Our History
The Alliance’s history stretches back over 75 years. The Alliance began as Evangelical Ministries in 1949 when Donald Barnhouse, with the encouragement of Dr. C. Everett Koop, was approached by a major network to pioneer a coast-to-coast ministry. Soon after the first broadcast of The Bible Study Hour aired introducing Dr. Barnhouse’s monumental study of Romans, a series which ran its 455 messages for over a decade. Evangelical Ministries would also begin publishing Eternity magazine.
What Do We Mean by the Name Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals?
The Alliance is a broad coalition of evangelical pastors, scholars, and churchmen from various denominations, including Baptist, Congregational (Independent), Anglican (Episcopal), Presbyterian, Reformed, and Lutheran who hold the historic creeds and confessions of the Reformed faith and who proclaim biblical doctrine in order to foster a Reformed awakening in today’s Church. The purpose of the Alliance’s existence is to call the Church, amidst a dying culture, to repent of its worldliness, to recover and confess the truth of God’s Word as did the reformers, and to see that truth embodied in doctrine, worship, and life.
The Cambridge Declaration
In April 1996, the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals held its first major meeting of evangelical scholars. The Cambridge Declaration, first presented at this meeting, is a call to the evangelical church to turn away from the worldly methods it has come to embrace, and to recover the Biblical doctrines of the Reformation. The Cambridge Declaration explains the importance of regaining adherence to the five “solas” of the Reformation.
Creeds, Confessions, and Catechisms
The Alliance stands firmly on the Bible—God’s inspired, infallible, and authoritative Word—as the final rule for all faith and practice. Because we represent a cross section of confessional evangelicalism, we look to historic documents such as the Westminster Confession of Faith, the Thirty-Nine Articles, and the Lutheran Book of Concord as accurate summaries of the key teachings of the Christian faith.
As crucial as broadcast and publishing are to the fulfillment of the Alliance’s mission, they can never substitute for the kind of person-to-person contact that events provide. They encourage Alliance members by assuring them that they are not alone and by allowing them to make contact with other conference goers and speakers. These contacts often bear unexpected fruit. Consequently, the Alliance is committed to a variety of national and regional gatherings.
Publishing offers the Alliance a different way to address the concerns that led Alliance members to form the ministry. Because it allows people to stop and think about what they are considering, the printed page enables and encourages them to think critically in a way that audio and visual media might not. Internet and print periodicals are generally a gateway to more serious reading.