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Title: Dense and opaque, but with some interesting parts.
Review: I gather from reading this book that the author has developed and previously published some theoretical or psychological model for analyzing religions. In this volume, he applies his analytical approach to the question of whether Freemasonry is a religion, which seems appropriate enough given Freemasonry's ritual and esoteric content. His explanation of his model and its jargon is even more impenetrable than the jargon itself. His discussion of his results suffers accordingly. The book becomes a bit more worthwhile in discussing why men join the fraternity (at least in England where his research was done), why they stay, who they are, what they get out of it, and what they do behind those closed doors. His unsurprising conclusion, as near as I can tell, is the same answer you would get by asking any random Freemason whether the fraternity was a religion.(This book was originally published in hardcover under the title "Who's Afraid of Freemasons?".
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