. I think I was in a better position.

John Dehlin [00:36:51] Yeah, sure.

Greg Kearney [00:36:51] I'm just saying I had already seen a. You know, essentially the ritual we practice today in Freemasonry is pretty much unchanged from its 19th century counterpart.

John Dehlin [00:37:07] Interesting. Yeah. I wonder whether members today would benefit by knowing a little more beforehand than they do. It's interesting to hear you talk about that.

Greg Kearney [00:37:17] So I knew, you know, I understood. And by that point I had kind of developed this idea of the message of the messenger and that I was perfectly willing to accept that Joseph Smith, who was a Mason, you know, had taken these elements and used them to teach the endowment. And it didn't bother me.

Joseph Smith, Nauvoo, and the Masonic Ritual

John Dehlin [00:37:39] Okay, so let's talk about Nauvoo for a second. So we know. Tell us a little bit about, you know, did Joseph get introduced to Masonry through John Bennett? How did he hear about it?

Greg Kearney [00:37:48] John Bennett was many. Many of the Brethren were already Masons by the time they arrived in Nauvoo. It was common in the 19th century to be so. Furthermore, Joseph Smith's father and elder brother, Hyrum, were both Masons in New York.

John Dehlin [00:38:03] In New York, yes. Okay. Didn't know.

Greg Kearney [00:38:06] So he grew up in a Masonic family. He was aware of Masonry long, long before John C. Bennett and the. And the crew and Nauvoo.

John Dehlin [00:38:18] So it was a family ritual. It was a family ritual. Family, yeah. Yeah. Okay.

Greg Kearney [00:38:23] You know, you know, he would have seen his father's apron, you know, Masonic aprons, his brother's Masonic apron, you know, other, you know, the ciphers and things like that would, would have been available to him, would have been in the Smith home as a boy growing up and as a young man.

John Dehlin [00:38:46] Do you know what brought the Masonic Lodge to Nauvoo? Do we know about the origins?

Greg Kearney [00:38:50] Well, Bennett was instrumental. I think it was a genuine desire after the business in Missouri, it was a genuine desire to try to integrate the Saints into a broader social community. And many of the Saints already were Masons. And Grandmaster Jonas, who was a politically ambitious man if there ever was one, saw an opportunity, you know, to curry favor with the largest city in the state. And, you know, so there were lots of motivations going on there to bring Masonry to the Latter Day Saints.

John Dehlin [00:39:34] So is this the head of the

Greg Kearney [00:39:35] Masonic Lodge, the Grand Lodge in Illinois? Yeah, Masonry. There is no national Grand Lodge. There is no national body that governs

John Dehlin [00:39:45] Masonry or global or global even.

Greg Kearney [00:39:48] Not nor global.

John Dehlin [00:39:49] Okay.

Greg Kearney [00:39:50] Each Grand Lodge is a, is an institution unto itself, completely self governing. That's how Utah was able to exclude Latter Day Saints for so long. Because there simply wasn't anybody to say, no, you can't do that because they're a self governing organization.

John Dehlin [00:40:10] So how did Joseph make the transition from his affiliation and he became a Master Mason, I heard, is that right?

Greg Kearney [00:40:17] He became a Master Mason. That was the highest degree. You hear a lot about like 32nd degree Masons. The highest degree of Mason you can be is a Master Mason. The other degrees, the so called higher degrees, are supplemental but subordinate to the Grand Lodge of the state that they're in. And so they're like extra little 19th century add ons. But it's not that anybody who goes out and you know, the secretary who runs the secretary of the Grand Lodge in Utah once described it. These are men with a real burning desire to pay dues.

John Dehlin [00:41:05] Right.

Greg Kearney [00:41:07] But in Joseph Smith's day, the highest degree that Scottish right didn't exist in, in Illinois at the time, you could only be a Master Mason.

John Dehlin [00:41:20] I heard that he progressed at a very fast rate, faster than he was.

Greg Kearney [00:41:25] He was made a Mason upon sight by Grandmaster Jonas. It's a very rare honor. And what it means is you're made a Master Mason immediately. You don't go through the all the steps like I did, right. They just make you into Master Mason immediately. When Grandmaster Jonas was questioned about this, the reason he cited for making Joseph Smith a Mason upon sight was that Joseph was, what is called in Masonry, a Lewis. He was the son of a Mason. So Joseph has made a Mason upon sight, but he does not become master of the Lodge in Nauvoo. There are four Mormon lodges created. Two in Illinois, Nye and Rising sun in Nauvoo, and there's two in Iowa. He doesn't become a master of any of those. What he becomes is chaplain of the Lodge. It's the only office I've ever held in a lodge. And it's an interesting one because you don't have to do much. All you have to do is memorize two set prayers. The one that opens the Lodge, the one that closes the Lodge. The rest of the time you get to sit and watch everybody else do this stuff.

John Dehlin [00:42:38] Right.

Greg Kearney [00:42:39] And it must have been extremely. The impact of it, as I said, must have been tremendous on Joseph. I believe it was. Because I believe what happened was he took the ritual that the Saints already knew to teach what they didn't know, the endowment, because he wanted them to focus on the endowment. He did not want them focusing on the ritual. So he says, well, I'll use a ritual they know. It's already familiar to them. You know, they won't have to remember all, you know, the ritual part, because they'll know it.

John Dehlin [00:43:18] Now, is there any writing you've read that says this or you sort of.

