Dr. David Harrison

Dr. David Harrison

W. Bro. Dr David Harrison gained his initial degree in Welsh History and Archeology at the University of Wales, Bangor, in 1997, and went on to gain his MA in 2000, and then his PhD in 2008, both at the University of Liverpool. Harrison also gained a Certificate of Education from the University of Manchester in 2000. He has worked as a History lecturer for the University of Liverpool and the University of Hope, Liverpool, and has worked as a project coordinator for various History groups around Liverpool and Merseyside.

Harrison has had 15 works published on the history of Freemasonry and Fraternalism and has had numerous academic papers published on the subject in various journals. His works include The Genesis of Freemasonry (2009), which was Harrison's PhD thesis, The Lost Rites and Rituals of Freemasonry (2017), The Rite of Seven Degrees (2021) and his most recent work The Life and Death of John Yarker, which won the AVDA award for best Masonic history book in 2024. He became a Freemason in Cheshire, England, in 1998, and is a Past Master of the Lodge of Lights no.148 in West Lancashire. He is currently Assistant Secretary of Coronation Lodge No.2927 and a member of the premier research lodge Quatuor Coronati No.2076 under the United Grand Lodge of England. Harrison is also an active member of the SRIA, he is a Fellow of the Philalethes Society and is an honorary member of two US based research lodges.

The Grand Orient of the United States of America; a Modern Masonic Experiment?

In 2005, Jeff Peace and a number of other Freemasons were struck-off from the Grand Lodge of Georgia; they had created a separate degree structure called the Rite of the Rose Cross of Gold. 

Part Masonic entertainment, part social club for new, young aspiring Masons, and in part an attempt at launching a new degree with an old name,  the new Rite, which was the brainchild of Peace, began to upset established Georgia Masons and ultimately led to Peace’s dismissal.  Around the same time in Cleveland, Ohio, the Halcyon Lodge No.498 was entering into an uncertain period of conflict with the Grand Lodge of Ohio in regards to the ownership of its lodge building, a conflict that would result in a highly expensive court case, which ultimately led to Halcyon unceremoniously leaving the Grand Lodge. Meanwhile in Alabama, a group of Freemasons led by Aaron Peavy and David Cooksey chose to leave the Grand Lodge of Alabama in a protest against the continuing and blatant racism which they experienced, their actions gaining some media coverage at the time. 

This all corresponded with the championing of what has been termed as ‘progressive’ Freemasonry, especially in California, one of the more prominent voices of this ‘movement’ at the time being John Slifko, who advocated and promoted a form of co-masonry and of course, initiated the use of the internet to promote Masonic groups and lodges in a new ‘liberal’ or ‘progressive’ Masonic vision of harmony. All of these ‘disenfranchised’ and ‘fringe’ Masonic groups found an uneasy home together under a Masonic experiment called the Grand Orient of the United States of America, or GOUSA, and for a short period, roughly between 2006 and 2013, the group became perhaps the most controversial independent Masonic organisation in the US.