Worth investigating: perhaps the Royal Commission and the postal survey on marriage contributed to the decline in church attendance

Did the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse and the Same-Sex Marriage Postal Survey have a bearing on the decline in attendance at the Anglican Church in Sydney outlined in the report currently being debated in the Sydney Synod (the church parliament)?

“It’s really interesting that the decline in Sydney attendance is still greater in the years when the Royal Commission and Marriage Equality website was around than in any other year before,” said Brisbane Archbishop Jeremy Greaves, pointing to several factors that have not been highlighted in the Sydney Synod debate so far. Greaves gave the opening address on the future of the church at the Australasian Religious Press Association on the Gold Coast on Tuesday, and coincidentally The other cheek participated in both events.

“It is interesting that the impact of the marriage equality plebiscite has attracted little attention either in Sydney or beyond.”

However, the actual report in the synod documents includes the paragraph: “It is possible that the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, the plebiscite on same-sex marriage, the lack of biblical teaching on human sexuality and the public debate surrounding this may have had an impact on church attendance, particularly in parts of the dioceses that were experiencing the greatest concomitant increase in secularism or irreligion.” This paragraph was not mentioned in The other cheek earlier report.

But it’s worth taking a second look at this chart now that Greaves has made us realize how significant both events are in 2017.

It is worth noting that the decline essentially begins with the 2017 to 2018 line segment on this graph. Correlation does not imply causation and a link cannot be proven. However, the final report of the Royal Commission, focusing on abuses in church organisations and the postal survey – two epochal events in the public perception of the Church, comes in late 2017. The decision by the Archbishop of Sydney in Council (not Synod) to provide $1 million for a “no” postal survey, has placed the diocese at the centre of this campaign.

Lest it be thought that Greaves was fooling around Schadenfreude over Sydney numbers Second Cheek notes that he quickly noticed that Bridnae had its own research, which had a linear decline for decades. He praised the Sydney researchers for the quality and depth of their research.

Additional adult attendance records in Sydney Anglican churches, going back to 2005, seem to provide evidence that something has broken the established weekly average attendance. They come from a question at Synod asked by Rev. Zac Veron – famous for asking similar questions at every Sydney Synod.

2005	46884
2006	47388
2007	47097
2008	45695
2009	47120
2010	47246
2011	46983
2012	47221
2013	46896
2014	47868
2015	48554
2016	47138
2017	47093
2018	46608
2019	45408
2020	45691
2021	38949
2022	39987
2023	44687

Due to the emergence of COVID-19, it is impossible to tell whether the “2017” impacts are having a lasting impact – data from the next few years will be crucial to determining whether the downward pattern from 2017 has continued.

Sydney evangelicals will join Greaves, who leads a more progressive diocese in southern Queensland, in suggesting that “there’s been a big shift when Australians are asked what’s most important in defining their personal identity. Our religious beliefs are pretty high on the list. They’re after our politics, our nationality, our gender and our job and all those things that people say define us more than our religious beliefs. About 70 per cent of Australians say religion is just not important in our lives.”

They will agree with him that more imagination and creativity will benefit the church. They will probably even agree with him and Uniting minister Sally Douglas, whom he quotes: “She said that church as a social club is dying, church as a marker of cultural respect is dying.” A report on attendance patterns in Sydney indicates that church attendance has declined most in those regions where respect for religion has been able to persist. They may also agree with Greaves that “we are being called to confront our self-perceptions and our complicity with the powers of empire and culture.”

But I would probably disagree with Greaves (and Douglas) when he states that “the Church as an authoritative police of purity is dying.”

But one of Greaves’s central hopes for the church resonates: “It seems to me that the way we can keep that story alive, the way we can have a future as a church, is to embody the faith in deep and authentic practices that embody, that demonstrate, those things—love, hope, care, and truth—the kinds of things that people still associate with Jesus, the kinds of things that the early Christians, known as the people of the road, helped spread the story of faith and make it flourish in the beginning.”

“Early second- and third-century accounts document Christians risking their own lives to care for the sick and dying in the extreme conditions of epidemics and pandemics. Followers of Christ took seriously the invitation to love one another as I have loved you. The dedication of Christians to care for others in times of disease, whether the sick were believers or not, demonstrates the integrity of the gospel message of love for others. These were actions that had an impact and attracted those outside the Christian faith.”

Photo: Publication of the 2017 postal survey. Photo source: Orderinchaos/wikimedia