Excerpt: 'Method Infinite: Freemasonry and the Mormon Restoration' (Kirtland School of the Prophets)

Method Infinite: Freemasonry and the Mormon Restoration

By Cheryl L. Bruno, Nicholas S. Literski and Joe Steve Swick III

During Mormonism’s Kirtland period, Joseph Smith found in Masonry a system of teaching that enabled him to present complex principles to a select group of the leading elders of the Church...

The first recorded meeting of the Kirtland School of the Prophets was held in the upper room of Newell K. Whitney’s store on January 23, 1833, and it was organized in the same tradition as the Masonic Schools of Instruction.

The school became a prototype of forthcoming Kirtland temple ritual. Whitney, a young merchant and businessman, had been a Freemason since July 26, 1819, when, at the age of twenty-four, he was raised to Master Mason in Meridian Orb Lodge No. 10 at Painesville, Ohio. Not content to only receive the three degrees of Craft Masonry, Whitney also received the Royal Arch Degree, taking an active part in the attempted formation of a Royal Arch chapter at Painesville.

He would repeat that effort in Hancock County in 1843, after the establishment of craft lodges at Nauvoo and Warsaw.

For a time, Whitney affiliated with the Campbellite, or Disciples of Christ tradition, and he was baptized into Joseph Smith’s church in November of 1830. Meetings of Kirtland’s leading elders in his respectable dry goods store resembled those of contemporary nineteenth-century lodges that frequently occupied an upper room in an existing building, such as a tavern. An announcement was soon made that a new edifice was to be built to house the School of the Prophets and to “endow those whom I [the Lord] have chosen with power from on high” (D&C 95:8).

Language such as this suggested that, just as the School of the Prophets was an elite and exclusive group, the endowment would also be given to a chosen and selective company whom the Lord would honor with his presence.

Not unlike the Masonic Fraternity, the Mormon School of the Prophets was a select body with specific membership requirements (D&C 88:133, 138). Its meetings began with a ritual greeting of uplifted hands between the instructor and class members. Zebedee Coltrin recalled:

Elder Orson Hyde was the teacher and saluted the brethren with uplifted hands, and they also answered with uplifted hands... The teacher saluted the brethren (one or more) as they came in. This salutation was given every morning when they met.

This formality was described as “a salutation to one another in the house of God, in the school of the prophets” (v. 136), connecting the school with the planned temple. In this responsorial greeting, men were received by covenant as brothers “in the bonds of love” (v. 133). This indicated a mystic fraternal tie in which they were bound together by mutual obligations to God. Masonic tradition identifies prayer with uplifted hands as a Jewish practice. This type of prayer is likewise found in the Book of Mormon’s description of the tradition of the apostate Zoramites meeting in their false synagogue. One person at a time would

go forth and stand upon the top thereof, and stretch forth his hands towards heaven, and cry with a loud voice, saying: Holy, holy God... we thank thee... that we area chosen and a holy people... Now the place was called by them Rameumptom, which, being interpreted, is the holy stand. 

(Alma 31:14, 18, 21)

While the context makes clear it is associated with a false religious form, the action itself is not spoken of disparagingly. Rather, it is the words that accompanied this ritual act that are treated with disapproval. Thus, there was no contradiction when in the School of the Prophets, Joseph Smith himself inaugurated the practice of prayer with uplifted hands.

Following the greeting, class members received confidential instruction. As in Freemasonry, emphasis was placed on learning certain “liberal arts and sciences” such as astronomy, geography, geology, history, languages, and politics (D&C 88:77–79). Those who attended in the winter and early spring of 1833 were instructed in several secular topics as well as church doctrine to prepare them for their ministry. Members of the School of the Prophets were given admonitions concerning their personal habits, spiritual practices, and comportment. But “above all things,” they were to “clothe [them]selves with the bond of charity, as with a mantle” (v. 125). This mirrored Masonic injunction: charity is the chief characteristic of the Lodge. From the very first degree, Freemasons are told that such charity is an identifying mark of the individual Freemason, for like the soul itself, it endures forever: “Faith may be lost in sight; Hope ends in fruition; but Charity extends beyond the grave, through the boundless realms of eternity.”

One of the courses of study at the School of the Prophets was the Lectures on Faith, which contains the earliest articulation of the Mormon doctrine of divinization. As was true of the instruction of candidates in the Masonic degrees, the lectures utilize a catechismal structure. For example, members of the school learned in Lecture 5 that by keeping the commandments they would grow “from grace to grace and become heirs of the heavenly kingdom... being transformed into the express image” of God. Referencing John 14, Lecture 7 explains Jesus “declares to his Father, in language not to be easily mistaken, that he wanted his disciples, even all of them, to be as himself and the Father... [T]he Savior wished his disciples to understand that they were to be partakers with him in all things, not even his glory excepted.”

The perfectibility of human personality is an idea that was strongly apparent among contemporary Masonic writers such as Hosea Ballou and was seen symbolically in Masonic ritual. The members of the School of the Prophets were to sanctify themselves so that they would become worthy to see the face of God (D&C 88:68). From among the members of the School, the “sons of Jacob” were to “build a holy city” (v. 58). The grand purpose of the school and eventually the temple ritual was to receive the name of God (D&C 109:9, 19, 22).

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