That Freemasonry is in crisis, that it is haemorrhaging members, that new young candidates are simply not coming forward in enough numbers, and remaining once initiated, to sustain things as they are beyond the next decade or so, seems to me to be the main topic of conversation in many lodges.
    Why this should be so is not really a mystery to those of us who are young in years. Freemasonry is deeply unfashionable. To the outside world it appears, and largely is, almost impossibly staid and fusty. The mystery is why so many of those on the inside totally fail to be aware of how introspective and out of touch Freemasonry has become and why so few of those who are aware are willing to do anything about it.
    To say that the problem is one of perception is not to say that the outside world is wrong, or unfairly harsh, as I so often hear said by masons. The world has simply moved on and will not come back to a more charitable view of Freemasonry while things remain as they are. The number of young men who are willing and able to dress in outmoded city suits with striped trousers and black jackets and waistcoats, and gather at 5pm for a lodge meeting on a working day, and tolerate second-rate cheap hotel food afterwards is always going to be small. Unless it changes significantly, Freemasonry will never appeal to a wider audience beyond a narrow range of prematurely-aged young fogeys (like myself). The image is BAD.
    I say this not to provoke despair, but simply as a statement of fact. If we see things as they are then a way forward can be found. Nor is this to say that everything that has gone before is wrong or should be scrapped. I, for one, believe that Freemasonry is in possession of great and immutable truths that the modern world has largely lost sight of, and would return to if only made aware of. In particular, I believe that we have lost sight of the spiritual in life. Freemasonry can help to restore that balance in society and can offer people a glimpse of something more worthwhile and permanent than the vain end of personal, egotistical self-fulfillment.
    Against such a background, the tenacity with which brethren cling to the empty rehearsal of hollow traditions that they learned in their youth, as Freemasonry crumbles around them, seems nothing less than tragic to those of us who see what it could be and what it could mean. Is it really that vital that Past Provincial Junior Assistant Grand Somebody-or-other should be saluted in lodge, take wine with the Master at the festive board and then be toasted thereafter? Does anyone realise how ridiculous this looks to young eyes? Is it surprising that the Craft is charged with being an old-boy’s club where old tie and social status count for much, while those in power at the centre seem to appoint one another, bearing absurdly long titles whose embodied visitations to lodges are greeted with almost embarrassing deference? One has to ask whether 5pm-start lodges are meeting because they have something important to do, or whether they are just social clubs for old men. They will not attract the young if that is all they are. Why should not all masons have a hand in electing senior officials, including the Board of General Purposes, Grand Secretary and the Grand Master? Candidates would have to convince the masonic electorate of their vision of Freemasonry’s destiny. The benefits to restoring people’s image of Freemasonry by such and other far-reaching measures would be incalculable.
    In any serious attempt at reforming Masonry, to make it relevant to a younger generation, the question must be asked: what is important in this and what is not? To my mind it is the ritual that is central, and I would not change that at all, other than to raise the importance of working by memory and speaking the words with the appropriate dignity and to mean them as they are spoken. Matters of timing, dress code and the form of the festive board seem to me to pale into insignificance, except when operating as barriers to attracting and retaining candidates.
    Here is a question I have not heard put to brethren: What kind of Freemasonry would be attractive to the young? To my mind, it would have to have a sense of mystery about it : an aura of hidden wisdom and spiritual insight. If Freemasonry appeared as wise and good, and maybe slightly otherworldly, then people would flock to it like moths to a candle. Sadly, this is not the image currently projected to the world at large.
    It is easy to blame the bad image on others. A sequence of spurious exposures, attacks by Christian fundamentalists, militant Catholics and conspiracy theorists, plus politicians and newspapers out for a juicy story against an easy target that doesn’t respond have all contributed. So too has the mood of the age, the zeitgeist since the 1950s having been one of iconoclasm and the disestablishment of old privileged élites, leaving the Craft exposed as a supposed bastion of old establishment power : a beached whale caught by a receding tide.
    In truth, the blame for Freemasonry’s bad image lies squarely on the doorstep of Freemasonry itself, for doing so little to move with the times and by refusing for so long to secure its own protection against unsubstantiated allegations, responding with a wall of silence. To recover from all this will take years. It took the Labour Party over a decade to rebrand itself as ‘New Labour’. Freemasonry must do something similar, and it will take as long or longer since the Craft does not have to test itself against the electorate – only its own membership. Enfranchise the membership and change will be quicker in coming. The time has come for radical change. Arguments about the invasion of privacy fail to grasp that it is the image problem which has generated confrontation with the government. The Ostrich Defence does not work.
    The only alternative to radical reform is to embrace continual decline and eventual oblivion. Soon it will be too late even to make a start.