Last month The Gospel Coalition ran a fascinating article with Sinclair Ferguson reflecting on his return to Aberdeen: how ‘a city of spires’ became ‘the most secular city in Scotland, which is the most secular country in the United Kingdom.’

How was it that Scotland in general, and Aberdeen in particular, experienced such an extraordinary emptying of the churches in just a few decades? Ferguson identifies some reasons: theological drift, lack of institutional structures, and a strategy of ‘quiet infiltration’.

“The strategy [of Scottish evangelical leaders]—and there was a very definite strategy—was essentially not to have a strategy,” he said. “The language that was used was ‘quiet infiltration.’”
In a single congregation, a conservative pastor can sometimes pull that off. But on a denominational level, it doesn’t work. Instead, the mild-mannered middle—even if it’s full of people who believe in Jesus—chooses the path of least resistance. In a liberalizing culture, that’s liberalization.
“The danger of quiet infiltration,” Ferguson said, “is that you are quietly infiltrated.”

The case of Scotland is especially stark, but we can trace a similar pattern across the UK, and increasingly in the USA too. We see it even in some very large, very influential churches where on some key theological issues (especially those concerning sexuality) there has been a deliberate strategy of silence, of saying things like, “I’m not going to say my own view, because…I want people to be able to be here and find a unity in holding different views.” That sounds very reasonable, very generous, but inevitably, ‘in a liberalizing culture, that’s liberalization…you are quietly infiltrated.’ This is a one way street. It is why what is apparently thriving and full of life can, in a few years, be empty and dead.

If the future is to have a church we need church leaders, denominations, and congregations that are willing to pay the cost of standing firm on doctrinal matters, who build robust institutions on those convictions, and who are unafraid to publicly articulate what they believe. Evangelical christianity is very much not the cultural majority in this cultural moment. This means the ‘rigging’ that makes belief easy has been torn away. Much of that has been good – a clearing out of the deadwood and a stripping away of what masqueraded as the church of Christ. But if we keep digging away the ground under our feet by abandoning theological clarity we shouldn’t be surprised to find ourselves also swept away.

Quiet infiltration is a strategy for the dead. The living gladly proclaim what they believe, build houses, cultivate fields, have babies and hope for a harvest.