Just checking back.

So it seems, as I observed earlier, that it is unlikely, to say the least, that the spread of RUS at singarounds in the US has any link to church attendance.

As I also noted, it certainly is an amazing coincidence that the allegation that church attendance is a possible cause of people not learning songs came from one of our eminent atheists.    It's nice to know they can always be depended on for a totally objective view of religion.

Look, RUS is actually a fine source book--at home. But there are many reasonable causes other than the ones I have already mentioned, which make its use attractive---regardless of the religious background or lack of same--for those who treat it as a folk hymnal. For instance, it has lots of good songs, it is compact, and it's not that expensive.

One of the ironies of the whole mess is that the compilers of the book never meant it to be the last word--they recognized it was just a snapshot. It's some, not all, of the users who have abused it.

But it does make it easy to have a "instant folk community in a box", as I mentioned earlier. Without doing any work to actually learn a song.

And that's how it has caused a schism in the US folk music world.    Which is already a small group.