Continuing the religious divagation a bit more.

Ron Davies pointed out that gospel is a common feature of US folk clubs' repertoire. (I have to take his word for it - when I lived in the US I never found a folk club, though there may have been one locally). It does occasionally feature in British ones too (or as mediated by Stephen Foster), but it's always seen as an American import. There doesn't seem to be any kind of religious folksong of the British Isles that has crossed over into the secular folk repertoire; we do have that kind of music, but West Gallery singing is a specialist genre that doesn't get mixed with other stuff, and while we have the tradition of Gaelic psalm singing in Scotland, it stays in church (and on Sunday morning Gaelic radio and on CD). I cannot imagine anybody, even Margaret Bennett, trying to lead the Edinburgh FC regulars in a Gaelic psalm, even though they'll all have heard them.

I doubt if Afro-Caribbean Christian music would be any more likely to get a hearing in the folk scene, even in clubs in London within five minutes walk of churches where it's sung every week. But that's a different story.

Anyway: religious folksong has made the crossover into the secular folk scene in the US but hasn't in the UK, even though such song genres exist in the UK too. There has to be a reason for the difference. I think the reason is simply that there's much less church-going in the UK and hence the cultural influence of activities that take place in church is much less. Why Ron is so outraged at that idea I can't imagine - most Christians in the UK don't have a problem with admitting they're a bit more marginal than they used to be.