From his Wiki:
and from the Wiki on the song itself, he turned it into a jazz standard on his 1938 Decca recording.
Actually, it didn’t. Armstrong recorded Saints in 1938, and there were no charts back then.
That Armstrong’s Saints hit the top ten comes from the book Pop Memories 1890—1954 by Joel Whitburn. This author has published many books based on Billboard charts, and most of them are fine. This one, however, covers the era before Billboard charts, during which record sales info was kept in the vaults of record companies and not released to the public. For Pop Memories, Whitburn pieced together his own set of charts based on industry publications. The book is notorious among record collectors for its inaccuracies and distortions. In many cases it claims great popularity for records that are so rare today that it’s unlikely many were ever sold. In one case, it gives credit to a performer (Billy Murray) who is known by collectors not to have performed on the record in question (Take Me Out to the Ball Game by the Haydn Quartet).
Almost everything you see in print about chart rankings of records from before 1955 comes from this book. I wouldn’t trust anything that’s based on it.
This thread needs some more soul/gospel.
“Are You Ready” - Pacific Gas & Electric
“I’ll Take You There” - The Staple Singers
[Johnny Carson]I did not know that![/JC]
Not a charting single, but IMHO notable enough to mention: “After Forever” by Black Sabbath. Opening verse:
Have you ever thought about your soul can it be saved?
Or perhaps you think that when you’re dead you just stay in your grave
Is God just a thought within your head or is he a part of you?
Is Christ just a name that you read in a book when you were in school?
If we start veering away from top 40, there are a ton of great ones such as “Satan is Real” by the Louvin Brothers and “The Christian Life” by the Byrds.
Although there was a resurgence in 2010, after New Orleans won the Super Bowl. Peaked at #11.
Did they play “Imagine there’s no heaven”?
Has anybody mentioned “People Get Ready” by the Impressions?
Ferlin Husky had a Top 20 hit with “Wings of a Dove” in 1960.
Yep 
I don’t think any of them hit the top 40, but a whole bunch of Alice Cooper’s songs have overtly Christian themes (particularly on “Brutal Planet,” “Dragontown,” and “The Last Temptation”).
Has anyone mentioned Let It Be? Explicit reference to Mother Mary.
Imagine is a song about the Kingdom of God on earth. There’d be no heaven, because earth would be heaven. There’d be no religion, because its mission would be fulfilled. All the other negatives (no countries, no killing, no possessions, no hunger, no greed) and the positives (peace, unity, brotherhood) are goals of Christ.
I think Paul says that Mother Mary was inspired by his own mother and is not biblical.
I was responding the person who said their big hits might not be overtly religious. So, if you are responding to me while dropping the context of the conversation, I guess that’s what you’re missing.
IMHO, how could references to a 40 day Flood and asking to be lifted up by God not be religious? I’m not religious but I had a little kid’s bible and some brief exposure to church as a child and I thought the whole 40 day flood thing was one of the most generally known religious references.
“Imagine no religion”
There are so many Marys in the New Testament that I wonder if “Mary” isn’t Aramaic for “some random woman.”
Jesus never said anything about religion.
Hard disagree. Imagine is a song about a world where there are no supernatural consequences for our actions; “no Hell below us, above us only sky”. It’s about a world where people are good to each other not because they’re afraid of punishment or hoping for reward, but because they know it’s the right thing to do. Lennon posits that once all the social pressures telling us to hate this or shun that or fear the outsider are removed, all that is left is love.
Loving because you know it’s the right thing to do is the essence of Christ’s message.
Michael W Smith hit #6 with “Place In This World”, which features lyrics like:
ETA: album released in 1990, song in 1991. The year I graduated from high school.