Greg Kearney [00:43:22] I'm inferring this. There have been several. There have been a couple of secondhand accounts written years later that say, well, Joseph thought that it came. You know, Joseph said it was the apostate temple ritual from Solomon's Temple. The problem with that approach is a couple. First of all, Joseph is only repeating what lots of 19th century masons believed anyway, that they were doing something that they did in Solomon's Temple. The other problem with it is if it were in fact ancient revealed ritualistic practice, why do we change it? And we change it all the time. It's changed significantly from Joseph's day.

John Dehlin [00:44:12] Okay, so I have to ask here. So when did you first come to the realization that the Masonic ceremony did not have its origins in Solomon's Temple? Was this something. That's a newer theory. Was this something that Masons have known for years?

Greg Kearney [00:44:29] I mean, this has been widely taught for probably the last hundred years.

John Dehlin [00:44:36] 100 years, yeah.

Greg Kearney [00:44:38] Okay. It's been widely recognized that there is no way to. No reliable, historically reliable way to draw that line that way.

John Dehlin [00:44:48] I wonder if that was a challenge of faith in Masonry for those.

Greg Kearney [00:44:52] I think it was. I know there are Plenty of Masons even now. I run into them even now who say, oh, well, you know, they did this back in Solomon's Temple. And I go, no, they didn't. You know, the Bible's clear what went on, you know, you know, we don't, you know, you know, I, I, and I know Latter Day Saints who are just as equally as, you know, I mean, I've got, you know, this is my opinion. I don't suggest that I have some special, you know, knowledge from on high.

John Dehlin [00:45:20] Right.

Greg Kearney [00:45:21] On this.

John Dehlin [00:45:21] Right.

Greg Kearney [00:45:23] And I have plenty of Latter Day Saints who don't agree with me at all.

John Dehlin [00:45:26] Sure.

Greg Kearney [00:45:27] You know, and say, you know, no, you're wrong. It's got to come from, you know, revealed from some ancient origin.

John Dehlin [00:45:36] Okay, okay.

Greg Kearney [00:45:37] Well, I just, you know, I mean, I don't, I don't believe there's any, you know, I think you tie yourself into knots trying to prove that point.

John Dehlin [00:45:45] And did Joseph, but just did Joseph believe that that did have, I think

Greg Kearney [00:45:49] Joseph, I think Joseph believed that the Masonic ritual probably came from Solomon's Temple. Almost all masons of his day believe that.

John Dehlin [00:45:56] Okay.

Greg Kearney [00:45:57] There's no reason to doubt that he didn't believe it.

John Dehlin [00:46:00] Okay, so you were saying he, he, he, he tried to bring it to Mormonism to make it a familiar ritual.

Greg Kearney [00:46:08] I think he was using a familiar ritualistic form.

John Dehlin [00:46:11] Right.

Greg Kearney [00:46:12] Something that the Saints already were acquainted with. Essentially, he had the Lord revealed to Joseph. These are the things the Saints must know and must covenant to in order to be exalted in my kingdom. Joseph, it's up to you to teach them these things,

John Dehlin [00:46:35] figure out the best way to do.

Greg Kearney [00:46:36] How do you figure out how to teach the, teach these and make the Saints receive these covenants.

John Dehlin [00:46:41] Fascinating.

Greg Kearney [00:46:43] And, you know, you work it out in your mind, essentially. And that's why to this day we have temple rituals that change to meet modern needs. The modern Latter Day Saint is no longer familiar with Masonry. He's probably not a member. You know, and so there were things in the endowment which, yeah, they meant something to somebody like me.

John Dehlin [00:47:18] Right.

Greg Kearney [00:47:18] But they didn't meant nothing. Or worse yet, they were, they were in some cases even troubling to a modern member.

John Dehlin [00:47:27] Yeah.

Greg Kearney [00:47:27] And as the church has expanded and as it's become an international organization and spread throughout the world into different cultures and languages, a lot of this stuff didn't work and didn't communicate the endowment any longer. In fact, it wasn't, in some cases, an obstacle to teaching the endowment. And so we make modifications under, you know, under direct priesthood Authority to, you know, to move the kingdom forward, essentially.

John Dehlin [00:48:01] So what can you.

Greg Kearney [00:48:02] I'm not bothered by that.

John Dehlin [00:48:03] Right, right. So, you know, for, for listeners who are, let's say, I don't know, 34 years and younger, maybe they will have experienced a somewhat different temple ceremony than

Greg Kearney [00:48:16] those who are, let's say, than somebody like my age.

John Dehlin [00:48:18] Yeah. Or me. I was. I'm 36. And I. I was. I went through before the changes that happened around 1990.

Greg Kearney [00:48:26] But what, what if you're in your early 30s or 20s, you. You would never have experienced.

John Dehlin [00:48:33] Okay. What. I just thought of one quick question I have to ask before we talk about the next thing, and that's. I heard that when. That when John C. Bennett and Joseph Smith fell out of favor and John C. Bennett left Nauvoo, one of the things he did was run to the head Mason in Illinois and say Joseph's, you know, betraying and perverting the sacredness of the Masonic Lodge, and that in some way that was a partial motivator for the animosity and the anger that led to his martyrdom. Is there any truth to that at all?

