Wallace was raised as a Presbyterian and remained a devout Christian all his life. In college, however, he became increasingly dissatisfied with organized religion after reading William James' The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902). Around 1919 he stopped attending the Presbyterian church[10] and spent the next ten years exploring other religious faiths and traditions, including spiritualism and esoteric religion. He later said, "I know I am often called a mystic, and in the years following my leaving the United Presbyterian Church I was probably a practical mystic ... I'd say I was a mystic in the sense that George Washington Carver was – who believed God was in everything and therefore, if you went to God, you could find the answers."[11] Wallace was not a Theosophist, but like many "advanced" people in his era, was influenced by theosophical ideas. In 1925 he helped organize a Des Moines parish of the Liberal Catholic Church, an inclusive Christian denomination with ties to theosophy. In 1939, however, he formally joined the Episcopal Church.
