Three cheers for a Boston Globe essay that may calm some fears of George W. Bush as the End Times President. The essay is by Alan Jacobs, an English professor at Wheaton College, which may be enough to disqualify him in certain provincialist circles. (Recall how only last month the Globe’s competition, the Boston Herald, instructed its readers that Wheaton “counts holy roller Billy Graham among its alumni.”)

Jack Beatty, a senior editor at The Atlantic, once explained his understanding of rationalism on the public radio program OnPoint.

It’s striking how quickly an accusation becomes presumed guilt and then a cliche detached from any need for proof. Consider the speed with which Karen Russell, a trial attorney appearing on MSNBC’s Abrams Report, mentions Mel Gibson as a hatemonger, as if this is an indisputable fact.

Jane Lampman of The Christian Science Monitor writes today about what she calls “rapturist” theology, and she clearly grasps most of the subtexts as Christians debate how Jesus will return to Earth.