Greg Kearney [00:49:11] I don't believe that. I've never read that Bennett did such a thing. Bennett became an adversary of the Church. With that there is little doubt. But I think, in fact, the fact that he didn't make a great deal about the similarities. He spoke some about the similarities between the large ritual and the temple ritual, but that wasn't his main whipping boy. His main whipping boy was polygamy. The fact that he doesn't make a big deal about it to me indicates that. That the early members knew full well what was going on. They understood completely, you know. You know, what was, you know, going on. Now, there were Masons in the mob that killed Joseph Smith. We know that.

John Dehlin [00:50:02] How do we know that there were.

Greg Kearney [00:50:05] We know that because Joseph Smith gave a Masonic cry of distress as he was killed at Carthage and several.

John Dehlin [00:50:12] Are you allowed to say what. What he. What he said? Are you allowed to say that?

Greg Kearney [00:50:16] No, I'm not allowed to say that.

John Dehlin [00:50:17] Okay. Okay, that's fine.

Greg Kearney [00:50:19] But I will say that this is the title of Reed Reed Durham's famous paper.

John Dehlin [00:50:25] Okay. And it's. It's probably repeated in the manuals today.

Greg Kearney [00:50:28] Yeah, well, I don't know. The first part of it, O Lord, my God, is repeated in the manuals.

John Dehlin [00:50:34] Okay.

Greg Kearney [00:50:35] Okay. And with that, I've given any skilled Internet user enough information to find out the whole phrase.

John Dehlin [00:50:45] And I'm not trying to be sneaky here. I'm just.

Greg Kearney [00:50:47] Yeah, it's also printed on the. On the flyleaf. It's also printed in kind of semi code on the flyleaf of the Da Vinci Code.

John Dehlin [00:50:56] But it's.

Greg Kearney [00:50:57] If you read the bolded words in the flyleaf of the Da Vinci Code.

John Dehlin [00:51:00] Right. So just for listeners, though it is true that both Joseph and I believe Hyrum, when they were dying, made some statement that's supposed to be some type of signal to those who are coming after him to say, hey, I'm a Mason. We've agreed not to kill each other.

Greg Kearney [00:51:20] Kill each other?

John Dehlin [00:51:21] You're not supposed to kill me.

Greg Kearney [00:51:22] It's a grand hailing sign of distress.

John Dehlin [00:51:24] Okay?

Greg Kearney [00:51:25] And we know they gave it, and we know it was ignored. And there were several, you know, there was a lot of kind of agitation in the lodges surrounding Nauvoo about. Hey, wait a second. You know, this guy was involved in the, you know, mob murder of a fellow Mason.

John Dehlin [00:51:42] Is that a pretty serious deal to kill?

Greg Kearney [00:51:44] Oh, well, you know, killing dogs is. Yeah, pretty serious deal.

John Dehlin [00:51:49] But within Masonry, to kill another Mason

Greg Kearney [00:51:51] is a pretty huge extreme, you know.

John Dehlin [00:51:54] Okay.

Greg Kearney [00:51:55] Killing anybody is a serious offense. It's, you know, grounds for, you know, expulsion.

John Dehlin [00:52:02] Okay. Okay.

Greg Kearney [00:52:05] So. So now I kind of lost my train of thought.

John Dehlin [00:52:10] Oh, no, no, no. It's good. And so I just wanted to. I just, you know, I don't know that Mormons understand how important Masonry was towards the end of Joseph's life. And I think that does. I think it's important for us to know there was a Masonic lodge in Nauvoo. Joseph was a Mason. There are parallels between the Masonic ceremony and the early endowment ceremony. And it was such an important issue in Joseph's life that even in his death and in Hyrum's, some of his last words were Masonic. You know, I just think. I love it when the facts get laid out so that no one hears this stuff like my friend Tina from some third party and says, hey, oh, this is distressing.

Greg Kearney [00:52:52] You know, what the anti Mormons and critics of the Church do is they use this business about Masonry as a wedge because many Latter Day Saints don't know anything about it.

John Dehlin [00:53:06] Right.

Greg Kearney [00:53:07] And so that makes the critic the expert.

John Dehlin [00:53:11] Right.

Greg Kearney [00:53:12] You know, and the critic can say anything. And because he's become the expert in the member's mind on this whole matter, you know, they can be, you know,

John Dehlin [00:53:23] they can pile it off people off

Greg Kearney [00:53:24] into strange, you know. You know, like, you know, they can lead people off to the great spacious building.

John Dehlin [00:53:31] Right, okay. Yeah. So Tell me, what can you tell us about the. I mean, again, I want my listeners and you to know that I have full respect for the LDS temple ceremony of us all respecting the covenants we make. But we all know that the full ceremony, in audio form and soon to be in video, was on the Internet. You mentioned to me before this program started that the Smoot hearings In the late 19th century, early 20th century, I guess, revealed a great deal about the temple ceremony. So what can you tell us about what elements of the Masonic ceremony spilled over into the LDS endowment ceremony without violating your covenants in either segment?

Comparing the Temple Ceremony and Masonic Rites

Greg Kearney [00:54:19] Okay. The basic ritualistic form, the idea of using an allegorical play. In the case of the Masons, we use the story of Hiram, of death. In the case of the temple endowment, we use the story of Adam and Eve. That idea, I believe, came over from the Masons. The ritualistic form of questions and answers. We see less of it today than we used to, but it's still there to a greater power in Masonry. For instance, the opening of the Lodge. It's always the same. And it's a set of questions asked by the Master to the senior warden of the Lodge. There are three primary offices. The Lodge, the Worshipful Master, the junior Warden, and the senior warden. And so they'll say things like, brother, senior warden, satisfy yourself that all are master Masons. And the senior warden looks around the room and says, I am so satisfied. And then he says, what induced you to become a Mason? And the senior warden always answers the same way. He always says, the better to serve myself and my family, to work in foreign countries, receive wages, and to help in the relief poor, distress master Masons, their widows and orphans. And it's always the same. It's this back and forth. That element, that teaching element of questions and answers comes, I believe, from Masonry.

