Gott ist nicht tot. The sacred in post WW2 music.

[Louis]

I suspect one reason for the "sacred music" trend, which is indeed huge in music since 1945 and particularly from the 1970s on:

It's absurdly hard for composers to come up with new music which is dialectial and profound from its own structure and form.

A lot of modern music sounds simply "meditative"

So why not take a meditative piece of music and try to make it more profound by saying it's about faith and god.

[Mandryka]

I suspect one reason for the "sacred music" trend, which is indeed huge in music since 1945 and particularly from the 1970s on:

It's absurdly hard for composers to come up with new music which is dialectial and profound from its own structure and form.

A lot of modern music sounds simply "meditative"

So why not take a meditative piece of music and try to make it more profound by saying it's about faith and god.

I urge you to go through the examples posted here so far, because I don't think any of them are "simply "meditative" with the possible exception of the Part. On the contrary.

There may be some truth in what you say, but I doubt it's the heart of the matter. 

But it is strange, that in music there should be such a theological trend but not, as far as I know, in  any other art.   Maybe it's partly a question of sponsorship.

[Mandryka]

Schoenberg's setting of the Hebrew text of Psalm 130 was written after the war - 1950. Very prayerful performance here