Flock grapples with faith in Wrestling Church
SHIPLEY, England—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 wrestlers 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’s the creation of Gareth Thompson, a charismatic 37-year-old who says he was saved by pro wrestling and Jesus—and wants others to have the same experience.
Thompson says the outsized characters and scripted morality battles of pro wrestling fit naturally with a Christian message.
“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.’”
Church attendance in the United Kingdom has been declining for decades. That has led churches to get creative in order to survive.
“You’ve got to take a few risks,” said the Rev. Natasha Thomas, the priest in charge at St. Peter’s.
“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.”
Solace and release
At a recent 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.
“I think it’s absolutely wonderful,” said Chris Moss, who married her husband, Mike, in St. Peter’s almost 50 years ago.
“You can look at some of the wrestlers and think”—she scrunched her face in distaste. But talking to them made her realize “you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover.”
Thompson, whose wrestling moniker is Gareth Angel, both wrestles and presides over the organized mayhem. He’s a mix of preacher and ringmaster, wearing a T-shirt that says “Pray, eat, wrestle, repeat.”
He’s loved wrestling since it provided solace and release during a troubled upbringing that saw him survive childhood sexual abuse and a period of homelessness as a teenager.
“I could watch Shawn Michaels and the Rock and Stone Cold (Steve Austin) and I could be like, I want to be like them,” he said. “So it’s always been an escape for me, and a release and a way to get away from stuff. But then God has obviously turned that around now and it’s become this passion.”
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.
Women’s champion
Kiara, Kingdom Wrestling’s reigning women’s champion, said the organization has helped her bring her Catholic faith into her wrestling life.
“It’s thanks to Kingdom Wrestling that I’ve had the confidence to pray in the locker room now before matches,” said Kiara, 26, known outside the ring as Stephanie Sid.
“I invite my opponent to pray with me, pray that we have a safe match, pray that there’s no injuries and pray that we entertain everybody here.”