John Dehlin [00:55:52] Okay.

Greg Kearney [00:55:56] I. With Renaissance, there are certain physical actions which are common to both. However, they do not have either the same name or the same meaning. And that's probably as far as I'm willing to go. Right,

John Dehlin [00:56:17] right.

Greg Kearney [00:56:18] Prior to 1990, there was the Five Points of Fellowship. There's also both rituals use the square and the compass.

John Dehlin [00:56:29] Right.

Greg Kearney [00:56:30] You know, it's the squares. Encompasses of fundamental iconic imagery of Freemasonry. Right. You see it on our gravestones, you see it on our buildings. You see it, you know, just about everywhere we go.

John Dehlin [00:56:43] Yes, and your Cadillacs.

Greg Kearney [00:56:46] Yeah, those of us who have Cadillacs. So both. Both use aprons. They mean different things. You know, one is symbolic of Adam and Eve's transgression in the Garden. The Masonic apron is representative of aprons worn by practicing stonemasons and in quarries.

John Dehlin [00:57:12] Right

Greg Kearney [00:57:14] now on the FAIR website, I have written a paper where I go down through. I took a anti Mormon who kind of gave you a laundry list of similarities. And I kind of walk down to the laundry list going, yes, this is the same. And here's where they come from. And you know, they both use, you know, holiness to the Lord. And where does that come from? It comes from the Bible. And on and on and on. Right. So to a Mason, the things that they would find most similar are the ritualistic form, the idea of this. Of this telling of an allegorical play of the question and answer form, and certain action elements which are substantively similar but whose meanings and names are different.

John Dehlin [00:58:03] Okay, quick follow up on that. For those who went through before 1990, you know, there was a part that's since been removed where the participant sort of indicates, through some hand motions, some ways that they'll receive punishment if they are to violate the promises within the temple. You could call them penalties, I guess. Is that something that also.

Greg Kearney [00:58:33] Yeah, that also exists in Freemasonry and

John Dehlin [00:58:35] is still practiced to this day and very, very similar. Are they similar or duplicates? Okay, okay, Right. Okay, good. Well, that's. That's interesting. So any other similarities that come across or is that a pretty good summary?

Greg Kearney [00:58:55] That's a fairly good summary.

John Dehlin [00:58:56] So if you're, if you were to go at high level, though, it sounds like the meaning is fundamentally different, like the core content. So there's some structure around the vehicle, the ritual, the delivery of the message. But it sounds like the messages are.

Greg Kearney [00:59:16] The messages are different. They're both important messages. Masonry primarily deals with man's relationship to his fellow men.

John Dehlin [00:59:28] Right.

Greg Kearney [00:59:29] The endowment is revealed information necessary for our eternal progression and receiving exaltation in the celestial kingdom. There's a world of difference between those two. One is eternal and. And is absolutely essential, you know, for exaltation. The other is a nice and useful and good thing that men of goodwill should do.

John Dehlin [01:00:08] Right.

Greg Kearney [01:00:09] But, you know, it's not, you know, it's not salvation in nature. Freemasonry is not a religion. We do not offer a means of salvation. Yes, I see that, and that is absolutely central to the point. And one of the things I have to deal with, you know, kind of when I work with fear and when I work in apologetics, is I'm answering not only critics of the church, but in my case, I'm answering a lot of church members. Who are, you know, convinced that Masonry is akin to secret combinations.

John Dehlin [01:00:48] Right. And I think Fawn Brody writes about that in her book on Joseph Smith. I think I remember reading that there was some murder that happened around the time Joseph Smith was a young boy and there was a Morgan affair and there was stirring that it was Masons who were involved.

Greg Kearney [01:01:05] Masons who did led to the anti Masonic political party. A whole party dedicated to anti Masonry.

John Dehlin [01:01:15] Sounds familiar.

Greg Kearney [01:01:16] You know, and you know, as I point out, you know, when members asked me about that, I said, you know, taking oaths to do good isn't a bad thing. That isn't what the secret combinations did. The secret combinations didn't get together and take oaths to do good and to help widows and orphans. Again, we know exactly what secret combinations were. Yeah, we're to kill to get gain.

John Dehlin [01:01:49] Right.

Greg Kearney [01:01:49] And things like street gangs and the mafia and the Klan fall into, you know, fall into that Al Qaeda and things of that nature.

Masonry Among Later Church Leaders

John Dehlin [01:02:00] So one question just pops to mind. Have any subsequent high level church leaders that we know of been Masons too or did our affiliation with Masonry end with Joseph?

Greg Kearney [01:02:13] No. Brigham Young was quite proud of it. Wore his Masonic stick pen his whole life. There are photographs of him with it. John Taylor, Wilford Woodruff were Masons. I believe that it ended. The affiliation of high level leadership ended as the Masonic Lodge in Utah as the, you know, the, the Joseph F. Smith era essentially.

John Dehlin [01:02:45] Okay.

Greg Kearney [01:02:47] Came into into effect and we had a situation in which Utah was excluding LDS members. By the way, they're the only Grand Lodge ever to do it.

