Christian Music Trivia
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This Christian music trivia quiz has 50 free questions with answers and spans centuries and genres: the stories behind Amazing Grace, How Great Thou Art and Silent Night; Handel's Messiah; gospel queen Mahalia Jackson and Kirk Franklin; the Jesus music of Larry Norman and Keith Green; Petra and Stryper; Amy Grant, Michael W. Smith, Sandi Patty and Steven Curtis Chapman; DC Talk and TobyMac; Third Day, Casting Crowns, MercyMe and Switchfoot; Skillet and Newsboys; the worship wave of Hillsong, Chris Tomlin, Elevation Worship and Lauren Daigle — plus the Dove Awards, K-LOVE and the biggest crossover hits. Early questions suit anyone who has been to a church youth group or a Christmas service; later ones reward CCM devotees who know who has the most Dove Awards and which song broke the record for weeks at No. 1. Every answer was checked against encyclopaedia entries before publishing. No lyrics are quoted.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Who wrote the words to 'Amazing Grace', published in 1779?
John Newton
John Newton had captained a slave ship before he became a clergyman at Olney, where he wrote the hymn to go with his New Year's Day sermon in 1773.
Q 02'How Great Thou Art' began as a poem in which language?
Swedish
Swedish: Carl Boberg's 1885 poem 'O Store Gud' was translated into German and then Russian, and it was the Russian version that missionary Stuart Hine turned into English.
Q 03Which instrument accompanied the first performance of 'Silent Night' on Christmas Eve 1818?
Guitar
Guitar: Joseph Mohr played it himself while he and composer Franz Gruber sang the carol at Christmas Mass, and the well-known tale that the church organ had broken down is unproven.
Q 04Handel made London his home, but which city heard the first performance of his Messiah in 1742?
Dublin
Dublin: to squeeze more people into the new music hall, ladies were asked to come without hoops in their dresses, and Handel gave the takings to charities that included a debtors' prison.
Q 05Which gospel singer's 1947 recording 'Move On Up a Little Higher' sold millions of copies?
Mahalia Jackson
Mahalia Jackson, who sang at the 1963 March on Washington before Martin Luther King Jr. gave his 'I Have a Dream' speech.
Q 06The brothers behind the duo for KING & COUNTRY started out as backing singers for which older sister?
Rebecca St. James
Rebecca St. James was born Rebecca Smallbone and sings under a stage name, which hides the surname she shares with younger brothers Joel and Luke, who backed her on tour.
Q 07What was early contemporary Christian pop of the 1960s and 70s initially called?
Jesus music
Jesus music took its name from the Jesus movement of the late 1960s, and its big 1972 showcase, the Explo '72 festival in Dallas, was dubbed 'the Christian Woodstock'.
Q 08The band Petra, formed in 1972, took its name from the Greek word for what?
Rock
Rock: petra is the Greek word in Matthew 16:18, where Jesus tells Peter, whose own name means rock, that he will build his church on it, so the name fits a rock band twice over.
Q 09Which Christian metal band sold more than a million copies of its 1986 album To Hell with the Devil?
Stryper
Stryper took the stage in yellow-and-black stripes and threw Bibles into the crowd, a habit singer Michael Sweet says the band has always kept.
Q 10Which Christian singer, who died in a 1982 plane crash, gave his records away for voluntary donations?
Keith Green
Keith Green left his record label so that he could offer his 1980 album So You Wanna Go Back to Egypt for whatever each listener could afford, even nothing.
Q 11Which singer is known as 'The Queen of Christian Pop'?
Amy Grant
Amy Grant made the first Christian album to go platinum, then crossed over to pop radio so completely that she scored a No. 1 hit on the Billboard Hot 100.
Q 12Which 1991 album produced the No. 1 pop hit 'Baby Baby'?
Heart in Motion
Heart in Motion: 'Baby Baby' sounds like a love song, but its singer wrote the words about her six-week-old daughter, Millie.
Q 13Which Michael W. Smith single reached No. 6 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1991?
Place in This World
Place in This World came from Go West Young Man, and in 1992 the American Music Awards named Michael W. Smith favorite new adult contemporary artist, nearly a decade after his first album.
