Sydney fake news scare

Widely-circulated figures which appeared to show a significant decline in church attendance for a major Australian evangelical group are now known to be an example of internet ‘fake news’.

A table of attendance figures now circulating on the web claims to show that Anglican churches in Sydney lost 10,000 regular attenders in the year the Sydney Anglican diocese gave money to the ‘No’ side in a national same-sex marriage postal vote.

The figures show an average Sunday attendance of 53,345 in 2017 and 46,608 in 2018, with lower figures still for the two subsequent years. Evangelicals Now understands that the source is the actual records from the Diocese of Sydney – but whoever compiled the table made a serious error.

The figures until 2017 accurately reflect the overall average Sunday attendance at Sydney Anglican churches. But the equivalent statistic for 2018 leaves out teenagers and children. The correct figure for 2018 is 54,154 – which is in fact a 2% increase over 2017.

This indicates that, contrary to the fake reports on the web, Sydney Anglican Diocese donating $1million to the ‘No’ case in the marriage vote had no discernible impact on the number of people attending Anglican churches in Sydney.

However, the table also shows that Sydney Anglican attendance has been flat since 2003, nudging upwards some years, downwards in others. This is worrying, for flatlining implies going backwards in a city with a population growing by 1.3 per cent a year.

Evangelicals Now understands that the bogus story of Sydney Anglicans losing 10,000 attenders was being hawked around UK and other media during last year’s General Synod.