Joe : I don't think it applies to more progressive Christians.

Hmmmm. Progressive Christianity sounds like an oxymoron to my ears, at least as far as the innumerable stripes of Christianity as manifest these last 2,000 years and still embodied in the monolithic absolutism of the Roman Catholic Church, and others... We're all pretty clear on what that sort of Christianity is all about, but the 'progressive' prefix makes it all kinda 'lite' somehow, and maybe a bit of an insult to all the countless thousands who've been ruthlessly persecuted for thinking outside the box of your church down the years - yeah! Even unto this very day! Still, a little bit of timely Re-branding never did anyone any harm, did it? Hey - why not have a KKK that no longer persecutes Black people? Or a Nazism that embraces Judaisim? Or why bother calling yourself Christian at all if you don't actually believe in any of it? I'm reminded of one high-up UK church type who said, in all seriousness: 'Of course Jesus might not have existed, but I'm sure if he did, he would have been a really nice man.' There was one vicar who ruined my elderly neighbor's Christmas with his message that there was no virgin birth, much less a nativity. Quite possibly there was no God also...

Don't get me wrong here, I have a VERY selective approach to Christianity myself - I love the more humane teachings of Christ Storyteller, and take a very keen interest in the theology with respect of its archaeology, history, architecture, music and folklore, but I would never call myself a Christian, though I occasionally refer to myself as a Jesuist and a Neo-Gnostic Marxist.

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Richard : Statistics demonstrate other wise - folk music has manifested in ways that differ from classical, pop, etc.

Statistics demonstrate nothing. The 1954 Definition accounts for ALL musical idioms in terms of human creativity, community and tradition & tell us nothing that isn't applicable to ANY other music - from Raga to Rap, from Border Balladry to Be-Bop. Folk exists ONLY as a multiplicity of idioms that have been designated as such by The Faithful and artificially selected & cultivated on their idiomatic / aesthetic / National merits.

The very idea that Folk is somehow different is patronising paternalistic bullshit that does a serious injustice to the creative idiosyncratic genius & improvisatory virtuosity of the working class men & women who made it. Folk is a matter of fundamental faith backed up with a pseudo science that makes it the cultural equivalent of Creationism. We all know and love the same songs, just we differ on how those songs came into being. I say they were composed & passed on within an idiomatic fluid oral tradition of free-styling that accounts for the myriad so-called 'variants' because in their Natural Habitat these songs were living things that came out different every time. As all music does to a greater or lesser extent, because that's how it EVOLVES.

We are all human beings. All human beings make & experience music, just as all human beings live, breathe, eat, shit, fuck and die. Unless there is a particular form of Folk Fucking that is inherently different from all others... Folk music is ONLY different because the Upper Class Folk Faithful Fundamentalists WANT it to be different, not in terms of its idiomatic uniqueness, but because they couldn't hack the idea of the uneducated peasantry being able to create great art as individuals, because that would challenge the rancid cultural apartheid on which their privileges are built.      

Anyhoo : talking about Upper Class Folk Fundamentalist Faith, I dug this up a few months ago which I thought you might like:

Cecil Sharp's Folksong Epiphany