When I said Ron Davies's description matched a church service, I was talking about my own experience of them. I've spent rather a lot of time sitting in large halls with a lot of other people singing words they don't know past the first verse and don't understand at all to tunes they only vaguely get, and it wasn't in the folk scene. What I believe now is not relevant to that experience and none of Ron's business.

There is a real difference between the number of people with first-hand experience of religious ritual in the US and UK:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_attendance

It's nearly four times as prevalent over there. A difference like that is going to shape people's expectations of social behaviour well outside the religious sphere and also among people who never go near a church.

Ballads are just as much a minority interest here as in the US. You hardly ever hear them in most folk clubs. "country, bluegrass, mining songs, labor songs, drinking songs, black and white gospel, labor songs-- protest songs of all types" fits just as well here (except not much gospel).