THE TEMPLE THAT NEVER SLEEPS: Freemasons and E-Masonry Toward a New Paradigm. Josh Heller and Gerald Reilly, Cornerstone Book Publishers, Charlottesville, VA and New Orleans, LA: 2006. Paperback, xvi and 144 pages, £9.99. ISBN: 1-887560-68-8.

If one was asked to describe the Masonic journey in a single word, what better word could one use than Light? Coincidentally, it is a word that could also be used to describe the phenomenon of our time–––the internet; after all the digital information carried by it, travels at light speed. Still less than fifteen years young, this global-reach technology not only offers a vast array of Masonic websites at the touch of a keyboard (a Google search on ‘Freemasonry’ currently results in more than 3 million hits), but it also offers an ever growing number of specially dedicated chatrooms and forums, where masons from all over the world can discuss their interests as never before. And it is on this latter, rather revolutionary, phenomenon that this book is focused.
    In fact, this book is a bit like an international market survey of masonic opinion, in that it is based on more than 75,000 emails submitted over a six-year period to the author’s internet forum. In this respect it is an invaluable contribution to our collective knowledge of the craft, not least because it reveals just how many masons ‘are looking for something else in their masonic journeys’. And herein lies the book’s importance. For if history teaches us anything it is that, any successful species or organisation needs to keep adapting to a changing environment, or it will die. Yet, as the authors lament, ‘Freemasonry has arrived at the dawn of the 21st century’, while still being ‘in the clothing and the mindset a much previous generation’. But, they argue, not all is lost. For there is the possibility that Freemasonry can adapt, and ‘that E-masonry might be able to contribute’ to its modernisation. For if Freemasonry possesses ‘values [that are] worthy of the future, there should be no resistance to their form being adapted in order to ensure their survival’.
    And while this reviewer certainly does not agree with all the ideas postulated in this tome, the authors have, nonetheless, raised some extremely prescient debates concerning the future of the craft.
    Joseph Maine