The Masonic has plummeted from 4,103,161 in 1959 to 946,006 in 2020 (using a calculated estimate for 3 states, who reported in 2021). That is over a 75% decrease. This is a startling decrease by anyone’s standards. Since 1959, the Masons’ membership has fallen every single year without fail – a continual decline of over 60 years. Amazingly, over this past 10 years, there has been over a 25% crash in numbers. That is a fall from 1,336,503 to 946,006. 400,000 members have disappeared from Masonic ranks. The Masonic Lodge cannot surely sustain such a wholesale disintegration.
Masonic website Forthrighter submits: “The ‘high water mark’ in terms of percentage representation was in 1928, where there were 3.2 million Freemasons in a population of 106 million US citizens; 3.11%. This point makes perfect sense because it is also near the peak of the Golden Age of Fraternalism.”
In 1930, 2.66 per cent of the population belonged to the Masonic fraternity. When women and kids, and men under 21 are taken out of the equation, as they are ineligible to join the Lodge, that percentage rises substantially. That would be over 10% of the male population over 21. By 2017, Masons represented 0.35% of Americans. To put it in its proper perspective, less than 1 in every 300 Americans you meet today are Masons. Masonry is clearly not as strong and influential as it pretends. The Masonic Lodge has become an increasingly marginalized grouping in today’s modern society, and is struggling to make itself relevant in the 21st century.