Data study · 2026
Do different denominations sing different worship songs?
We took 258 English-speaking churches, joined each one to its denomination, and looked at what its Spotify worship playlists contain. A clear majority in every tradition share the same megachurch anthems. What splits along denominational lines is something else entirely.
258
churches
5
traditions
73%
sing the anthems
40%
sing modern hymns
Denomination comes from directory data; song adoption from each church's playlists, so this is not the AI worship-style classifier repackaged. Of 597 English-speaking, playlist-publishing churches, these 258 had a clear denomination. It leans contemporary and is not a census.
Across 258 churches, songs from the four big worship houses (Hillsong, Bethel, Elevation, and Passion) show up in 73% of them, and in a clear majority of every tradition (from 60% of Anglican churches to 84% of non-denominational ones). The real denominational difference is the modern hymn. Baptist churches carry a Getty, CityAlight, or Sovereign Grace hymn 60% of the time. Pentecostal churches, just 11%. So what separates traditions is not the anthems they share, it is whether they also sing the new hymns.
The split
One shared anthem canon, a hymn line that splits by tradition
Share of each tradition's churches with at least one modern hymn (CityAlight, Getty, or Sovereign Grace) versus at least one megachurch anthem (Hillsong, Bethel, Elevation, or Passion) in their playlists. We sort songs by publishing house, not musical form. The anthem bars run long across the board, from 60% up. The hymn bars are where the traditions pull apart.
Baptist
n = 50Evangelical (general)
n = 80Anglican / Episcopal
n = 25Non-denominational
n = 68Pentecostal
n = 35Why the hymn line lands there
The modern hymn revival found a home in one kind of church
The songs pulling those hymn bars up are not old. They belong to the modern-hymn movement that grew out of Keith and Kristyn Getty's In Christ Alone, joined later by CityAlight and Sovereign Grace Music. Christianity Today has described it as a self-consciously theological project, a reaction to worship its writers saw as repetitive and thin, built on dense, lyric-first, word-centered songs. In Christ Alone has sat on CCLI's Top 100 for more than fifteen years, and Getty songs alone account for a meaningful slice of the most-used titles in US and UK churches.
Our data shows where that movement actually landed. Its natural home is the confessional, word-centered end of the church: Baptist, Reformed-leaning evangelical, and Anglican congregations sing these hymns roughly half the time or more. The experiential, charismatic end (Pentecostal and much of the non-denominational world) largely stayed with the anthems. Two very different sources, the movement's own theology and what churches actually saved to their playlists, point to the same map.
In their own playlists
What each tradition sings most
The most common songs in each tradition's playlists. Read the top of the Non-denominational and Evangelical lists side by side and the whole study is right there.
Evangelical (general)
n = 80hymns 50% · anthems 71%
- 1Behold Our God34%
- 2Yet Not I but Through Christ in Me33%
- 3Living Hope25%
- 4Only a Holy God25%
- 5This Is Amazing Grace24%
- 6All I Have Is Christ23%
Non-denominational
n = 68hymns 24% · anthems 84%
- 1Praise34%
- 2What A Beautiful Name34%
- 3Goodness of God29%
- 4I Speak Jesus29%
- 5All Hail King Jesus29%
- 6Graves Into Gardens (Live)29%
Baptist
n = 50hymns 60% · anthems 66%
- 1Great Are You Lord28%
- 2Yet Not I but Through Christ in Me28%
- 3Holy Forever26%
- 4Behold Our God24%
- 5All Creatures of Our God and King22%
- 6Living Hope22%
Pentecostal
n = 35hymns 11% · anthems 74%
- 1Praise29%
- 2How Great Is Our God26%
- 3I Speak Jesus26%
- 4Great Are You Lord23%
- 5King Of Kings23%
- 6O Praise The Name (Anástasis)23%
Anglican / Episcopal
n = 25hymns 48% · anthems 60%
- 1King Of Kings36%
- 2Christ Is Mine Forevermore28%
- 3O Praise The Name (Anástasis)28%
- 4Goodness of God28%
- 5Yet Not I but Through Christ in Me24%
- 6Praise24%
How we measured this
Method, and what it does not cover
We started from the playlist.church corpus (built 2026-07-18) of real church-curated Spotify worship playlists, and joined each church to its denomination from our directory. The denomination label is not derived from the songs, and the songs were chosen by the churches, not inferred by a worship-style model, so this is not that classifier repackaged. We sort songs into hymns and anthems by their publishing house (CityAlight, Getty, and Sovereign Grace on one side; Hillsong, Bethel, Elevation, and Passion on the other), not by musical form, so a hymn-shaped Hillsong song like King of Kings is counted on the anthem side. We restricted the comparison to 597 churches in English-speaking countries so a language difference could not masquerade as a denominational one, then reported the 5 denomination families with at least 25 churches (258 churches in total).
Read it as a signal, not a verdict. The per-tradition samples are modest (25 to 80 churches), a church "sings" a song if it is in a playlist rather than logged service by service, and the whole corpus skews toward contemporary, playlist-publishing churches. The gap between Baptist at 60% and Pentecostal at 11% is wide enough to be real; treat the smaller differences as directional.
Cite & download
The aggregates are open under CC BY 4.0 and available as raw JSON at /api/worship-by-denomination.json. This is the by-tradition companion to the overall worship-song chart. For methodology questions, write to press at gospelchannel dot com.
Generated 2026-07-26 · Data version 2026.07 · Context: Christianity Today on the Getty modern-hymn movement (2024); benchmark: CCLI Top 100.
Questions people ask
Do different denominations sing different worship songs?
Partly. In this data, the big megachurch anthems (Hillsong, Bethel, Elevation, Passion) reach a large majority of churches in every tradition, from 60% to 84%, and 73% overall. What splits by denomination is the modern hymn: Baptist churches carry a Getty, CityAlight, or Sovereign Grace hymn 60% of the time; Pentecostal churches only 11%. So the divide is not the anthems everyone shares, it is whether a tradition also sings the new hymns.
Which denominations sing the most modern hymns?
In this sample, Baptist churches lead at 60%; evangelical (50%) and Anglican/Episcopal (48%) follow close behind and are within sampling range of each other. Pentecostal (11%) and non-denominational (24%) churches sing them least. Modern hymns here means songs from CityAlight, Keith & Kristyn Getty, or Sovereign Grace Music (classified by publisher, not by musical form).
What worship songs do non-denominational churches sing?
Almost entirely megachurch anthems. The most common in non-denominational churches are Praise (Elevation), What A Beautiful Name (Hillsong), Goodness of God (Bethel), and I Speak Jesus. None of their top songs is a modern hymn.
What counts as a modern hymn?
The lyric-first, theologically dense songs of the modern-hymn movement, associated with Keith & Kristyn Getty, CityAlight, and Sovereign Grace Music. Well-known examples include In Christ Alone, Yet Not I But Through Christ in Me, and Behold Our God. The movement began as a reaction to repetitive contemporary worship and is rooted in Reformed, word-centered theology.
How was this measured?
By joining two independent sources: each church's denomination (from directory data) and the songs in its public Spotify worship playlists (the playlist.church corpus). Nothing here is guessed by an AI worship-style classifier. It covers 258 English-speaking churches with a recognizable denomination.
Find a church that sings your language of worship
Whether you want the modern hymns or the big anthems, you can browse by denomination or worship style and hear what a church actually sounds like before you visit.
The live, always-current chart lives at playlist.church.