By Walt Garlington, an Orthodox Christian living in Dixieland. His writings have appeared on several web sites, and he maintains a site of his own, Confiteri: A Southern Perspective.
Benjamin Franklin is lately the recipient of some awfully mushy love letters from the Evangelical Protestant worshippers of Americanism. This is largely owing to the recent saccharine ‘faith-based’ film, A Great Awakening, which tracks the intertwining lives of the revival preacher George Whitfield and the aforementioned Franklin. Here is a teensy taste from one of the men involved in the creation of the film:
[Chief Story Officer Joshua] Enck explains: “Ben Franklin was on a spiritual journey, like we all are in life. But what people don’t realize is that this friendship that he had with George Whitefield, this reverend, ended up being the catalyst for the Great Awakening. We learn that Ben Franklin was born the 10th son of his Puritan father, who was a religious man. His father set him apart as a tithe to be a preacher. Ben Franklin ran away from that. But years later, he was the greatest promoter of the greatest awakening the colonies had ever seen. That’s providential. That’s how God works. The Lord redeemed that calling that was on Ben Franklin’s life by having him promote this uprising of faith.”
This is a very shallow view of Franklin’s influence on the life of the colonies/States. It completely ignores Mr Franklin’s strong, lifelong bonds with the satanic Freemasons. The picture that Enck and others are trying to paint lately is that through Whitfield’s influence, Franklin went from Deist to proto-Evangelical Protestant. The historical record is rather different:
He was initiated in either 1730 or 1731 at St. John’s Lodge in Philadelphia. Once he was a member, his style of writing changed in the Gazette, where his tone shifted towards tremendous praise about Freemasonry in America, especially in Pennsylvania. We often refer to these writings when learning about the beginnings of Freemasonry in the United States.
It’s no surprise that Bro. Franklin made an impression on the Brothers of St. John’s Lodge quickly, due to his wit, public servitude, courageousness, and outgoing personality. Only a year after joining, he was a member of the committee drafting by-laws of St. John’s Lodge; on June 24, 1732, he was appointed as Junior Warden of the Grand Lodge of Pennsylvania, and then Grand Master in 1734, according to his personal records. In 1735, he was elected Secretary, an office which he held for three years. As we know, typically several years of service occur before a brother receives any recognition in Grand Lodge.
Bro. Franklin also published The Constitutions of the Freemasons, the first Masonic book printed in America. It was a reprint of Anderson’s Constitutions, first published in England and containing Masonic history, charges, regulations, and more. Copies of Franklin’s publication are cherished treasures in various Masonic libraries around the country.
He visited various lodges around the Northeast and Europe and was present at important meetings and ceremonies, including the Quarterly Communication of the Grand Lodge of Massachusetts in 1754. In June of 1760, he was elected a Provincial Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of England and was officially entered into the minutes at their November 1760 meeting in London. As he eventually was sent to France as an ambassador for the United States, his first actions were those affiliated with Masonic Lodges. In 1777 he was elected a member of “Loge des Neuf Soeurs” of Paris, and a year later he assisted in Voltaire’s initiation into this lodge. He went on to also become a member of Respectable Lodge de Saint Jean de Jerusalem in 1782, and the next year was elected Venerable d’Honneur of that body. In 1783 he was also elected an honorary member of Lodge des Bons Amis, Rouen. Seven short years later, after much more meaningful, Masonic work, Bro. Franklin passed away on April 17, 1790, at 84 years old.
The promoters of Americanism are particularly fond of the story of Mr Franklin’s motion during the constitutional convention in Philadelphia that prayers be offered to help the convention come to an agreement on a new plan of government for the union of States at a time of great contention. From his address on 28 June 1787:
In this situation of this Assembly groping as it were in the dark to find political truth, and scarce able to distinguish it when presented to us, how has it happened, Sir, that we have not hitherto once thought of humbly applying to the Father of lights to illuminate our understandings? In the beginning of the contest with G. Britain, when we were sensible of danger we had daily prayer in this room for the Divine Protection. — Our prayers, Sir, were heard, and they were graciously answered. All of us who were engaged in the struggle must have observed frequent instances of a Superintending providence in our favor. To that kind providence we owe this happy opportunity of consulting in peace on the means of establishing our future national felicity. And have we now forgotten that powerful friend? Or do we imagine that we no longer need His assistance.
I have lived, Sir, a long time and the longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth — that God governs in the affairs of men. And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without [H]is notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without [H]is aid? We have been assured, Sir, in the sacred writings that “except the Lord build the House they labor in vain that build it.” I firmly believe this; and I also believe that without [H]is concurring aid we shall succeed in this political building no better than the Builders of Babel: We shall be divided by our little partial local interests; our projects will be confounded, and we ourselves shall be become a reproach and a bye word down to future age. And what is worse, mankind may hereafter from this unfortunate instance, despair of establishing Governments by Human Wisdom, and leave it to chance, war, and conquest.