John Dehlin [01:02:56] So you mean the early 1970s Joseph F. Smith.

Greg Kearney [01:03:00] By 1872 the Grand Lodge in Utah was established and they established a policy of excluding Mormons until 1984.

John Dehlin [01:03:12] Okay. I was confusing Joseph F. Smith with Joseph Feeling Smith, Joseph Fielding smith, so late 1800s.

Greg Kearney [01:03:18] And so Joseph F. Smith became a man in Utah territory. Masonry was unavailable to him as an institution because he was a Latter Day Saint. And the Grand Lodge of Utah had excluded, decided to exclude Latter Day Saints from membership.

John Dehlin [01:03:36] So the Mormons didn't shut out the Masons. It was the other.

Greg Kearney [01:03:38] No, it was the other way around.

John Dehlin [01:03:39] Okay.

Greg Kearney [01:03:40] And it was totally unmasonic. It totally. I mean one of the things, you know, to ask is what is your religion? What do you believe?

John Dehlin [01:03:50] Right.

Greg Kearney [01:03:51] You know, you can believe. You know, I sit here in Casper, Wyoming and I sit in a lodge here that has members who are Buddhists, who are Jews, one Muslim, a whole bunch of, you know, Heinz, 57 varieties of Protestants.

John Dehlin [01:04:08] That's Beautiful.

Greg Kearney [01:04:09] And me with the lone Mormon right now.

John Dehlin [01:04:14] That's beautiful, though. What a great way to unify the community.

Greg Kearney [01:04:17] Yeah. And so, but that's one of the basic points of Masonry was it was supposed to be. It's not a religion. And it. You can be religious without being religion and, you know, and kind of stand away from that, that whole idea.

John Dehlin [01:04:37] So I. Okay, I have to break in with the question that I was in Chicago, I don't know, 10 years ago maybe, and I was at some wedding reception and there was this African American man who had a ring on him, a Masonic ring. And I started talking to him about it and he just happened to mention that that at that time, at least in Chicago, that the Masonic lodge was segregated. Even in the 90s, there were not multiracial in terms of blacks and whites together chapters that the blacks had to have their own Masonic temples and the whites and others had their own. Is that true and has that changed?

Greg Kearney [01:05:20] That is, sadly, as much as we profess our good intentions, we don't dislike church members. We don't always live up to the high ideals that we profess. Masonry was, with the exception of New England, segregated in many parts of the United States and in some places in the south remains so more now out of social convention than out of actual outright policy.

John Dehlin [01:05:56] Just where people live. They go to the temple near. And it just.

Greg Kearney [01:05:58] Well, they get, you know, there's the African American lodges and the Prince hall lodges and the, you know, and the white, you know, lodges. Essentially, in most northern jurisdictions now, the two organizations have recognized each other as false Masons and persons can now visit and join back and forth between the two.

John Dehlin [01:06:26] But full, full integration maybe is, you

Greg Kearney [01:06:29] know, and it's places like Wyoming where the, you know, African American population is very, very small. They obviously don't have their own lodges. They just attend, you know, there's only one kind of lodge.

John Dehlin [01:06:42] So are there, are there Masonic lodges where blacks and whites were worship or were practiced together?

Greg Kearney [01:06:48] We don't worship in a Masonic lodge.

John Dehlin [01:06:50] Right, right.

Greg Kearney [01:06:51] We're not a.

John Dehlin [01:06:52] Were they affiliated?

Greg Kearney [01:06:54] It's a business meeting for the most part, by the way. You know, it's like, you know, you know, are we going to help a widow with her. With her mortgage and stuff like that? Yeah, sure. In many northern jurisdictions, if you go to, you know, and particularly in small towns in the northern parts of the United States where there may be, you know, only one or two, you know, African American men in the whole town, of course they're going to be members of the, you know, you know, the local lodge there.

John Dehlin [01:07:25] But it's, it sounds like that would

Greg Kearney [01:07:26] be the case here in Wyoming, for instance.

John Dehlin [01:07:28] But it sounds like it's something you'd like to see.

Greg Kearney [01:07:32] I think the Civil War ended more than 100 years ago and it's time for these guys down south and stop fighting it.

John Dehlin [01:07:37] Okay. Okay.

Greg Kearney [01:07:38] So this is, I've said that repeatedly.

John Dehlin [01:07:42] So for those, for those detractors of the LDS Church, there are even other organizations that maybe took a little bit longer than we did to come around on the issues of.

Greg Kearney [01:07:54] Well, yeah, you know, Martin Luther King said the most segregated place in America is 10 o' clock on a Sunday morning.

John Dehlin [01:08:00] Yeah.

Greg Kearney [01:08:02] And he was right.

John Dehlin [01:08:05] Yeah. Okay. Oh, that's good. Okay, so let's turn to give you a chance to. Well, I want to give you a chance to evangelize your cause to LDS folk. And if you want to just in masonry in general. But let's start with, let's start with LDS folk. So, you know, a lot of people who have left the church or anti Mormons are going to list Masonry as one of their top 10 issues on why the church isn't true, on why people should be troubled, on why Joseph Smith was a fraud or whatever. So if you had to give, let's say someone who's ignorant about this whole issue or someone who's left the church because of it, or someone who's right on the fence, really struggling with it. Give us your five minuter on why

Greg Kearney [01:08:55] this shouldn't matter, why it shouldn't matter,

John Dehlin [01:08:58] or why it's a good thing. Or why it's a good thing.

