U2 Inspired Evangelical Church Worship Music
Thank God U2 aren't litigious, because everybody ripped them off.
From a Guitar.com interview by Crystal Koe with Megadeath's bassist, David Ellefson:
Elsewhere, the bassist shares how U2’s influence extends to not just rock music, but contemporary church music as well, saying: “I started playing in church a little bit, which was right after the Risk album. My kids were real young, so my family started going to this modern church. And I realised almost every song in there, if it weren’t for U2, there would be no modern church music. Chris Tomlin, all this stuff. It’s all U2, you know, Where the Streets Have No Name… The whole genre. And thank God U2 aren’t litigious, because everybody ripped them off.”
It's funny to hear it from the bassist from a heavy metal band, but he's 100% accurate. If you stepped inside a evangelical church from the late 90's on—even to this day—and you have even the most basic of popular musical ears, you can hear the influence of U2 over everything.
It's a funny mix of U2 being "safe" for a while in the 80's before getting more dangerous and edgy (every pun intended) in the 90's—"Bono is smoking! Is he even a Christian???"—and then back to being more palatable in the 2000's to the evangelical ear.
The irony being that the band has established many times over that they are very pro-choice, attempting to be LGBTQ+ allies, pro-feminism, call out hypocrisy in how the poor and misfortunate are treated, vulnerable and honest, and generally come off very progressive. All things many modern evangelical churches are terrified of even having conversations around.
But the church has no problem ripping off the synth / string intros, jangly chords, delay, reverb, and worship leaders desperate to be rock stars, and leaves the actual heart stuff to a "secular" band to work through.