"IT'S STILL REAL TO ME, DAMMIT!": What Professional Wrestling Teaches Us About Belief, Authenticity, and Religion

Our fall semester finale!

We are living in a cultural moment that values authenticity and discusses authenticity all the time while also being incredibly skeptical of it. What makes something real? What makes it authentic? Can we even know anymore? 

A professor of Religious Studies turns to one of the greatest American performance arts to address these questions: Professional Wrestling. Wrestling isn't just fake. It's a cultural artform where performers, audiences, and producers play with the boundaries between truth and fiction. For generations, it has offered a fascinating window into how people gather together, construct authenticity, suspend disbelief, and invest meaning in stories they know are staged.

This Discourse explores what professional wrestling can teach us about belief, religion, and authenticity in a world where reality itself increasingly feels like a performance. 

Mike Altman is a Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Alabama. Trained in the study of…