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	Mannheim Manifesto

- Conscious of the fact that the countless freemasons on this multicultural planet are members of different masonic obediences;

- Considering that a mason may not grant the doctrine and tenets of his own obedience to masons of other obediences;

- Convinced that all masons - notwithstanding the differences between autonomous obediences - always were brethren and always will be;

- Being sure that all masons have the right to seek the masonic obedience that suits them best;

- Nursing the idea that peaceful competition between masonic doctrines can only be achieved by a limitless right to visit other obediences than one’s own;

- Ethically convinced that the biblical command of hospitality in normal everyday life holds evidently even more good in masonic intercourse;

- Knowing for sure that the universal brotherliness instruction of the United Nations mentioned above, is of application for freemasons;

- Daily witnessing the growing tolerance with which Christian churches place their temples at the disposal of other Christian beliefs;

- Living with the experience that in Europe the constitutionally protected rights of the individual citizen gain more and more influence in civil law concerning societies and clubs;

- Trusting we are equally spokesmen for female masons which are not allowed at our sessions.

We, the undersigned, declare that all limits imposed upon the freedom of any freemason to visit lodges of another obedience are incompatible.

with Biblical Laws:

in particular with the initial commands of Jahweh (3.Mos.19,33f), with the lessons of Moses (5.Mos,24,17f), with the verdicts of the later Judges (Judges 19, 20-23) and with the exhortations of the man Job (Job 31-32);

with human dignity:

in particular with the socio-historical realization of humanistic, Christian an Enlightenment values and norms and with their insertion in the German Constitution Art. 1. The citizens’s right to informal self-determination was also confirmed by a verdict of 15-12- 1983 by the German Constitutional Court of December 15, 1983, referring to the principle of law that fundamental constitutional rights have an influence on civil law (which in its turn influences the masonic community’s life);

With the spirit of human rights:

in particular with the Declaration of Human Rights of the United Nations of 1948
Art. 1 (all people being equal in dignity and meeting in a spirit of brotherliness),
Art. 18 (on the freedom of conscience and religion),
Art. 19 (on the right to give and receive information freely),
Art. 20 (on the liberty of peaceful association and assembly),
Art. 27 (on the right to participate in the cultural life of the community),
Art. 30 (on the prohibition to pass bills that aim at the annihilation of the rights and liberties mentioned above).

We, the undersigned, submit here and now to these norms and deem them to have priority over any administrative or legislative regulations by human organisations and their representatives.

Mannheim, November 25, 1995.