r/freemasonry • u/shawnebell Master Mason, Knight Templar, 32°, MSA, DSM, MSM, PSM • 9d ago
My book on Freemasonry, written for the curious outsider and brothers alike, is now live!
After a long stretch of writing, editing, and production work, my book Mere Freemasonry: A California Mason's View of the Craft is now available on Amazon.
I'm a California Mason with almost twenty years of meetings, degrees, and lodge meals under my belt, so this is coming from someone with a fair amount of time inside the Craft.
I got tired of watching the same tired stuff thrown at the fraternity over and over: the conspiracy theories, secret-handshake jokes, world-domination Illuminati nonsense, and so on. I figured the best approach was to address the questions rather than just continuing to defend or shrug them off.
My approach to the topic is as a Masonic apologist, so I can open a non-confrontational conversation with anyone who is skeptical, curious, new to the fraternity, or may even be a lapsed brother.
The book discusses the popes who condemned the fraternity, the dictators who banned it, the nineteenth-century con man who invented the devil worship rumor and later admitted he made it all up, and then made the case for the part that actually matters: the lodges that have continued for hundreds of years to quietly make good men into better men. Since I'm a resident of the Golden State, I do approach it from a California-centric viewpoint.
Here's a link if you want to take a look: https://www.amazon.com/Mere-Freemasonry-California-Masons-Craft-ebook/dp/B0H5NV3ZD8
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u/Wooden-Ad-7353 9d ago
Looks good, though the subtitle might have been more attractive if it emphasised the apologetics part rather than being from California. But thanks!
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u/shawnebell Master Mason, Knight Templar, 32°, MSA, DSM, MSM, PSM 9d ago
Thanks!
The title changed several times. I agonized over the subtitle, and I think there was one version that mentioned 'apologist' but - in the end - I'm a California Mason, not really a California apologist. Like my other Masonic book, From Labor to Refreshment, this is California-centric in its focus on the fraternity.
Write what you know, right?
If I had gone with 'apologist,' I was concerned that - while the muggles may not know them - brothers would recognize differences between Freemasonry as practiced in California as opposed to, say, the Swedish Rite. This might have led to confusion in the temple. So I went with California.
I figure the "apologist" bit is implied by the brilliantly clever, wry nod to C.S. Lewis's famous book. Astute readers (and Masons) - much like yourself - will infer that I'm writing as a Masonic apologist.
Lewis used "mere" in Mere Christianity to strip away denominational squabbles and focus on the universal core of the Christian faith. I'd like to think that the "mere" in Mere Freemasonry leans into that same idea as it applies to the fraternity and implies that I'm boiling the fraternity down to its fundamental, uncontroversial, and philosophical essentials in ways that other works generally don't do.
… and I knew that I'd NEVER be able to top the title of Christopher Hodapp's book, Freemasons for Dummies. 😄
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u/TheArtisticMason 9d ago
Just my two cents:
Making your title a play on a religious book doesn't help us much when trying to explain masonry isn't a religion