Wrestling Church – The Weird Side of the Internet

Wrestling Church – The Weird Side of the Internet – by Liam Sweeny.

Christianity is in trouble, at least in the UK and Wales. Membership is down, and people who claim to have no religion has risen in recent years from 20% to 37%. So obviously, churches have to get creative. This could mean bingo on Wednesday nights, or a 50/50 raffle entry for every successful confession. Or it could mean letting the congregation watch two people pound the snot out of each other between the Gospel reading and the sermon. Yes, that’s exactly what I said.

Welcome to Saint Peter’s Anglican Church in Shipley, England. It is otherwise known as Wrestling Church, and is presided over by 37-year old Gareth Thompson. Having lived a rough life of sexual abuse and homelessness, Gareth had found solace in watching professional wrestling, and he sees the sport as a perfect metaphor of the struggle of good and evil. He sees, in wrestling, David and Goliath, Cain and Able, and Esau and Jacob. And it has brought an entirely new congregation that is both new to Christianity and longstanding worshippers.

Funny story. My mom was a big wrestling fan during the nine months I spent hitching a ride. And as she recounted, when she was some months along, she went to a wrestling match, and, filled with compassion and righteous anger at the “bad guy” wrestler, walked up and threw her purse in the ring. Little did she know the bun in her oven would grow to almost seven feet tall.

I’m not a big wrestling fan, but this sounds cool. I know some people think this is tawdry, but what was Christianity when Jesus was alive but a traveling road show? You go to where the people are, figuratively and sometimes literally, that’s what spreading the Gospel is about, right? If entertaining people on Sunday makes them want to be better people, what’s wrong with that?

Shipley, England, home of the Divine Right Elbow.

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