Love old gospel music!!

This is the kind of Gospel Music, I can get into.

Sister Rosetta Tharpe (March 20, 1915 – October 9, 1973) was an American singer, songwriter, guitarist, and recording artist. As a pioneer of mid-20th-century music, she attained popularity in the 1930s and 1940s with her gospel recordings, characterized by a unique mixture of spiritual lyrics and rhythmic accompaniment that was a precursor of rock and roll. She was the first great recording star of gospel music and among the first gospel musicians to appeal to rhythm-and-blues and rock-and-roll audiences, later being referred to as "the original soul sister" and "the Godmother of rock and roll". She influenced early rock-and-roll musicians, including Little Richard, Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins, Chuck Berry, Elvis Presley and Jerry Lee Lewis.

While I'm an atheist, I do enjoy occasionally hearing a gospel song because of the music or rhythm rather than meaning. Since I'm not African American and didn't grow up in a church I have no negative connections as you do. Music, art, and literature are subjective.

Christian devotional music tends to irritate every one of my nerves.

True story: I was once a gospel singer in the south and billed as "The Teenage Gospel Singing Sensation" (This was over 40 years ago.) I toured with numerous well known country and gospel artists for a few years. I started at 14 and enjoyed some my first "sins" drinking, drugs and sex back stage and in the dressing rooms, after I and the other gospel singers and quartets had knelt/cried/sang of sin, salvation and the glory of god. Kinda messed up for a kid raised in a southern pentecostal church. Very liberating and has brought me to here today. I leaned about hypocrisy and pandering at a very early. But DAMN did I have some fun!

Yup, but I also consider the source and realize that most of the artists and musicians of the past few centuries were only creating work for the main employer of the time..the church.
No doubt, their works reflected their sponsors more than their true beliefs.

I’ve no religious past, but that music SUCKS.

Is there a religious music whose purpose is not to slave you? I like the beauty of a well done performance. I am oblivious to religious music purpose on its design. I am not at war with god or with religion.

There's just so much I feel that way about. I used to think all the religious music, paintings, and sculpture was so beautiful. Especially what Michelangelo did. Now, not so much.
I was raised catholic. There was so much pomp and circumstance attached to all the rituals.
Now, knowing what I know about the history of the catholic church, and all other religions, it just turns my stomach. I still appreciate church architecture, but that's waning as well.