Independent Christian traditions defy simple categorisation. The term ‘Independent’, however, does not denote a catchall category of marginal Christian traditions who do not neatly ‘fit’ into the historic families of the Christian faith. Instead, these groups self-identify as ‘Independent’ often based on historical, social and theological circumstances. Many Independent groups, such as Churches of Christ (non-instrumental), represent denominations that self-consciously separated from the historic families of the Christian faith at some point in their history. Other Independent groups, such as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS), trace their origins to religious movements outside and separate from historic Christian traditions. At the same time, others are Independent because their theology and practice fall outside of traditional Christian orthodoxy. For example, Jehovah's Witnesses reject Nicaean and Chalcedonian Trinitarian formulations, favouring an Arian interpretation of Jesus Christ. Finally, Christian groups can be Independents for various reasons that fall outside of those listed above. For example, Independent traditions such as the National Baptist Convention and the Church of God in Christ emerged when an ethnic minority had to create a new denomination in the face of racial prejudice. Yet despite the diverse nature of Independent Christian traditions, these groups have a commonality in their tendency to exhibit a high degree of creativity and energy in their respective interpretations of the Christian faith. As a result, Independents’ respective sense of mission and identity have left a lasting imprint on both North American Christianity and the character of world Christianity.

The third edition of the World Christian Encyclopedia designates roughly 280 Independent Christian denominations in North America, with 248 in the USA. Of the 32 remaining groups, the majority began as US Independent denominations before being established in Bermuda, Canada and Greenland. Why does the USA have so many Independent Christian groups, especially compared with other North American nations? What is distinctive about the cultural and religious landscape of the USA that allows Independent denominations to proliferate and thrive? This essay briefly explores the political and cultural developments in the late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century USA that allowed Independent Christian denominations to succeed. After I establish this context, I discuss representative examples of contemporary North American Independents, many of which have roots in the USA.

The sagacity with which Mr. Hoskins had chosen the site of Judiville became every day more manifest, by the preference given to it by settlers of the mechanical orders. It was evident, in the course of the first twelve months, that it would in the end leave Babelmandel and Napoleon two dwarfs; and nothing did so much to help it forward as the judicious bargain which the far-foreseeing old man made with Mr. Bell to become preacher and teacher. For by the end of three months, the settlers at Babelmandel, seeing the turn which the emigration had taken towards Judiville, willingly assented that Mr. Bell should fulfil his agreement with Mr. Hoskins; and his renown as a great gun having been constantly spreading, many who came to settle at Napoleon or Babelmandel, set themselves down there entirely on account of the minister.

Among a batch of these was a widow lady, with two fine young men her sons, and an only daughter. They were of a genteeler class than emigrants commonly consist of, and the two sons were, for settlers, the best prepared of all I have ever met with. Mr. Cockspur, their father, had long meditated the intention of bringing his family to America, being a man of republican predilections, and he had brought up and educated his children for the purpose. There was scarcely a useful trade of which both Oliver and Bradshaw Cockspur had not some knowledge, and few mechanical tools they did not handle with dexterity. The young lady their sister was no less accomplished than her brothers; all sorts of household thrifts were as familiar to her finger-ends, as scratching to the nails of a highland-man. Besides baking and brewing, pickling and stewing, shaping and sewing, and every sort of domestical doing, she had a spinning-wheel and a loom on which she plied the flying shuttle like a destiny weaving the life of a prodigal. Nor, with all these qualifications to make themselves independent, were they unprepared with pastimes.

A meaningful tension lies throughout Montesquieu's works. In The Spirit of the Laws, he states that virtue, or the love of the laws and the homeland, is a principle contrary to human nature, which requires constant self-renunciation. As such, it is an unreliable passion for anchoring the political community. Yet, he bemoans contemporary citizens’ smallness of stature compared to the ancients. He laments ‘The things that were done in those governments that we no longer see and that astonish our small souls.’ In My Thoughts, Montesquieu more poignantly writes: ‘When one thinks about the pettiness of our motives, the baseness of our means, the avarice with which we seek out vile rewards, the ambition – so different from love of glory – one is astonished at the difference in spectacles, and it seems that, ever since those two great peoples ceased to exist, men have lost a few inches in stature.’ Notwithstanding Montesquieu's nostalgia for the classical politics of Athens and Rome, his emphasis on stature reveals an important philosophical insight, which intimates the possibility of fulfilling greater human capacities that once flourished during antiquity. If Montesquieu rejects the classical republican vision of politics on both practical and theoretical grounds, as we have seen in his rejection of James Harrington's political project, what are the more human qualities of past ages that could be revived? The following two chapters will examine Montesquieu's and his Scottish counterparts’ response to this question.

