There is record of the earliest music of the Christian church in a few New Testament books of what are probably hymns. Some of these fragments are still sung as hymns today in the Orthodox Church, including "Awake, awake O sleeper" on the occasion of someone's baptism.

Being Jewish, Jesus and his disciples would most likely have sung the psalms from memory. However, without a centralised music industry, the repertoire of ordinary people was much greater than it is today, so they probably knew other songs too. Early Christians continued to sing the psalms much as they were sung in the synagogues in the first century

Gospel music refers to the religious music that first came out of African-American churches in the first quarter of the twentieth century or, more loosely, to both black gospel music and to the religious music composed and sung by predominately white Southern Gospel artists. While the separation between the two styles was never absolute both drew from the Methodist hymnal and artists in one tradition sometimes sang songs belonging to the other.The sharp division between black and white America, particularly black and white churches, kept the two apart. While those divisions have lessened slightly in the past fifty years, the two traditions are still distinct.

In both traditions, some performers, such as Mahalia Jackson have limited themselves to appearing in religious contexts only, while others, such as Sister Rosetta Tharpe, the Golden Gate Quartet and Clara Ward, have performed gospel music in secular settings, even night clubs. Many performers, such as The Jordanaires, The Blackwood Brothers, Al Green, and Solomon Burke have performed both secular and religious music. It is common for such performers to include gospel songs in otherwise secular performances, although the opposite almost never happens.

.Gospel is a musical genre characterised by dominant vocals (often with strong use of harmony) referencing lyrics of a religious nature, particularly Christian. Subgenres include contemporary gospel and urban contemporary gospel. Gospel is the the successor to spirituals, consisting of religious songs close to the style of late-nineteenth-century popular music.