Greg Kearney [01:09:00] Yeah. First of all, I would say that let's get a few facts down right off the bat. Joseph Smith was a Freemason. So was Joseph Smith's father, so was his brother. So were almost all the men of Nauvoo in his day. It was a common social institution. It provided Joseph with a means of teaching the saints important truths. If they have been, if these people have been to the temple, they know that these are eternal truths and that Freemasonry was the vehicle by which the teaching method of the endowment was developed and delivered to the saints. Freemasonry is not sinister. We're not trying to take over the world. We're a bunch of middle aged men reenacting medieval stonemason guild practices. I am thankful that Joseph was able to learn those principles and that teaching method which is so effective at teaching the truths of the endowment. I think that they need to separate the endowment from the presentation of the endowment. And however the presentation got developed, you know, that's not the endowment. That's how it's given to you.

John Dehlin [01:10:39] Interesting.

Greg Kearney [01:10:40] There you go.

John Dehlin [01:10:41] That's it?

Greg Kearney [01:10:42] That's it.

John Dehlin [01:10:43] No, I actually really, really appreciate that. And I have to admit I've never. I've never looked at it that way before. So that's really good. So let me just ask you really quickly two things. Has the church itself. I know you've been involved in fair, and if you want to talk about the website and how people can get up there and check things out and read what you've written, let's do that at the end. But has the church itself ever called on you or anyone else you know of to consult them on how to deal with this issue or how to talk about it, or let's do an Ensign article or let's write some Deseret book so that we can, you know, catch this horse off at the pass before it runs away kind of thing? That's the first part of a second two part question, I guess.

The Church's Relationship with Masonic History

Greg Kearney [01:11:36] Okay, well, the answer to that is the church itself. No, I think the church relies upon an independent body known as Fair to do that for them. And frankly, I think Fair and the church like it that, you know, that fair is kind of arm's length, you know, from the church.

John Dehlin [01:11:59] But I mean. Okay, so.

Greg Kearney [01:12:00] But no, they've never asked for an article. They've never asked for, you know, anything from me. At the same point, they've never, they've never said one, one word. What about, you know, what? I have presented repeatedly, publicly. I mean, you know, standing up in front of the Fair conference in August, speaking to 300 people about this.

John Dehlin [01:12:23] Right. And saying pretty much the same thing.

Greg Kearney [01:12:25] We've talked about the same thing I'm saying here.

John Dehlin [01:12:27] Okay, so I haven't asked you to talk about anything you haven't already talked about before.

Greg Kearney [01:12:31] So they've never. At the same point, they've never said, you know, Greg, you're wrong, or don't talk about this, or don't, you know, they've never done that either.

John Dehlin [01:12:38] Okay. Do you think, you know, I think about, you know, the Masonic issue and the. Well, let me just back up for a second. A professor of mine at byu, his name is Ted Lyon. His dad was T. Edgar Lyon, who was a really important church historian and educator. He was also the church's expert on nauvoo in the 60s and 70s. And one of the things he told. One of the things I read, I think in Dr. Lyon's book was that when the Church really started restoring Nauvoo, one of the things they did when they were putting signs up on all the buildings to. To let the visitors know what the buildings were at the time of Joseph Smith, when it came time to put the sign on the Masonic Lodge, they put like, Cultural hall or something. They. They just didn't. They didn't. And I think that's pretty much fact that. That's.

Greg Kearney [01:13:34] I think. Well, I've been to Navajo and I've seen the sign, and they do call it the Cultural hall, which I've always been amused at, because Joseph wouldn't go. What?

John Dehlin [01:13:46] Right, right.

Greg Kearney [01:13:47] But the rest of the sign, when you read the whole sign, it says that this building was used as the meeting place of the Masonic Lodge.

John Dehlin [01:13:54] Okay.

Greg Kearney [01:13:55] And if you pester enough, you can go upstairs on the third floor where the Lodge hall was. And in my presentation, I show a diagram of how that room would have been laid out in Joseph Smith's day and where people would have sa. Wow. You know, Hiram Smith would have sat here, and Joseph would have sat here, and Porter Rockwell there.

John Dehlin [01:14:15] Well, I guess what I'm kind of.

Greg Kearney [01:14:17] I always wanted them to restore it and have the room set up the way Joseph would have known it.

John Dehlin [01:14:24] Well, the reason why I'm asking the question is, you know, there's the issue of Masonic Lodge and the issue of the blacks in the priesthood, and there are like five or ten issues that. It's like the crazy grandmother in the basement. You know, it's like the elephant. It's like the elephant in the room that you don't want to acknowledge.

Greg Kearney [01:14:41] Yeah. If nobody says there's an elephant in the room, it's not there.

John Dehlin [01:14:44] Right. So here's my question to you. And I don't think that either you or I are in the position to really advise the Church, but, you know, I just. I want to ask the question anyway,

Greg Kearney [01:14:56] you know, steady that arc.

John Dehlin [01:14:58] Yeah, well, I don't. I don't want to do that, but I do want to just. If. If there's a way we can help the Church through a dialogue some way, you know, maybe it could happen. So my would be, why. Why not just, you know, get up in general conference or out in the open or write some Ensign article and say, hey, look, here's our position. You know, this happened. It's actually not a bad thing. Here's why it's not a bad thing. And here's why you should. Because then nobody's going to, you know, then if it's taught in seminary is a little small, little blurb. And if it's mentioned in Sunday school once a year and everybody knows about it, it's like they've been inoculated such that when an anti Mormon comes at them with it, they're like, so what? You know, that's a good thing and here's why. And they can give the same answers you did. You know, why can't we get to the point where we can just be honest about it?