Scholars have argued that Montesquieu doubted the practicality of loftier forms of honour and virtue in a world of small souls. They unearth a theory of honour which aims to approximate Mandevillean virtue, whereby individuals pursue their private interests, unwittingly serving the public interest.

In the wake of his 2016 election and throughout his presidency and most especially in the lead-up to and wake of the 2020 election, Donald Trump made near constant reference to ‘fake news’, ‘rigged’ outcomes and ‘stolen’ elections. His false claims about stolen elections predictably reached a crescendo when Joe Biden was elected as the forty-sixth President of the United States in November 2020. In early 2021, crowds of Trump supporters descended on Washington, DC, to protest against Congress's certification of the election results. On 6 January, with Trump's encouragement, thousands of those who had gathered in DC marched to the US Capitol grounds in an attempt to overturn the results of the election. Quickly overwhelming security, hundreds of the rioters broke into the Capitol building, which they occupied for much of the afternoon.

Republican Party lawmakers and donors, US military members and various rogue militia groups, QAnon supporters and other conspiracists, Proud Boys and Boogaloo Boys, along with an array of other far-right and white-nationalist groups, from neo-Nazis to neo-Confederates, were represented in the coalition that stormed the Capitol. So too were members of one of Donald Trump's most faithful and devoted groups of supporters: white Christians. Religious iconography in general and Christian imagery in particular were well represented. Flags, banners and posters bearing crosses and Christian messaging marched lockstep alongside the kinds of Norse mythological symbols often appropriated for contemporary white supremacist purposes; a variety of marchers wore clothing emblazoned with a range of racist and anti-Semitic slogans, memes and ideas.

When pressed, some of the white Christian leaders who otherwise supported Trump throughout his presidency and re-election campaign denounced and distanced themselves from the Capitol rioters. Others were either actually there or at least close by. Some supported the messaging but not the methods. As it became clear that Christianity was in some way implicated, some merely demurred for one reason or another.

Whatever else it might currently signify or encompass, white Christianity in the context of the contemporary USA cannot be divorced from its militantly ethno-nationalist representation, which was on display during the 6 January siege.

Few mass media have been subject to such consistently fervent regulation as has cinema. The history of film censorship shows its modes and practices varying radically over time but remaining remarkably steadfast. From the inception of the medium, film was perceived by many as posing a potential threat to the moral well-being of its audiences, linked first and foremost to its primarily visual means of communication. As Thomas Doherty observes, motion picture morality had been monitored by guardians of civic virtue since the chaste peck between middle-aged lovebirds in Edison Studio's The Kiss (1896): “For progressive reformers and cultural conservatives who beheld the embryonic medium the potential for social damage and moral blight, the products of the motion picture industry warranted regulation and prohibition as a public health measure” (“Code” 6).

The first broad-scale organized attempt to implement social control of motion pictures took place in Ontario, Canada, in the form of the Ontario Theatres and Cinematographs Act of 1911. Enacted in March of that year, it led to the formation of the Ontario Censorship Board on June 27, predating both the formation of short-lived State Censor Boards in America later that year and the establishment of the British Board of Film Classification in 1912. Under the chairmanship of George G. Armstrong, the exceedingly broad evaluative criteria provided to the Ontario Board noted, “No picture of an immoral or obscene nature or depicting a crime or reproducing a prize fight shall be exhibited” (qtd. in Report 484). Given that it took until 2005 for the Ontario government to begin legislatively limiting the extent to which it would prohibit “mainstream” films from entering the public market, Ontario can be seen as serving Western cinematic censorship practices both as incubator and hospice. The explicit prohibition of “prize fight” reproductions in the Ontario Theatres and Cinematographs Act exemplifies the sometimes-peculiar subjects of focus in these earliest attempts at organized censorship (in the following year, Australia would issue a ban on any film involving “bushrangers”—escaped convicts in the early years of the British settlement of Australia—a prohibition which lasted for thirty years [McKenzie 54]).

Little Forest (Liteul Poleseuteu, 2018), director Yim Soon-rye's Korean remake of a Japanese film of the same title (directed by Mori Junichi, adapted from Igarashi Daisuke's manga series Ritoru Foresuto [2002–2005], and spread over two feature-length instalments: ‘Summer/Autumn’ [2014] and ‘Winter/Spring’ [2015]), offers a distinctive lens onto the various sociocultural and industrial factors involved in the reworking of a text across spatial and temporal boundaries. While it represents one of the most commercially successful examples of South Korean cinema's recent trend of remaking Japanese motion pictures (on the heels of Lee Gye-byeok's action-comedy Luck-Key [Leokki, 2016], which was based on the 2012 production of Key of Life [Kagi Dorobō no Mesoddo] and followed by Kim Jong-kwan's romantic drama Josée [2020], based on the 2003 production of Josee, the Tiger and the Fish [Joze to Tora to Sakanatachi]), the production was driven less by its boxoffice potential than by a desire to serve a particular social function. Namely, Yim's film provides a sense of ‘healing’ to a young generation of Koreans and a model of rural life as an alternative to a competitive and alienating existence in Seoul and other large metropolitan areas. This owes something to the evocations of rural life found in the original Japanese film, which was released in two parts (in 2014 and 2015) and was an adaptation of a manga about a young woman who retreats to her hometown in a remote village after a series of disheartening encounters. Through a self-reliant life of physical labour and food preparation, the female protagonist regains confidence and the deep sense of belonging she has pined for, but not found, in the city.

