The New Cathars

Eight hundred years ago, a Christian movement was driven to extinction. But its questions never disappeared. The New Cathars explores the history, faith, persecution, and surviving teachings of the medieval Good Christians, often called the Cathars, while asking a larger question: what can their story teach us about following Christ today? Three times each week, we return to the surviving texts, the Gospel, eyewitness testimony, inquisitorial records, and modern scholarship to separate what we know, what was alleged, what remains disputed, and what may have been lost. We investigate difficult questions rather than avoiding them. Were the Cathars truly dualists? What did they believe about Jesus, Mary, Scripture, the Old Testament, prayer, materialism, and salvation? What did Rome get right about them? What might their opponents have misunderstood or exaggerated? And where the evidence cannot answer, we are willing to say: we don’t know. This is also a journey forward. We cannot recreate the eight centuries of theological development that persecution prevented. We can recover what survives, learn from the Good Christians, return continually to the Gospel, and explore what a modern New Cathar movement might become. Historical. Investigative. Christ first. Gospel focused. New episodes every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.