Sitting around a wrestling ring, churchgoers roared as local hero Billy O’Keeffe body-slammed a fighter named Disciple. Beneath stained-glass windows, they whooped and cheered as burly, tattooed wresters tumbled into the aisle during a six-man tag-team battle.
This is Wrestling Church, which brings blood, sweat and tears — mostly sweat — to St Peter’s Anglican church in the northern England town of Shipley.
It is the creation of Gareth Thompson, a charismatic 37-year-old who said he was saved by pro wrestling and Jesus — and wants others to have the same experience.
Photo: AP
The outsized characters and scripted morality battles of pro wrestling fit naturally with a Christian message, Thompson said.
“Boil it down to the basics, it’s good versus evil,” he said. “When I became Christian, I started seeing the wrestling world through a Christian lens. I started seeing David and Goliath. I started seeing Cain and Abel. I started seeing Esau having his heritage stolen from him — and I’m like: ‘We could tell these stories,’” he said.
Church attendance in the UK has been declining for decades, and a 2021 census found that fewer than half of people in England and Wales consider themselves Christian. Those who said they have no religion rose from 25 percent to 37 percent in a decade.
Photo: AP
That has led churches to get creative to survive.
“You’ve got to take a few risks,” said the Reverend Natasha Thomas, the priest in charge at St Peter’s.
She said she “wasn’t entirely sure what it was I was letting myself in for” when she agreed to host wrestling events.
“It’s not church as you would know it. It’s certainly not for everyone,” she said. “But it’s bringing in a different group of people, a different community, than we would normally get.”
At a Wrestling Church evening, almost 200 people — older couples, teenagers, pierced and tattooed wrestling fans, parents with excited young children — packed into chairs around a ring erected under the vaulted ceiling of the century-old church.
After a short homily and prayer from Thomas, it was time for two hours of smackdowns, body slams and flying headbutts. The atmosphere grew cheerfully raucous, as fans waved giant foam fingers and hollered “knock him out” at participants.
Some longtime churchgoers have welcomed the infusion of energy.
“I think it’s absolutely wonderful,” said Chris Moss, who married her husband in St Peter’s almost 50 years ago.
“You can look at some of the wrestlers and think,” she said, scrunching her face in distaste.
However, talking to them made her realize “you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover.”
Thompson, whose wrestling moniker is Gareth Angel, wrestles and presides over the organized mayhem. He is a mix of preacher and ringmaster, wearing a T-shirt that says “Pray, eat, wrestle, repeat.”
He found Christianity in 2011, ran his first Wrestling Church event in a former nightclub-turned-church in 2022, and moved to St Peter’s last year.
As well as the monthly Saturday night shows, his charity Kingdom Wrestling runs training sessions for adults and children in a back room of the church, along with women’s self-defense classes, a men’s mental health group and coaching for children who have been expelled from school.
For many in the close-knit community of British wrestlers and fans, religion is a new ingredient, but not an unwelcome one.
“I’m mainly here for the wrestling,” said 33-year-old Liam Ledger, who wrestles as Flamin’ Daemon Crowe.
Sitting in a pungent changing room as wrestlers discussed fight plans, he said it was a bit “surreal” when baptisms are held between bouts.
“It works both ways,” he said. “There’s people that come here that are big on religion, and they’re here for all of that sort of stuff, and then they go: ‘Oh, actually this wrestling is sort of fun.’”
Only a handful of people have gone from watching the wrestling to attending Sunday-morning services, but Wrestling Church baptized 30 people in its first year.
Thompson is unfazed by doubters in the format.
“People say: ‘Oh, wrestling and Christianity, they’re two fake things in a fake world of their own existence,’” he said. “If you don’t believe in it, of course you will think that of it, but my own personal experience of my Christian faith is that it is alive and living, and it is true. The wrestling world, if you really believe in it, you believe that it’s true and you can suspend your disbelief.
“You suspend it because you want to get lost in it. You want to believe in it. You want to hope for it,” he said.
BACKLASH: The National Party quit its decades-long partnership with the Liberal Party after their election loss to center-left Labor, which won a historic third term Australia’s National Party has split from its conservative coalition partner of more than 60 years, the Liberal Party, citing policy differences over renewable energy and after a resounding loss at a national election this month. “Its time to have a break,” Nationals leader David Littleproud told reporters yesterday. The split shows the pressure on Australia’s conservative parties after Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s center-left Labor party won a historic second term in the May 3 election, powered by a voter backlash against US President Donald Trump’s policies. Under the long-standing partnership in state and federal politics, the Liberal and National coalition had shared power
A Croatian town has come up with a novel solution to solve the issue of working parents when there are no public childcare spaces available: pay grandparents to do it. Samobor, near the capital, Zagreb, has become the first in the country to run a “Grandmother-Grandfather Service,” which pays 360 euros (US$400) a month per child. The scheme allows grandparents to top up their pension, but the authorities also hope it will boost family ties and tackle social isolation as the population ages. “The benefits are multiple,” Samobor Mayor Petra Skrobot told reporters. “Pensions are rather low and for parents it is sometimes
CONTROVERSY: During the performance of Israel’s entrant Yuval Raphael’s song ‘New Day Will Rise,’ loud whistles were heard and two people tried to get on stage Austria’s JJ yesterday won the Eurovision Song Contest, with his operatic song Wasted Love triumphing at the world’s biggest live music television event. After votes from national juries around Europe and viewers from across the continent and beyond, JJ gave Austria its first victory since bearded drag performer Conchita Wurst’s 2014 triumph. After the nail-biting drama as the votes were revealed running into yesterday morning, Austria finished with 436 points, ahead of Israel — whose participation drew protests — on 357 and Estonia on 356. “Thank you to you, Europe, for making my dreams come true,” 24-year-old countertenor JJ, whose
A documentary whose main subject, 25-year-old photojournalist Fatima Hassouna, was killed in an Israeli airstrike in Gaza weeks before it premiered at Cannes stunned viewers into silence at the festival on Thursday. As the cinema lights came back on, filmmaker Sepideh Farsi held up an image of the young Palestinian woman killed with younger siblings on April 16, and encouraged the audience to stand up and clap to pay tribute. “To kill a child, to kill a photographer is unacceptable,” Farsi said. “There are still children to save. It must be done fast,” the exiled Iranian filmmaker added. With Israel
RSS