In New Zealand, where Bill lives, the last Census showed that about 50% of the population claimed to have no religious affiliation at all making it one of the most secular countries in the world. Bill does not believe that God has died, but the belief in a metaphysical tribal intervening God is dying. In Bill’s opinion, so is the belief in dualism i.e. the belief that everything can be divided up into a series of self-contained opposites and that, therefore, as a consequence, there are no systems religious or otherwise that are totally superior in all respects to all other systems.

What is also beginning to die is belief in the supremacy of words which Christianity has been blighted with since the Reformation. Scientists are now beginning to affirm that there always will be mystery beyond what they have discovered. So what we need is the mystic cosmic mystery that is beyond words coupled with the evolving scientific revelation of the nature of the cosmic processes.

In Bill’s belief, attempting to control the actions of God through the manipulation of prayers is best replaced by increasing awareness of God’s processes within the evolution of the Cosmos and of ourselves.
 

Index to William L. Wallace’s Series of Hymns “Cosmic Mystery”

 
Acid Speech Breeds Violent Acts
 
All Cultures Choose to Name a God
 
All Things Are Bound Together Now
 
All Things Exist in Flowing Change
 
All Who Claim to Follow Jesus
 
Are We Followers of Jesus?
 
As a Tree That Reaches Up
 
As Life Approaches Ending
 
As the Sunlight Turns to Shadow
 
As the Veil of Mystery Is Lifted
 
As We Gaze Upon the Cross
 
As We Welcome Spirit’s Presence
 
At Each Day’s Ending and At Death
 
At The Birthing of This Year
 

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William (Bill) Livingstone Wallace is a retired New Zealand Methodist Minister and one of our most prolific contributors. Bill says that his work springs from communicating with the fire in his gut and his observation of both the internal and external aspects of the Cosmos. Since an early age, he has been both sympathetic to and critical of the church, announcing at the age of 13 his belief in evolution. In his youth, he struggled with the disconnection between art and spirituality in his own and other denominations and with the way in which all of the liturgies prior to the sermon were regarded as preliminaries and longer sermons were viewed as superior to more concise ones.
 
He holds a B.A. in philosophy and a Dip. Ed. and is the author of nine published collections of his hymns as well as other resources on our website. His aim is to help people be empowered by the divine within them and the Cosmos and to work to overthrow the forces of personal and institutional greed which destroy both the ecosystem and human society.
 
Click Here for a Full Biography of William L. Wallace
 
Click here for a complete list of his work on ProgressiveChristianity.org