Independent
Order of Good Templars
The
Good Templars was founded in 1851 in Utica, New York, as a fraternal temperance
society for teetotalers of either sex. It has since spread worldwide and
publishes the National Good Templar 10 times a year. In 1994, there were 5,000
members in the United States alone.
The
Good Templars promotes total abstinence from alcohol. The founder, Daniel Cady,
had been a member of the Sons of Temperance (founded 1842), which had assumed a
number of fraternal and benevolent characteristics while trying to reform drunks
and keep them reformed. His Knights of Jericho (1850) soon metamorphosed into
the Good Templars in 1851, survived schism and reunification the following year
(the short-lived Independent Order of Good Templars) and went on to prosper. It
always admitted women on the same basis as men, and has, according to its own
literature, always been racially mixed. In 1868 the organization spread to
England.
At the
turn of the century, the Good Templars in the United States boasted about
350,000 members. It has shrunk drastically since then, but seems to be on the
rebound from the low of 2,000 quoted by Schmidt in his Fraternal Organizations
in 1979.
Its
greatest strength is to be found outside the United States, especially in Sweden
Lodges also exist in Austria, Canada, Denmark, England, Finland, France, Germany,
Greece, Iceland, India, Ireland, Japan, Liberia, the Netherlands, Nigeria,
Norway, Scotland, Switzerland, Turkey, Wales, and elsewhere. Membership worldwide
is probably between half a million and a million.
Originally,
the Good Templars worked three Degrees, namely Heart,
Charity