A Sense of Belonging

Groups like the Masons offer a way to strengthen community, combat loneliness, fight polarization, maybe even save democracy. And it’s all happening at your local pancake breakfast.

By Tony Gilbert

The earthy aroma of percolating coffee permeates the dining hall. Eggs crowd the griddle, sizzling as they fry. A warming tray is stacked with buttery pancakes. Friends, guests, and their families sit together at long tables, chatting against a background of clanking dishes and a metal whisk stirring up a new batch of batter.

It’s a very just-help-yourself kind of gathering, says Joseph Gutierrez, the lodge master of Lemon Grove № 736 and the main organizing force behind this year’s pancake breakfast fundraiser. Held annually for half a century just outside San Diego, the event raises money for several college scholarships the lodge hands out each year.

With several regular members of the lodge in attendance, plus assorted neighbors and friend, “This breakfast is the biggest [membership] boost we have as a lodge,” Gutierrez explains.

A little over 100 miles north, a similar scene is unfolding at Redlands № 300, in a suburb east of San Bernardino. There the local lodge hosts weekly Saturday breakfasts for prospects and members. Rick Johnson, the current lodge tiler, says he first got involved with Freemasonry through just such a breakfast meeting. From there he found himself cracking eggs in the hall’s kitchen and, before long, lending his hand at stated meeting dinners, an annual BBQ lunch, and events for the Masonic youth groups. A decade later, he’s still the man behind the grill and griddle.

Though each is taking place at a Masonic hall, these breakfast gettogethers could be happening anywhere, in any town—and they do, at church picnics and VFW halls and roadside diners. In fact, it’s the utter familiarity of such gatherings that makes them so welcoming. Beneath their ordinariness, however—or perhaps because of it—these kinds of gatherings are facilitating something extraordinary.

It's Not About Coffee and Eggs

Of course, any Mason can tell you that a lodge breakfast isn’t about the food, just like family Sunday dinner isn’t about the meatloaf and a father-son fishing trip isn’t about catching fish. Johnson remembers bringing his father, also a Mason, to his lodge and being blown away by the reception the elder Johnson got there. “Every brother dropped what they were doing and came over to hang out with him,” he recalls. In that moment, Johnson was offered a view into one aspect of Freemasonry’s appeal. It’s what makes groups like the Masons an important, and potentially transformative, part not only of their own members’ lives, but also of their communities—and, some say, of the overall health of our democracy. In short: They give members an opportunity to connect to one another in a way that is otherwise vanishing from American life.

One of the people banging that drum the loudest is Robert Putnam, author of the 2000 book Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community, which helped popularize the concept of social capital. In it, Putnam, a Harvard sociologist, linked the sharp decline in membership with voluntary associations and social clubs like the Masons, not to mention churches, parent-teacher associations, and, yes, even bowling leagues, to the rise of political polarization and social distrust. Radical as it may sound, Putnam and others argue, the simple act of joining something like a Masonic lodge is an antidote to the kind of malaise that has gripped our country.

That makes Freemasonry and other organizations potentially powerful drivers of social and civic engagement—if enough people are willing to join.

To Masons like Johnson, that idea checks out. “Brothers share common experiences in the degree work, which establishes an instant bond,” he says. That echoes the 18th-century fraternal maxim about Masonry bringing about “true Friendship among Persons that must else have remain’d at a perpetual Distance.” In Putnam’s sociological terms, it could be described as a prime example of members building “social capital”—creating relationships outside their own racial, political, or socioeconomic circles. By building more of that kind of social capital, he argues, members of a community grow closer, promoting trust in one another and the institutions they belong to, and are more willing to participate in a shared civic life. In so doing, they strengthen the very democracy that powers our country. Sound highfalutin? Not to the people who’ve sat around the table at those kinds of gatherings.

Frank Cobos Jr., the lodge master of Redlands № 300, invokes the beehive, the Masonic symbol of industry and teamwork, in describing the way his lodge cooperates. “Whatever things may deter us from wanting to be on the team, we set those aside and try to work together,” he says. “If we work together, there is nothing we can’t accomplish.”

In an era when it’s never been easier to get most of what you need from the comfort of home, the lodge offers members an opportunity to experience social bonding in person. Indeed, nearly a quarter of older adults in the U.S. are considered socially isolated, according to the National Institutes of Health, while more than a third over 45 report feeling persistently lonely. Both are linked to increased health issues. Research shows that loneliness increases the risk of heart disease by 29 percent, dementia by 50 percent, depression by 77 percent, premature mortality by 29 percent, and diabetes by 49 percent. On balance, the effect of social isolation on one’s health is equivalent to the effects of smoking a pack of cigarettes per day.

So in addition to saving democracy, attendance at lodge can also help extend your life.

Above: Lodge members John Linehan (center) and Bill Johnson (left) meet with current and prospective members.

"Universities of Democracy"

In the age of the social safety net, we might take for granted that in the past, group bonding carried an increased chance for survival. In fact, 19th-century Americans relied on mutual benefit societies like the Masons to provide for them in times of distress or sickness. In addition to offering a built-in network of friends and contacts and vouching for one’s trustworthiness, fraternal groups also held funeral services and cared for widows and orphans. In that era, sociability wasn’t optional; it was practically required.

For many years, that made social groups a central aspect of American life—something Alexis de Tocqueville noted as far back as the 1830s. Over a century later, Arthur Schlesinger suggested in his 1944 article “Biography of a Nation of Joiners” that the “associative impulse” of Americans to rally around civic groups and social clubs carried a deeper significance. Schlesinger went so far as to say such clubs were responsible for “transmitting existing social values” through society.

