I certainly wouldn't want to include gospel in the Spirituals Permathread. Crouch's song is gospel (I got the 'soft rock' from a thread discussing his music; I thought it was funny, but in truth he does have that touch).

The first dated Gospel song? "Each gospel song has an identifiable composer" is massive overstatement. Gospel developed in the 19th c., white- Phillip Bliss published his "Gospel Songs" in 1874; the style was taken up by street singers and itinerant holiness and evangelist singers.

Black Gospel-
Thomas A. Dorsey is often referred to as the 'father of gospel' from his compositions in the 1930s, blending jazz, blues and rural gospel. There were earlier unknowns or little known developers of the form.
C. A. Tindley, born in 1851, had a church of 5000 members by 1910. He was composing gospel before the turn of the century, and eight of his songs appeared in "New Songs of the Gospel," 1901, by C. Austin Miles. The gospel books of Miles, published between 1900 and 1910, were so popular that copies are cheap today. Tindley's "We'll Understand It Better By and By" (1905) is a standby in the South. "I'll Overcome Some Day," of course, is the origin of "We Shall Overcome."

Both Tindley and Dorsey were backgrounded by revivalist hymns, evangelist hymns, ragtime and early blues. Rural blues is an important component of the storefront church music that developed in the cities. Mahalia Jackson sang many of her gospel songs in the old Dr. Watts singing style.

Calling Black gospel 'urban' leaves out Black Pentacostalists who travelled the country, such as Sister Caller Fancy, who belonged to the 'Sanctified' church, as well as the rural gospelers such as Blind Willie Johnson (c. 1900) who added much to the form. Dorsey was from Georgia, although he developed his style in Chicago.

Black gospel began to achieve a stable modern composed 'style' in the 1930s. Now it is a marketing term. Since gospel music is the base for most contemporary Black music- soul, rock, hip-hop, etc. boundaries on singing styles such as Crouch's are hard to define.

Gospel means different things to different Mudcatters. How about the revival songs of the post-Civil War? Sacred Harp?

And fer land's sakes, take off the urban blinkers and see gospel as the mix it is, grounded in blues, jazz and rural gospel. It is 'Country Come to Town!' after a couple of generations.