If there's not a financial incentive to prevent situations like this, the likelihood that YouTube will correct it is approximately nil.

The sad truth is that the parties controlling the recordings that YouTube's algos erroneously protect are probably worth more to them financially than some church that broadcasts these performances.

It isn't an unreasonable critique but there are schools of capitalism that do not like the copyright system. That isn't an inherent part of capitalism. Peak capitalism tends to ignore copyright (eg, Silicon Valley in the early glory years, or the market for movies once BitTorrent was developed).

But, to a first approximation, in a capitalist system, if $THING doesn't make money, $THING isn't going to get done at any scale which matters. There are exceptions when philosophical principles and inherent human desires (such as curiosity and artistic expression) are involved. The corollary here, in true "the market adapts" fashion, is that if $THING is done and an entity with sufficient money dislikes $THING enough, then $THING will no longer be happening. I'm not sure whether the initial statement, or the corollary is fundamentally more distasteful.

Maybe YouTube just has to commit copyright seppuku to achieve enlightenment.

Their automation obsession has resulted in a firehose of erroneous takedowns that 100% aren't required by law, and they deserve all the ridicule and damage to their business that comes with that.

The fight doesn’t have to take place in the realm of law. At best copyright holders would have sued youtube into oblivion if they didn’t do proactive takedowns. At worst, well considering that Comcast owns both tons of copyrighted property (through Universal Studios) and major telecommunication infrastructure, I can’t imagine how dirty they can play if they had to.

I didn't find out whether they consider religious content as controversial or otherwise unwanted on their platform, but from the overall view, it looks fine.

Are there other hosting options? Vimeo, one of the podcasting "networks", or even a terrestrial radio station which has online archives?

So they will push music attached to dollars, according to the strictest legal terms of the loudest, most punishing complaints. Everything else is ignored, and thus sinks, or gets shoved off the top of the index by greed beasts that ignore courtesy, decency and rules.

Obnoxious greed beasts are sociopathic, and will game every tool Google arms them with. They want to be ranked highest for all keywords, as cheaply as possible.

So, how does one invert this payola scheme, as an eyeball used to justify advertising profits?

You have to tear the greed beasts limb from limb.

It may not be obvious, but the people that are filing spurious claims against you, are not good faith actors. They are the sock puppets of people who stand to make money from the keywords you stand to outshine all others on. You are likely crowding out low quality losers, who unfortunately have enough money to buy off-shore social media fleshbots that protest for them in surrogate.

That's precisely the issue. It is technologically impossible to solve the problem by analyzing the audio.

1. Two different performances could be audibly indistinguishable.

2. An infringing copy isn't necessarily indistinguishable. Often they have their own imperfections.