“Considering the central importance of the voluntary organization in American history there is no doubt it has provided the people with their greatest school of self-government. Rubbing minds as well as elbows, they have been trained from youth to take common counsel, choose leaders, harmonize differences, and obey the expressed will of the majority. In mastering the associative way, they have mastered the democratic way.”

Cobos has seen these factors at play in his own lodge, where members from very different backgrounds get a crash course in working together. “Our lodge is supposed to provide a safe space, so to speak, where men can work on becoming the best version of themselves,” he says. “A past master described it this way: We should make our lodges ‘universities of democracy.’ It should be a nurturing environment. And together we can build a better place.” As grandiose as that ambition might sound for one local lodge, Schlesinger would likely have agreed with the sentiment.

Lodges build a sense of community among their members, while the lodge itself has a role to play within the community at large. John Linehan, another member of Redlands № 300, points out that the lodge includes members of all political stripes, many of whom disagree vehemently over various issues. But by and large, everyone agrees on the importance of helping out at a local school or food pantry. “Masonry has changed my point of view” in that respect, he says.

At Lemon Grove, a similar emphasis on volunteerism plays that dual role of bringing members together while improving the community in small but meaningful ways. Gutierrez points to the lodge’s adoption of a flagpole downtown, which members maintain and help landscape the area around throughout the year, as one such example. The lodge also works closely with the school district and hosts lodge outreach efforts to connect with elderly members and their widows.

Above: Rich Johnson hands Mike Saucedo a hot plate at the Redlands Nº 300 weekly breakfast.

Changing Demographics, Changing Needs

If organizations like the Masons are uniquely well positioned to offer the kind of personal connections and social capital that people and communities require to stave off isolation and build civic trust, why has membership continued to decline? (Rotary: Down 20 percent over the past two decades. Junior Chamber: Down 64 percent. Odd Fellows: Down more than 50 percent since 1990. And so on.)

Michael Brand has an idea about that: Where in the past service clubs typically were organized around a common place (say, Sacramento № 40), today people increasingly organize themselves around ideas (the tech community, Swifties, Raider Nation). Brand, a longtime Rotarian and a branding expert who works with many volunteer-driven nonprofits, cites the well-known writer Seth Godin in observing that digital life has reorganized people according to their “tribes”—groups founded on shared passions or values—rather than their neighborhoods.

For service groups to thrive today, he says, they need to align themselves with members’ interests while remaining centered on the organization’s shared values. “That’s the jewel we have to pass on to the next generation. It’s up to them to create a club that works for them and gives them what they need,” he says.

Indeed, California Masonry has already begun to refashion itself along these lines. While preserving the Masonic ritual and the core elements of the fraternal tradition, many lodges have deemphasized the lengthy and often business-oriented stated meeting, with a growing number gathering quarterly instead of monthly; additionally, many Masons now join a second lodge arranged around purely social endeavors, such as affinity lodges for outdoorsmen and magic enthusiasts.

That’s an important point, says Alexander Towey, a member of Vista № 687 and a lecturer of U.S. history at Cal State San Marcos, who has written about the changing demographics of Freemasonry in California. Towey points out that as the swell of “paper members”—largely unengaged Masons primarily interested in the fraternity for its social and reputational benefits—crested in the 1960s and ’70s, the character of Masonic lodges began to shift, as well. As their rosters dwindled, lodges focused on “quality over quantity,” emphasizing philosophic and esoteric learning. In recent years, there’s been an effort to marry those interests—making a lodge a place of casual social bonding, but also bringing together like-minded enthusiasts. In that way, the lodge of tomorrow can be an enormously powerful setting.z

Above: Members gather for a weekly breakfast at Redlands № 300.

Joining the Club

“One of the greatest things about Masonry is the relationships,” says Michael David, a past master of Home № 721 in Van Nuys. The numbers tend to bear him out: In 2020, nearly 75 percent of Masons surveyed cited brotherhood as the most important benefit of their membership.

But for some, simply approaching a lodge is a challenge. At David’s lodge, a stated meeting dinner can sometimes draw 130 attendees. For a stranger walking into a room like that—on top of feeling intimidated by whatever questions or preconceived notions they have about Freemasonry—it’s easy to feel unseen.

Reversing that has been the goal of David’s club within a club, the Rough Ashlars. Conceived in March 2023, the Rough Ashlars comprise Masonic prospects and those waiting on a lodge to act on their application. Prior to becoming an Entered Apprentice, the prospects get a sneak peek at the camaraderie the fraternity provides. And the existing Masons “get a reminder of what the fraternity is all about.”

Edgar Barragan was among the first cohort of Rough Ashlars. He’d become familiar with Freemasonry when he volunteered at the Shriners Children’s Hospital in Pasadena. There, he became friendly with several members of the lodge and before long began meeting with other prospects during the closed lodge business sessions and keeping in touch via a text messaging thread. “I really felt right away that the guys were great,” he says. “Once guys see that, they get hooked.”

That, of course, returns us to the lodge breakfast. Call it the secret degree of Freemasonry: The time spent together outside the lodge room is just as consequential as the ritual, memorization, and lectures that happen within it. After all, Masons only go through the degrees once, usually within a year or two. But for most, membership is a lifetime affair. The social bonding, the community service, and the mentoring of the next generation—they’re what’s left after one’s degrees are complete.

That’s what stays with John Linehan, anyway. “I simply would not be the Mason I am today without the camaraderie and fellowship found in the kitchen at the lodge on those Saturday mornings.”

Photography by:

JR Sheetz
Noah Berger/Associated Press via Shutterstock