I'm a liberal Catholic with a degree in theology, and I've been a church musician all my life. I have a lot of fun singing gospel music, but I won't sing it during Mass because most of it is "fundamentalist" in perspective, and mostly incompatible with the theology of "mainstream" Christianity. The bloody dead lambs and the war images and all that stuff just don't seem to fit us liberals - but the songs sure are enjoyable to sing. I'll sing gospel before or after Mass, but not during.
I've said before that during my seminary days, we had a quartet who called themselves the Rolling Lambs. They wore nerdy white shirts with black ties; and black blazers with "RL" emblems on them. they'd gather us around the piano in the dining hall, and we'd drink beer and sing gospel til the cows came home. So, yeah, I love singing gospel - just don't ask me to sing it in church.
-Joe Offer-