On lectures and sermons, I consider myself to have long ago overdosed. Hardly anyone alive can have listened to more of them than I.  

By reason of an unusually prolonged course of seminary studies, followed by extended association with a university, I have logged many more hours in lecture halls than was good for my brain. Because of a lifetime of church going, I have heard more sermons than could ever have benefited my soul.

One solid benefit of this overload, however, is that I have become a connoisseur of the spoken word. I know a good lecture when I hear one; I resonate to a good sermon when it happens.

Of course, I also quickly recognize the earmarks of bad speech. The professor skilled in dullness, disorganization, and mumbling, among other talents, always causes me pain. The preacher who has no more idea than his listeners do of where or when his sermon is going to end afflicts my spirit.

Perhaps this personal background helps explain my heartfelt enthusiasm when I come upon effective spoken language. Last week, I heard a lecture that stirred me to admiration. It had everything I love in public discourse: scope, insight, wit, sophistication, provocation, and moderate length. I felt myself to be hearing a master of the form, a person who could correct and enlarge my thinking and inspire me to further investigation of his subject.

The speaker was Bernard Lewis, professor emeritus of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton, and, before that, professor at the University of London. His writings on the Middle East have attracted wide attention; his most recent book, “What Went Wrong,” has become a best seller. It provides a fascinating account of the historical reasons for the current low ebb of predominately Islamic countries.

Now 85, Professor Lewis brings to his lecturing long experience with original research, familiarity with the countries he talks about, and mastery of other languages. Not everyone agrees with his views, I have discovered, but even his critics must admit his competence.

At the beginning Lewis set forth a simple agenda – – to refine the terms used in the lecture’s title, “The Middle East, Democracy, and Religion.”

The Middle East, he informed us, is a misnomer. He calls it a “shapeless, colorless, meaningless expression,” now used almost everywhere, even within the region itself. Incongruously, residents of the countries included use it without being aware that its geographical reference point is Western Europe.

Speaking about forms of government, Professor Lewis regrets the common Western assumption that there are basically only two –  –  democracy, and everything else. He considers this a great mistake because, among other things, it ignores the vast differences between traditional autocracies and dictatorships.

Whatever their faults, states such as Saudi Arabia respect some freedoms, whereas Iraq and Syria exhibit ruthless tyranny. The latter have implemented the only Western model successfully transplanted to the Middle East – Fascism.

In the theocracy that currently reigns in Iran, Lewis discerns a functional Christianization of traditionally non-clerical Islam: “They have created a papacy, college of cardinals, a bench of bishops, and above all, an Inquisition.”

This venerable professor shows himself skeptical about democracy as a model for all countries. “What we call democracy,” he says, “might more accurately be described as the parochial habits of the English-speaking people that they devise for the conduct of their affairs.”

He goes on to assert, “I do not share the prevailing view that democracy, thus defined, is the natural condition of mankind, any deviation from which is either a crime to be punished or a disease to be cured.”

One has to be wary: the effect of Westernization, he claims, has been not to decrease but to increase autocracy. And, too often, modernization has turned despots into dictators.

In the last part of his talk, Lewis raised the question of the compatibility between religion and democracy. By contrast with recent Christianity, Islam from the beginning has retained its identification with the state. “Mohammed was his own Constantine,” says Lewis. The Turkish form of secularization, separating religion and government, is a model foreign to the other Muslim countries.

About Islamic attitudes toward the United States, Lewis sees three groups of countries: 1) those which have regimes supportive of the U.S. but a population against us (Saudi Arabia); 2) those where regimes are against us and the people are for us (Iran); 3) places where both favor the U. S., (Turkey and Israel).

There is indeed a mood of great anger among many Muslims. They face a crucial choice. Some want to go back to what they conceive of as “true Islam;”

Others recognize their inferior place in the world and want to modernize. Their decisions will have a decisive influence on the world at large.

These brief references to a memorable lecture cannot convey the brilliance of the whole. However, this account may serve to vindicate once more the pleasures of the spoken word when it is graced with learning and matured judgment.

Richard Griffin