Q 21Which MercyMe song about the death of Bart Millard's father became a 2018 film of the same name?
I Can Only Imagine
I Can Only Imagine began as a phrase Bart Millard kept scribbling for years after his father died; when he finally sat down with it, he says the lyrics took about ten minutes.
Q 22Which Christian pop-punk band named itself after guitarist Matt Hoopes's car?
Relient K
Relient K borrowed the name of a Plymouth Reliant K, a boxy 1980s economy car, and misspelled it on purpose to set the band apart from the car.
Q 23Which band was founded in Marietta, Georgia, in 1991 by Mac Powell and Mark Lee?
Third Day
Q 14Whose rendition of 'The Star-Spangled Banner', aired during the 1986 Statue of Liberty rededication, made her nationally known?
Sandi Patty
Sandi Patty had sung for a largely Christian audience until her recording played during the broadcast, and the exposure landed her on The Tonight Show.
Q 15As of 2025, which artist had won more Dove Awards than anyone else in history?
Steven Curtis Chapman
Steven Curtis Chapman has about 60 of them. He and his wife, Mary Beth, adopted three daughters from China and in 2003 founded Show Hope to help other families adopt.
Q 16Where did DC Talk form in 1987?
Liberty University in Virginia
Liberty University in Virginia: the 'DC' first pointed to Washington, D.C., and only later was it said to stand for 'decent Christian'.
Q 17What was DC Talk's 1995 album, whose title track became an anthem of Christian music?
Jesus Freak
Jesus Freak took an insult once thrown at zealous young believers and wore it with pride, setting the title track to a loud, grunge-style sound.
Q 18What is the name of TobyMac's road band?
Diverse City
Diverse City shares its name with TobyMac's 2004 album Welcome to Diverse City, which reunited him with his two DC Talk bandmates on a remix of the track 'Atmosphere'.
Q 19Which 1997 Kirk Franklin hit won heavy rotation on MTV?
Stomp
Stomp borrowed the groove of 'One Nation Under a Groove' and added a rap from Salt of Salt-N-Pepa, a mix that carried a gospel choir onto pop and R&B radio.
Q 20What was the name of Kirk Franklin's first choir, which debuted on record in 1993?
The Family
The Family was put together by Kirk Franklin, who was given up as a small child and raised by a great-aunt who collected aluminum cans to pay for his piano lessons.
Third Day grew out of a high-school garage band with the unlikely name Nuclear Hoedown, where Mac Powell and Mark Lee first played together before turning to songs about their faith.
Q 24Casting Crowns' frontman Mark Hall formed the band in 1999 while working as what?
A youth pastor
A youth pastor: even after their debut album took off, Mark Hall and his bandmates kept working as youth ministers at a Baptist church outside Atlanta.
Q 25Where does the name of the band Switchfoot come from?
A surfing term
A surfing term: the Foreman brothers had surfed since childhood, and to switch your feet is to take a new stance on the board, facing the opposite direction.
Q 26In which city was Skillet formed in 1996?
Memphis
Memphis: the founders had each spent years in other bands, so the name was a joke about tossing ingredients from all their styles into one skillet.
Q 27Which Christian band, founded in Mooloolaba, Australia, in 1985, later performed in the film God's Not Dead?
Newsboys
Newsboys play 'God's Not Dead (Like a Lion)' in the film's concert scene, and after the 2014 release the three-year-old song became the band's first platinum single.
Q 28Which Hillsong Worship song won the 2018 Grammy for Best Contemporary Christian Music Performance/Song?
What a Beautiful Name
What a Beautiful Name was written by Brooke Ligertwood and Ben Fielding simply to be sung at the church's own annual conference, and it went on to win the group its only Grammy.
Q 29In which Australian city was Hillsong Church founded in 1983?
Sydney
Sydney: Brian and Bobbie Houston hired a public-school hall in the city's north-west for their first services, and the church was called Hills Christian Life Centre until 2001.
Q 30Which worship leader from Grand Saline, Texas, co-wrote 'How Great Is Our God'?
Chris Tomlin
Chris Tomlin grew up on country music and Willie Nelson songs, long before his own worship songs became some of the most sung in American churches.