Freemasonry, for all its appearance of being a conservative part of the civil establishment, is at its heart a radical institution. What we do not realize today is that the ideas espoused by Freemasonry in the 18th and early 19th centuries, while sounding common-place to us, were truly revolutionary in their own day. The heart of Freemasonry is its ritual. If we truly listen to the music of the words and understand that ideas have consequences, we will come to see the revolutionary implications for our own day of the great masonic virtues: Brotherly Love, Relief, Truth, Equality, Temperance, Friendship, and, above all, Justice.
    The face and promise of Freemasonry has changed greatly in the past thirty years. I have the unique privilege of meeting and talking with men in their twenties, thirties, and forties. Men of this generation are seeking to become Freemasons and they are finding out how to do so on the Internet, from their fathers and uncles and grandfathers, and from their friends. They are asking for applications, and we are indeed giving them the forms. Men born in the 1960s and 1970s are this very minute knocking at the Door of Freemasonry…
    When we open that door, What will they find?
    How you answer that question in your lodges, Grand Lodges, and for yourselves will determine the future of the Craft for the next seventy-five years.
    It is easy to say that Freemasonry is at a critical time. In North America membership has declined steadily for thirty-five years and the average age in some lodges is somewhere between seventy and eighty. Everywhere in the land Grand Lodges and individual masons speak of the need for well-trained leaders, public relations programmes, reaching out to the general public in small ways and large ways so that men will come "to know who we, the masons" are and will therefore want to join in our endeavours. Twenty-seven years ago I participated in discussions on the hot-button issue of whether we were making masons or making members. The only thing that has changed is that we are now making fewer of them.
    Freemasonry has probably not experienced such a critical time since the Anti-Masonic movement of the 1820s-1840s. The material and membership damage inflicted on the Fraternity took over two decades to heal, and the Freemasonry that re-emerged in the 1860s was, in general, a different, though vibrant and popular, institution. I believe that we are now at that stage again – we have experienced the largest proportional decline in membership and number of lodges since the era of the Anti-Masonic movement.
    The Anti-Masonic movement was a "quick and dirty" external attack on the Fraternity, and was effectively over after twenty years, but it took Freemasonry another fifteen years to rebuild. Just as our 19th century Brethren stood ready to rebuild the Fraternity at the 1843 Baltimore Convention, we are now at the threshold of our rebuilding, and now is the time for us to lay the cornerstone for a Masonic Renaissance in the 21st century. There will be no quick fixes, and there will be plenty of hard work in the quarries of our lodges, but there will be new applicants to our ancient and honourable Fraternity – and we must see to their needs and expectations.
    When we open that door, what will they find?
    What we do know for certain is that they will want information about the organization they have decided to join. How are they going to receive "further Light in masonry?" Brother Cyrus Field Willard, a Founder and the first President of The Philalethes Society, wrote much about the necessity of masonic education. His experience with newly-made masons emphasized the saying, "Catch them young." He found them hungry for knowledge about masonry. For Brother Willard, the main idea of masonic education is "to supply the average mason with knowledge about the institution of which he is a member and of which ordinary literature gives him no accurate information."
    In an article published in The Builder in October 1929, he wrote pertaining to masonic education that it "may be necessary to go back to fundamentals and assert that the masonic organisations…are supposed to be, from their very nature, educational and also individualistic in their teachings to develop the individual." He was adamant that there is no need for the introduction of Masonic Education into the lodge – "It was there from the beginning. It is for the rank and file to demand their birthright, for the sacerdotal class in all ages and in all bodies, even Grand Lodges, have always sought to keep the multitude in ignorance…"
    When we open the door of Freemasonry, what will they find?
    Will they find a social club centring on family values and community service? Will that satisfy what they are seeking? Will that be Freemasonry?
    Or will our new applicants find a Band of Brothers, Seeking Truth?

Joel Springer was recently appointed President of the influential and prominent North American masonic research group, The Philalethes Society. He is a third generation member of Paul Revere Lodge, No. 462, under the Grand Lodge of California. He is also in the Royal Arch, Ancient and Accepted Rite and Cryptic Rite.

This comment by Joel Springer was first published in The Philalethes, April 2002, and is published here by permission. See their website: www.freemasonry.org.