Greg Kearney [01:15:46] You know, I think we have bigger fish to fry than some esoteric discussion about Masonry's influence in our temple endowment.

John Dehlin [01:15:54] Really.

Greg Kearney [01:15:55] Sure we do.

John Dehlin [01:15:56] I know, but. No, but I know that. I know that we need to talk about the plan of salvation and the Atonement and that's all huge, but this is a pretty big stumbling block for people, I think.

Greg Kearney [01:16:09] I think if we get enough, you know, if there are enough people who realize, you know, you can, you can go ask this question. You know, if you have this question, here's a place you can go to. You can go to fair. They've got a paper, you know, they've got a person, Greg Carney, who will send you back an email explaining all this. Right. If this becomes an issue.

John Dehlin [01:16:33] Right.

Greg Kearney [01:16:34] I mean, I don't think we need to get up in general conference or

John Dehlin [01:16:38] in the inside just because it would maybe create more problems than it was.

Greg Kearney [01:16:41] Yeah, maybe, you know, it might. It might create more problems than it. Than it would solve.

John Dehlin [01:16:46] Yeah.

Greg Kearney [01:16:46] For some people. And you know, it's just, you know, I say, you know, you know, I spent a lot of time studying this. You know, this is like looking at American history by looking down a straw. And so I got this little narrow view of church history, you know, just to do this one little esoteric subject.

John Dehlin [01:17:06] No, I hear you, but it is, it is one of the.

Greg Kearney [01:17:08] I think we can. Best way we could deal with it would be to restore the Lodge in Nauvoo to the way it looked in Joseph's time. Take people up there till this was the Masonic Lodge and we reconstructed as closely as we can to what it would have looked like in his day.

John Dehlin [01:17:25] Right.

Greg Kearney [01:17:27] And that's all we need to say, you know, and then. And you know, and I always get a joke when they take you up there, they take you up to the third floor. At least the last time I was there. We know that they used to use this for dances because we can see the pattern, the dance patterns on the floor. And I go, no, those aren't dance patterns. Those are the trademarks of hundreds of men doing the Masonic ritual and walking in a circle.

John Dehlin [01:17:53] But see, a different. And this is where I think the apologetic thing comes in, because, you know, some people are going to go to that and say, we're being lied to, we're being misled. This is deception. But you totally don't see it that way. Tell us. And I value that. I want to hear that. So tell me why that doesn't make you just furious and say, I'm leaving.

Greg Kearney [01:18:13] I don't get furious.

John Dehlin [01:18:15] Help us see why so that we can.

Greg Kearney [01:18:16] These people, these members, these people doing these tours know almost nothing about Masonry, right? Probably all they really know about Masonry, at least most of them, is that this was a Masonic Lodge, this building was used as a Masonic Lodge. That's about it, right? And Latter Day Saints are great at kind of repeating kind of the, you know, whatever the last tour guide told him. That's what they'll keep saying, right. You know, and I remember I went up with. With one of the tour guys, like, I said, you probably have to beg to get up on the third floor, right? And I said, you know, I went around the room and I stood in each of those positions where the officers of the lodge said. And I said, this is where John C. Bennett sat. This is where Joseph Smith sat. This is where Hyrum Smith sat. This is where he received Heber C. Kimball. You know, there would have been, you know, this chair here, here and here. There would have been an altar here. There would have, you know, wow. You know, Porter Rocco would have been without the door, with the drawn sword as the Tyler. I would like to meet up with him as a Tyler. He put the fear of God into you.

John Dehlin [01:19:46] Sounds like a dream of yours would be to help participate in the restoration of that room to its.

Greg Kearney [01:19:50] Of that room. Because we know exactly what it looked like. I have 1840s era ciphers from Illinois in my collection. And we know exactly where everything would have been, you know, precisely. And I drew a diagram for my little lecture.

John Dehlin [01:20:11] That's fascinating. Well, let's. Let me. Unless there's something else you want to talk about, I can. I can close with sort of a final request.

Greg Kearney [01:20:21] Okay.

John Dehlin [01:20:21] Anything. Anything you want to throw in before I ask you a final question.

Greg Kearney [01:20:25] Well, now you can go ahead and. Okay, go ahead.

John Dehlin [01:20:29] Okay. So here it is. So I don't know if you're comfortable recruiting for Masons, but if you were to sort of. I imagine that the Masonic Lodge experiences what other, you know, the Elks Lodge or The, you know, the Eagles Lodge or whatever is experiencing, which is an aging population, maybe even a shrinking membership, maybe a concern about reaching out to the youth of today to get new members, etc. So if you had to give your. Put your salesman hat on, if that's something you even are interested in doing, to say, hey, people should give the Masons a look because they contribute to society in a positive way. Do you have a little pitch you'd give?

Masonry Today and Closing Reflections

Greg Kearney [01:21:08] Oh, I. Masonry doesn't go out and recruit members.

John Dehlin [01:21:14] Right.

Greg Kearney [01:21:14] We wait like the Jews. We wait for people to come to us.

John Dehlin [01:21:18] Right.

