Was it my imagination? Or was there something fitting about Derek Maul's refreshing commentary ("It's time we listened to atheists," June 29) being placed on the very last page of the Outlook? For here is a journal, a fine one with a distinguished history, caught increasingly in the centripetal winds of a denomination in numerical decline — a Christian family focused more and more on its own troubles and tiffs. Maul's savvy, theologically astute and outward-looking piece enters this culture as a meteor from Mars, as a shock to the system.