Modern REFORMATION (July / August 1996) 
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An Introduction to The Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals' 
Cambridge Summit Meeting 
by James M. Boice
© 1996 Modern Reformation / ACE
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April 17, 1996
I'd like to tell you a little bit about the Alliance of Confessing 
Evangelicals. It is a little hard to know exactly what to say because we 
have so many concerns. Years ago I was involved in something very similar 
to this called the International Council on Biblical Inerrancy where we 
also had a council and we called a meeting much like this one in Chicago. 
But compared to what we are concerned about here, the task that we were 
faced with at ICBI was a breeze. We only had a single issue. It was the 
inerrancy of the Bible and our goal was to lift that up as a doctrine 
without which you lose the full authority of Scripture.
But our problem here is to talk about the weakness of the evangelical 
church as we see it, and that's not just a single issue, it is a very 
complex and widespread matter. To put it in a word, it is the lack of 
theology in the church. People who have done surveys like Gallup and Barna 
have come back with statistics that just scare us to death. We cannot 
believe there is so much ignorance of basic theology out there. And as a 
result or consequence of that lack of a well-defined theology, we find 
evangelicals buying into all of the world's ways of doing things. I 
sometimes say what you've got in the evangelical church today is what a 
generation ago the liberal church was guilty of. They were guilty of 
pursuing the world's theology, the world's wisdom, the world's agenda, and 
the world's methods. And as I look at the contemporary situation today it 
seems to me that that is exactly what has happened with evangelicals. We 
have the world's theology: people are basically good and all by ourselves 
we can choose to get into heaven or not-we don't really need grace. And if 
we talk about faith, sure it is good but works have to be added to it; you 
at least maintain yourself in a state of grace by your works. All this gets 
to be Roman Catholic theology before long. When you go down all the 
distinctives of the Protestant Reformation not only do you find that 
evangelicals fail to understand these basic doctrines, but in the opinion 
of many of us, they have slipped back just to where the church was in the 
middle ages before the time of Martin Luther. So that's the kind of thing 
that concerns us and the kind of thing we want to deal with here.
Let me say a couple things about the location. We picked this site because 
it is Harvard Square. If there is an intellectual capitol of America it is 
here at Harvard University. And what we are concerned about are the 
intellectual undergirdings-the truth-of the Christian faith. I'm sure by 
now you've seen the Harvard logo around here, and as you know it has that 
shield right in the middle of it with the latin word veritas, meaning 
truth. It is a reminder that our Puritan forefathers and mothers who 
founded these institutions throughout the colonies were concerned about 
truth. And they didn't mean truth in a general or broad liberal way, as 
that has come to be interpreted today in the universities, but it was the 
truth of God. And they were concerned to train up ministers to understand 
that truth, to proclaim it and to let it permeate a culture. Well, that's 
why we're here. We want to say once again that truth matters, and if there 
is a context in which that can be recovered and proclaimed it should be the 
context of the evangelical movement. We consider ourselves evangelicals in 
that sense, not in the debased sense that has become so popular today, but 
just as evangelicals of the past have stood for the gospel, the truth of 
the Word of God, and the great doctrines. That is precisely the kind of 
thing we would like to recover in our own time.
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The Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals exists to call the church, amidst 
our dying culture, to repent of its worldliness, to recover and confess the 
five "solas" of the Reformation, and to see them embodied in our doctrine, 
worship, and life. For more information about Alliance resources, 
conferences, or broadcasts, call 215-546-3696. The web site address for 
this document is: www. remembrancer.com/ace. 
Sincerely in Christ,
Charlie Ray, 
Chaplain
1 Timothy 4:16
Watch you life and doctrine closely.  Persevere in them, because if you do, 
you will save both your
self and your hearers.  (NIV).
chaplain@isgroup.net
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 * WR  # 461 * Sola Fide, Sola Gratia, Sola Scriptura, Solus Christus.
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