Greg Kearney [01:21:20] But at the same point, you know, I've had people, you know, members ask that. And I think Masonry represents a kind of a unique social institution. It's clearly the oldest fraternal organization in the world. Its roots are deep in American history. And it presents a kind of a unique opportunity for Latter Day Saints to see, you know, the world as Joseph saw it, as Joseph experienced it. Because pretty much our rituals and our practices are unchanged from Joseph's day. We do good works. We support hospitals for children that have never charged anybody a dime to go there and be treated, rich or poor. We do good works in the community. And we're probably one of the few fraternal organizations that Latter Day Saints can join, knowing that there won't be any drinking.

John Dehlin [01:22:23] Oh, is it forbidden?

Greg Kearney [01:22:25] It's forbidden. The blue largest to drink, yes.

John Dehlin [01:22:27] Oh, wow, I didn't know.

Greg Kearney [01:22:29] And so it's an organization which supports and upholds our values. It supports and upholds our view that we have a set of scriptures that is, you know, in addition to the Bible. And not every large member may accept those scriptures, but they're going to accept that you accept them. And we have so few things that have come down to us from medieval times reasonably intact, and this is one of them. And they have one of the best genealogical records you've ever seen, right? Untapped, virtually untapped genealogical records of this amazing depth of information that's available.

John Dehlin [01:23:22] So it's not only an important part of our religious heritage, but part of

Greg Kearney [01:23:26] our nation, of our civilization. It has struck me odd that there is nowhere, at least that I know of in the English speaking world anyway, where you can go and do formal academic studies in Freemasonry and its influence in Western civilization. And so here it is, this institution which had this huge impact and is still relatively unstudied, which I find too bad.

John Dehlin [01:23:57] I think it's because people feel like they're not supposed to study it or something, but You've helped us see through that, that there's a lot you can know and can study.

Greg Kearney [01:24:05] There's a lot I can know. So I guess if a man is interested in being an asset to his community and in bettering himself and in being able to meet with men, I meet with men I would never encounter any other way. I mean, I just wouldn't come in contact with these men.

John Dehlin [01:24:29] Right.

Greg Kearney [01:24:30] You know, and I think sometimes a lot of these things are kind of inward looking, you know, like they, you know, the Latter Day Saint man knows all the men in his quorum, but not the man across the street.

John Dehlin [01:24:44] Right. Yeah, I've seen that. Yeah.

Greg Kearney [01:24:46] You know, and. And, you know, this is a way to do that in a fraternal organization that doesn't violate your, you know, you know, your religious principles or your priorities.

John Dehlin [01:24:59] Yeah.

Greg Kearney [01:24:59] You know, or your. Or your priorities. And, you know, you know, you can. It's perfectly possible to make masonry and get way too involved in it.

John Dehlin [01:25:10] Sure.

Greg Kearney [01:25:10] Just like anything, you can do that at the country club or at your

John Dehlin [01:25:13] job or with the church. You could.

Greg Kearney [01:25:15] Or the church. Yeah, you can. You can do that the way you're neglecting your family responsibility.

John Dehlin [01:25:19] Right.

Greg Kearney [01:25:20] So. And masonry specifically warned you against doing that.

John Dehlin [01:25:25] Right.

Greg Kearney [01:25:26] As you progress with the degrees, they're always reminding you, you know, you shouldn't, you know, place masonry ahead of your responsibilities to your God or your family.

John Dehlin [01:25:36] Right, right. Well, I just must say that you're an incredibly positive spokesman, both for Masonry, for our church, and for fair. And so I just can't thank you enough. I have learned a ton. I mean, I've taken this issue, which was on my top 10 list of worries or concerns, and it's all of a sudden disappeared from the list. So I just want to thank you so much for coming on Mormon Stories and for telling your story.

Greg Kearney [01:26:10] Okay. Thank you.

John Dehlin [01:26:13] Yeah. Well, once again, we'd like to thank Greg Kearney, is it?

Greg Kearney [01:26:19] Yes, Kearney. Kearney, like the town in Nebraska.

John Dehlin [01:26:22] Okay. We'd like to thank Greg Carney for coming on Mormon Stories today. I'd like to thank all you listeners for bearing with us. It looks like this podcast is going to be about an hour and 30 minutes. So those of you who have made it to the end, next time I see you, I owe you an ice cream. We'd like to remind you that you can read more about this interview up at www.mormonstories.org. we have a blog up there now, so if you want to give comments to Greg or give him feedback or us we'd love to have you post them there. I think I can convince Greg to come up to my blog and if there are questions for him there, I think he'd probably be willing to answer them. Is that right, Greg?

Greg Kearney [01:27:04] Oh, yes. I answer questions all the time.

John Dehlin [01:27:06] Okay. I think it's also fair to say, since I found you through, fair to also let the listeners know that if they ever want to learn more about what Greg's written on this subject or on any subject related to, let's say, anti Mormon allegations or issues with church and history, they can also go up to Fairlds.org Is that the right URL, Greg?

Greg Kearney [01:27:28] Yes.

John Dehlin [01:27:29] Okay. Yeah, go up to Fairlds.org and look up in their topics, the papers and you can read up all about this stuff. So I just want to close and thank you all for listening. Thanks so much for joining us at Mormon Stories. Please send us email and we look forward to seeing you next time. Thanks so much. The depth of your dreams, the height of your wishes, the.

Transcript © 2026 John P. Dehlin. All rights reserved. Brief quotations are welcome with attribution and a link to mormonstories.org; all other use requires written permission.