how do Anderson and Dermott differ on the required belief in God for admission to the Craft

James Anderson's 1723 Constitutions required candidates to observe the moral law and adhere to "that religion in which all men agree," leaving specific religious opinions to the individual brother 2. This charge removed the explicitly Christian framework found in the earlier Old Charges in favor of a broader, inclusive standard, while explicitly barring the "stupid Atheist" and "irreligious libertine" from admission 12.

Laurence Dermott adopted Anderson's revised phrasing from the 1738 edition almost word-for-word in the Ahiman Rezon, retaining the same formal prohibition against atheists and libertines alongside the mandate to live as a "true Noachida" 2. However, Dermott leveraged the religious issue to portray the Moderns as anti-religious, striving to maintain the Antients as a distinctly Christian body by embedding explicitly Christian sentiments and references into their constitutions and official documents whenever possible 3.