I therefore beg leave to move — that henceforth prayers imploring the assistance of Heaven, and its blessings on our deliberations, be held in this Assembly every morning before we proceed to business, and that one or more of the Clergy of this City be requested to officiate in that service.
This, they say, is proof that ‘America’ (or the US constitution, at least) has a Christian foundation (overlooking the truth that this suggestion was offered by a man still deeply enmeshed in Freemasonry, per the above. Perhaps the best way to frame the transformation of Franklin over his life isn’t from Deist to quasi-Christian but rather from Deist to committed Freemason). The impression that relaying this story leaves with the reader is that Mr Franklin’s motion was accepted by the pious framers, a compromise was reached with God’s help, and the United States went on to become the most God-blessed country in the world and in all of history.
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But once again, the real historical record tells a different story. After debate, the motion was not voted on. The debate itself was short and embarrassing (Ibid.):
Mr. HAMILTON & several others expressed their apprehensions that however proper such a resolution might have been at the beginning of the convention, it might at this late day, I. bring on it some disagreeable animadversions. & 2. lead the public to believe that the embarrassments and dissensions within the Convention, had suggested this measure. It was answered by Docr. F. Mr. SHERMAN & others, that the past omission of a duty could not justify a further omission-that the rejection of such a proposition would expose the Convention to more unpleasant animadversions than the adoption of it: and that the alarm out of doors that might be excited for the state of things within, would at least be as likely to do good as ill.
Mr. WILLIAMSON, observed that the true cause of the omission could not be mistaken. The Convention had no funds.
Mr. RANDOLPH proposed in order to give a favorable aspect to ye. measure, that a sermon be preached at the request of the convention on 4th of July, the anniversary of Independence; & thenceforward prayers be used in ye. Convention every morning. Dr. FRANKLIN. 2nd this motion After several unsuccessful attempts for silently postponing the matter by morning. Dr. FRANKLIN. 2nd this motion After several unsuccessful attempts for silently postponing the matter by adjourning. the adjournment was at length carried, without any vote on the motion.
By Franklin’s own account, the supporters of his motion were only three or four out of 55 delegates (Ibid.): ‘The Convention, except three or four persons, thought Prayers unnecessary.’
Thus, the account of the convention put forward by the Protestant idolators who worship America – that God through Ben Franklin’s prayer resolution saved the convention and the ‘American nation’ – is a fantastic lie. The resolution failed, no prayers were offered, yet a constitution was agreed upon and a new union established – not on Christianity but on a more humanistic foundation.
The Philadelphia charter created an unnatural and unstable chimera, that the union would be ‘partly national, partly federal’. But the monstrosity created by these men, tame-looking at first, couldn’t be controlled in the long run. The national parts after several decades succeeded in killing the federal parts during Lincoln’s war to annihilate the Southern/localist resistance to the government in D.C., and that beast has gone on to corrupt, scorch, manipulate, and destroy many parts of the earth since then.
Hail, the United States Empire of Freemasonry! Hail to Ben Franklin, one its chief architects and craftsmen! Hail to the French Masons who helped the North American colonists in their unjust war against the British!
The blindness of the Protestant Evangelicals to all of this, whether knowing or unknowing, speaks to their lack of discernment. If they know about this background of Mr Franklin and other Founding Fathers but purposely ignore it, then they are revealing that they worship not the Holy Trinity and belong not to His Holy Church but that they worship an idol, an idea, a this-worldly paradise called the United States of America, and that they will bend everything to its service (including the corruption of the Christian Faith itself). If they do not know any of this, then they are just as unworthy of our trust, being poor students of history and naïve participants in a demented ideological project, the American Experiment.
Either result is lamentable; nevertheless, it is simply how things end when the Faith of the Apostles found in the Orthodox Church is rejected and replaced with the new gospel of Americanism.
Those, then, who call for the end of this ‘Grand Experiment’ are well justified in doing so. It can be done in an orderly way. Patrick Deneen’s advice in Why Liberalism Failed is sound: Preserve the good things that are currently tangled up together with the bad – things like the protections against tyrannical government, for instance: preserving jury trials, writ of habeas corpus, etc. – and add to that preservation the rebuilding of local cultures and home economies and the development of political governance that is closer to and more responsive to the needs of plain folks.
Returning where we began, for those who want to see a Christian film worthy of the name, we encourage them to pass on by the phony propaganda flick A Great Awakening and to seek out instead a screening of Where Are You, Adam?, an honest, humble, sober, earthy, and yet other-worldly documentary about life at a monastery on Mount Athos. A review, trailer, and more information are available on this page.