TRANSPLANTED IRISH INSTITUTIONS - University of Canterbury

30
manner. .,59 The lodge referred to was Walker's Purple Heroes, No. 24; Temperance Lodge.
After taking up the temperance cause the Orangemen were seen by such churches as the
Methodists as being more respectable. The Orangemen in Ireland had acquired reputations
of drunken celebrations and violent conduct. The orderly celebrations evident in New
Zealand must have encouraged members of the different Protestant churches in New
Zealand to join the L.O.I.
Just as there were rules regulating the public life of members there were also the
elaborate rituals that began with a member's initiation into the Orange Institution. The rules
and regulations do not mention any details of an initiation ceremony.
Since the Orange
Institution was a secret society they could not commit to paper what happened as that would
nullify the mystery surrounding their initiation ceremony. Thus the only examples of these
ceremonies are from disaffected members who felt compelled to 'expose' the Orange
Institution.
E. Lewis was as Australian ex-Orangeman who claimed to have been an Assistant
Chaplain and Arch Purple man of the Campbell Lodge No. 130, of the Orange Institution
in Victoria, and he details the initiation of a candidate into the Royal Arch Purple Degree.
The initiation involved the candidate being stripped of all clothing except for his pants and
being blind folded. Before entering the lodge room there was some questioning and once
inside, the ritual test began. This ritual test was based on biblical incidents such as travelling
through the wilderness and crossing the Jordan river. Once the ritual test was completed the
candidate then became initiated into the R.A.P. Order. 60 The initiation ceremony described
by Lewis gives some details of each ritual test but essentially the rest of his narrative is a
diatribe against the Orange Institution.
It is but the simple truth to say that these ceremonies are, as is befitting the methods of such
ardent supporters of the open Bible, a wretched and disgustingly stupid travesty of incidents
narrated in Scripture history, and whilst such ceremonies are strikingly characteristic of the Order,
they must, when described, fill any decent Protestant, who has the slightest love or veneration for
the Holy Scripture, with indignation and loathing for such blasphemous tomfoolery.61
5~ew Zealand Methodist, 7 July 1888.
6~. Lewis, Orangeism Exposed, Melbourne, Advocate Office, 1899? pp. 12-15.
61Ibid., p. 12.