The seed for CAC was planted in the early 1970's when Charles C. Pugh III, Director of the Center, was an apologetics student of Dr. Thomas B. Warren at Harding Graduate School of Religion. Later, in the mid 1970's Mr. Pugh and CAC Research Coordinator, W. Terry Varner, met for the first time because of the common conviction they shared concerning proof for the existence of God. In 1978, CAC Resource Staff members Glenn Hawkins and Dick Sztanyo, along with Charles Pugh III and others, were invited by Dr. Warren to serve as staff members of the Institute for the Advancement of Christian Theism (I-ACT). I-ACT was a short-lived theistic center, founded by Dr. Warren, for the purpose of defending theism and stopping the growing influence of atheistic thought. Thomas B. Warren (1920-2000) was likely one of the greatest apologists during the last 100 years. Dr. Warren possessed the rare combination of gifted, logical thinking, speaking, and writing in the spirit of a true Christian gentleman. There is a real sense in which the good accomplished by CAC is a tribute to the life and work of Thomas B. Warren.

 

That the need exists for such a center would seem obvious when one considers the indubitable observation of distinguished British philosopher, David Conway, who says, "[T]he theistic doctrine . . . is largely dismissed by philosophers today. . . . [Theism] . . . once formed the lynchpin of western civilisation. . . . [S]cepticism . . . has culminated in our day, not simply in a form of secularism or militant atheism that . . . has been practically [fashionable] among western intelligentsia, but in a novel and highly sophisticated form of [relativism] known as post-modernism" (The Rediscovery of Wisdom, 4-5). CAC, and similar projects, are ideas whose time has come.