The Masonic Lodge has a strong background of Christianity. My father was Worshipful Master of his Lodge, my mother was Eastern Star and I was a member of the Order of the Rainbow for Girls Lodge as was my sister. The Masons handled my father's funeral and it was very helpful for my mother. Don't believe anything you hear and only half of what you see. NB

Many of our founding fathers including Washington, Jefferson, and a lot of others were Master Masons.

My grandfather was in it. My father said that Grandpa would have loved for him to join. But he never did. He was going to once, but changed his mind. I don't know much about it. I once said to Grandpa "That's a bricklayers' union, isn't it?", which I don't think he much liked; still, in one advertisement of it I read, it did say that they were for separation of church and state.

My former denomination split from it’s original denomination over a refusal to denounce Free Masonry back in the 1850s. I really have no opinion otherwise. Seems pretty benign.

Thanks for the input, all...

I am a Mason. As a member it is clear I belong to a fraternity, not a religion. Masons have strong similarities in their thinking, but are definitely not the same nor are they expected to be the same. The brothers in my lodge belong to different religions or different sects of the same general religion and also span the political spectrum. This is a broad subject that can't be covered in a single post.

From William Wheland.
Excerpt:
Most Masons who deny that Masonry is a religion confuse religion with the Christian religion. They know Masonry is not Christian since if it were their Jewish and Moslem brethren would object. Since it is not Christian they assume that it is not religious. Or their views of Christianity as primarily a system of character building and as synonymous with the decent. kindly. and gentlemanly coincide with their appraisal of the lodge and they see no conflict between the two institutions. The fact is, however, that the lodge is essentially religious and possesses all the elements of a religion of naturalism.

Masons themselves have testified again and again to the religious nature of the lodge while denying that Masonry should be classified as "sectarian" religion. By this they mean that the various religious faiths represent on a lower plane that pure and undefiled universal religion of mankind represented by Freemasonry. For example, Pike states:

Masonry is not a religion. He who makes of it a religious belief falsifies and denaturalizes it. The Brahmin, the Jew, the Mohometan, the Catholic, the Protestant, each professing his peculiar religion, sanctioned by the laws, by time, and by climate, must needs retain it, and cannot have two religions; for the social and sacred laws adapted to the usages, manners, and prejudices of particular countries are the work of man.[1]

Masonry is willing to humor those brethren who go along with the local and tribal cults so long as they realize that the sectarian doctrines of these cults are simply necessary evils. Pike explains:

But Masonry teaches, and has preserved in their purity, the cardinal tenets of the old primitive faith, which underlie and are the foundation of all religion. All that ever existed have had a basis of truth; and all have overlaid that truth with errors . . . Masonry is the universal morality which is suitable to the inhabitants of every clime, to the man of every creed.[2]

He adds, "Religion, to obtain currency and influence with the great mass of mankind, must needs be alloyed with such an amount of error as to place it far below the standard attainable by the higher human capacities."[3] Masonry, however, strips sectarian religion of these encrusted errors and reveals itself as the universal religion. While religion gathers the barnacles of superstition and error, Masonry remains pure and undefiled. It becomes Christianity without Christ, Judaism without the Law, Islam without the Prophet.