The TFA is a dynamic fellowship of leaders based upon the chivalric principles of the historic Knights Templars. Our purpose is to enhance personal development through study & creative investigation.
The TFA draws like minded friends who want to study, explore, and share ideas concerning Life’s mysteries. We are based on the chivalric principles of the historic Knight Templars.
Our primary goal is to join forces to build character, bridges of friendship, and a network of spiritual understanding and goodwill.
Goals of the TFA
The Goals of the TFA are intangible, yet all important. Group activities are designed to cultivate leadership skills and facilitate individual transformation within the organization, family & community.
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•Pursue knowledge
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•Strengthen character in order to apply them to one’s life.
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•Provide opportunities to study, learn and build happier members and a better world, one heart at a time.
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•Cultivate a moral code of self-discipline as a means for maturing.
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•Expand awareness. By expanding awareness, we gain empathy for others and find new joy in life. We discover aspects of ourselves that change our outlook at many levels.
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•Develop leaders. One of the greatest gifts anyone can contribute to an organization is passion in leadership. Service to others is not only satisfying but builds a better world.
One very wise Austrian Knight Templar once said that we can grow faster together than we can alone.
The soul friendships and affiliations cultivated in the Templar Fellowship deepen through the years and generate bonds in mysterious ways. Members take these memories back to their own families and communities as models for healthy relationships in their outer world.
Who May Participate?
Anyone interested in cultivation of qualities such as the following is welcome to participate:
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✦The search for answers to universal questions.
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✦Being grounded in reality.
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✦Honesty with self and others.
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✦Responsibility
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✦Integrity
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✦Striving to live congruently in actions, thoughts and beliefs
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✦A sense of purpose
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✦Living by a moral code of mutual respect and honor
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✦Compassion
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✦Endorsing human dignity and human rights
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✦Open-mindedness to the views and experiences of others
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✦Belief in a higher power
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✦Openness to new concepts
Those interested in becoming a member are encouraged to get to know us and let us get to know you. Over a period of time, spiritual bonds between Templar friends grow stronger, both at the local level and across the globe.
The Motto of Templar Fellowship of America
Gnosis - Katanoisis - Sophia
For a Lifetime
Welcome to the Templar Fellowship of America, where a new breed of 21st Century Templar is being born. A new approach to Templarism is emerging that is inclusive, non-militaristic,and nonsectarian.
This new approach originated on the European Continent in Austria. The Templar Fellowship of America is the Grand Priory of Austria’s first extension. Our American connection began four years ago when an American woman was initiated into the Austrian Templar Order and then felt the need to establish something similar in her home state of Texas.
So, the story goes ….In the beginning a Templar Knight of the Austrian Order and a US Knight Templar began to converse and found that they had more in common than they had differences. Being Knights at heart they began to work together with the dream of beginning a new “FELLOWSHIP” of Templars.
These knights began to work together in partnership to develop a new organization based upon “Kindred FELLOWSHIP”—focusing on our similarities with other Templar Orders rather than upon differences or upon “Militaristic Uniformity”.
These knights drafted a plan for “Templar Fellowships” and devised proposed details for every level of a local, state, national and international organization of Fellowships. Choosing to work closely with the Austrian Order of Templars these knights sought, through their fellowships with the Austrian Order, to have these two bodies be in Fellowship with each other.
The Austrians have just recently gone so far as to recognize the Templar Knighthood of one of our US Templars and invite him into membership in their order. Thus was the groundwork for the Templar Fellowship of America created.
So, what is the TFA? And what do the Templars have to do with search for knowledge or spirituality? Didn’t they just protect the pilgrim ways to Jerusalem? And weren’t they just Christian soldiers who took vows of chastity and poverty? What does that have to do with learning to live in today’s complex world?
Until now, a Knight Templar profile’s here in the USA looks like a Christian Male who is a Freemason. While Non-Masonic Templar Orders tend to be exclusively Christian, the Austrian model however, is inclusive of all genders, cultures, races and faiths. So what makes us different is that we are inclusive, tolerant and non-sectarian.
The TFA is a dynamic fellowship of like minded friends who want to study, explore, and share ideas concerning Life’s mysteries. We are based on the chivalric principles of the historic Knight Templars.
What are those principles?
Truth, compassion, tolerance, purpose, respect, responsibility, honesty, integrity, and good reputation. These principles serve as tools in building the Temple of the Body and Soul. The TFA is designed to enhance personal development through study, creative investigation and service. Creative investigation then opens doorways to new horizons.
The Templar way can lead down a number of paths… such as historical, religious, spiritual, scholastic, creative, mystic, scientific, civic, or even financial paths. It can take us down many unexpected roads of discovery. Through knowledge, understanding and wisdom, the Templar hopes to travel the road they are called to.
TFA Philosophy
We are seldom offered a “highway to success” without challenges. One must take the resources at hand and create their own “path of life.” The TFA offers positive stepping stones to those building their “path of life” offering uplifting “construction materials” and shared advice to make use of on one’s “way".
TFA Membership
Fellowship Meetings are open attendance, but membership in the TFA is by invitation to become an associate member—a “Friend of the Templars,” with Knighthood being the ultimate aim.
Basic requirements for knighthood include being a mature man or woman of truth, compassion, purpose, respect, responsibility, honesty and integrity, and of good reputation, and a desire and intention to pursue the road to knighthood.
