SHIPLEY, England (AP) — 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’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.’”
A match made in heaven
Church attendance in the U.K. has been declining for decades, and the 2021 census found that less than half of people in England and Wales now consider themselves Christian. Those who say they have no religion rose from 25% to 37% in a decade.
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 …