Southern France during the Crusades. Home of Bons Chretians - Good Christians - who made no claim to exclusivity nor paraded any kind of costumed pontificating arrogance designed to awe the ignorant and enhance personal power and wealth at the expense of believers.

They were known as "Good Christians", not a politburo of religious thugs dominated by a self-interested cleric wearing the highest Miter and vestments pretending to speak to the world for God.

Like good Christians in America today, not a politburo primarily composed of Christian evangelical and television thugs dominated by self-interest wearing wealth like a badge of piety and pretending to speak to the world  the words of a dead book as if God really spoke them and then shut the hell up forever. The absolute arrogance of that notion reflects nothing more than a Kindergarten Religion led by the most immature of the class.

Oh that we could all drink our Pepsi's and munch our peanuts while falling under the hypnotic spell of Hollywood's greatest tale-weavers.

A movie if you please about Roman Catholic Christianity`s declaration of war upon it`s own kindred. The Albigensian Crusade that did not come to pass in the Middle East where devout cross-wearing professional killers slaughtered mercilessly men, women and children while attempting to take back cities and relics in the name of someone who never did nor ever would authorize violence in His name.:

Albigensian is one word used to describe Christian believers and the so-called heretics who ministered to them. They were also known as Cathari (Cathars). In a very short time, they transformed most of Southern France into something more resembling Christian ideals preached even in Catholic cathedrals all over Europe.

A Cathar priest was known as a "Perfect" (in French, Parfait) and these priests were quite obviously much more effective in building communities of faith than was the Roman Catholic empire with its thousand-year head start and semi-successful use of fear, shame, guilt and extortion based on manipulations using a bible withheld from all but the priesthood.

The crime of the Cathari?

A spiritual alternative of substance more than form and extortion;

one that more closely resembled the stories about the wonder and wisdom of Jesus - many stories which the Catholic clerics themselves shared with the peasants.

It was a legitimate Christian alternative, only a version that did not arise out of expediency, greed and fear of civil authority.

It did not exploit the people nor tax them nor play upon their fears of a mindless and judgmental God who had somehow forced them into subservience to an openly arrogant and greedy priesthood.

It was a Christianity of trust without spiritual extortion.

"The Albigensian Crusade and the Inquisition in Languedoc had established one dark, immutable axiom: To dedicate one's life to a Christian creed outside the bounds of medieval orthodoxy was a capital crime. Only those who renounced the Cathar creed would be spared the flames of ecclesiastical justice.

"Bertrand Marty and his 200 companions had a fortnight to think over their stark choice: recant or burn. Not one of the Perfect came forward to beg mercy of Archbishop Amiel. They parceled out their meager belongings among their neighbors on the mountaintop and comforted their weeping relatives.

"As their time left on Earth dwindled each passing day, the men and women of the dualist faith steeled themselves for an awful death. From atop the walls of Montsegur, the archbishop's men could be seen at work in a field far below, stacking a large enclosure with dry wood scavenged from the surrounding forests.

"On Sunday, March 13, ten days into the two-week wait, twenty-one credentes approached the Perfect and asked to be given the consolamentum. They too were willing to brave the fire. It was the most eloquent moment in the whole sad saga of Catharism, a testament to the devotion inspired by the holy men and women whose preaching had convulsed an era.

"Now, as they were on the threshold of death, twenty-one people stepped forward to join them. It was an act of defiance, solidarity, courage, and, in the end, faith. These companions of the last hour came from all stations of feudal society. Raymond of Pereille's wife, Corba, and daughter, Esclarmonde, decided to leave their noble families for the timeless embrace of the Good. With them went four knights, six soldiers (two with their wives), two messengers, one squire, one crossbowman, one merchant, one peasant woman, and one lady.

"The Perfect of Montsegur administered the consolamentum to all of them and welcomed them into their ranks. They had three days of life remaining.

"The lugubrious procession of March 16, 1244, began in the early morning. It wound down the sinuous track leading from the summit to a clearing at the base of the hill. The 220 or so condemned walked past the last patches of snow on the brown winter grass until they reached a palisade of logs. Friend and enemy looked on.

"The leaders of the Cathar faith, barefoot and clad only in coarse robes, climbed the ladders propped up against the wooden walls. Groups of them were lashed together, their backs to the tall stakes sticking up from the colossal bier. At a sign from the archbishop, his men threw burning brands into the enclosure.

"The low murmur of prayers was overtaken by the crackling sound of flame, spreading underfoot, curing the first of the fiery twigs and setting the hems of garments alight. Within minutes, the crackling had become one great oceanic roar.

"By midmorning, a choking black nimbus billowed through the ravines and valleys leading from Montsegur. Shepherds on nearby hills would have seen it rise slowly, heavy with the stench of fear and pain and man's inhumanity to God. The wind took the cloud and, as it had done so long ago at Beziers, lifted it high into the skies of Languedoc. The particles of smoke drifted and dispersed, then disappeared."

Stephen O'Shea- The Perfect Heresy

"Amaury responded to the question: `How shall we tell who are the heretics?' with his now infamous answer that undoubtedly expressed the spirit of the Albigensian Crusade.
`Kill them all, the Lord will know his own.'"

Tobias Churton- The Gnostics

If Christians cannot bring themselves to see and learn about America's persecution of non-Christians in the Middle East then perhaps a good dose of graphic historical truth in the Christ-Passion Hollywood style will wake them up.

Literal thinking and a dogmatic insistence on an inerrant Bible never has and will never serve this generation and the generations to come in an efficacious way.

The greatest handicap of literal fundamentalists is their obstinate insistence on continuing to revere history at the cost of a diminished future - in effect attempting to drive forward while looking out the rear window, willfully refusing to see anything but a receding road.