Both the original Japanese film and the Korean remake share this basic plot and setting; how each work portrays her rural life, cooking and search for identity, however, differs considerably. The fundamental difference between the two, which I will elaborate in this chapter, lies where the protagonist finds the ‘power of healing’.

The Foreign Minister was down with the gout. For a week he had been confined to the house, and he had missed two Cabinet Councils at a time when the pressure upon his department was severe. It is true that he had an excellent undersecretary and an admirable staff, but the Minister was a man of such ripe experience and of such proven sagacity that things halted in his absence. When his firm hand was at the wheel the great ship of State rode easily and smoothly upon her way; when it was removed she yawed and staggered until twelve British editors rose up in their omniscience and traced out twelve several courses, each of which was the sole and only path to safety. Then it was that the Opposition said vain things, and that the harassed Prime Minister prayed for his absent colleague.

The Foreign Minister sat in his dressing-room in the great house in Cavendish Square. It was May, and the square garden shot up like a veil of green in front of his window, but, in spite of the sunshine, a fire crackled and sputtered in the grate of the sick-room. In a deep-red plush arm-chair sat the great statesman, his head leaning back upon a silken pillow, one foot stretched forward and supported upon a padded rest. His deeplylined, finely-chiselled face and slow-moving, heavily-pouched eyes were turned upwards towards the carved and painted ceiling, with that inscrutable expression which had been the despair and the admiration of his Continental colleagues upon the occasion of the famous Congress when he had made his first appearance in the arena of European diplomacy. Yet at the present moment his capacity for hiding his emotions had for the instant failed him, for about the lines of his strong, straight mouth and the puckers of his broad, overhanging forehead, there were sufficient indications of the restlessness and impatience which consumed him.

And indeed there was enough to make a man chafe, for he had much to think of and yet was bereft of the power of thought. There was, for example, that question of the Dobrutscha and the navigation of the mouths of the Danube which was ripe for settlement.

When critic James Quandt framed a then recent grouping of French films by Gaspar Noe, Claire Denis, and Bruno Dumont, as part of what he pejoratively labeled a “New French Extremity” (18), he was reprimanding such filmmakers for what he saw as exploiting tactics traditionally associated with genres of excess, like pornography and horror. Mainly a response to Bruno Dumont's 2003 film Twentynine Palms, Quandt criticized what he saw as the promising young filmmaker (whose Humanité was awarded the Jury Prize at the 1999 Cannes Film Festival) jumping on board with an ill-advised, decidedly “commercial” arthouse trend. Ironically, defenders of the films that Quandt disparagingly labelled as the “New French Extremity” have embraced the term for its usefulness in conceptually linking certain formal characteristics and aesthetic strategies of early twentieth-century European art films (my use of the label, and its more internationally inclusive counterpart the “New Cinematic Extremism,” is by no means intended to echo its pejorative use by Quandt).

The extensive reformation of the Western censorship policies and practices that took place in the early part of the twenty-first century seemed significantly to coincide with the emergence of this trend in French filmmaking, in which new and abrasive forms of cinema were dealing frankly and graphically with the body. In his book Brutal Intimacy, Tim Palmer offers an alternative to Quandt's label for conceptualizing these films, not by singling out their transgressive elements as the basis of new genre formation, but instead by suggesting the idea of a “cinema du corps,” whose basic agenda, “an onscreen interrogation of physicality in brutally intimate terms,” offers an increasingly explicit discussion of the body through its sexual capacities, sexual conflicts (57). Palmer's categorization of the films has less to do with conventional markings of genre than with a conceptual linking of the films’ unusual narrative, aesthetic, and stylistic strategies. Palmer points out that the international scrutiny provoked by these “films of the body” tends to overshadow the experimental stylistic treatment that makes them so affecting in both conception and execution (59). In other words, it has been easier for audiences and critics to dismiss the cinema du corps for its use of graphic physicality than to gauge its status as a conceptually dynamic model of filmmaking.

On the morning after the new Mill Company was established, the post brought me a letter from my father. My son had arrived at Bonnytown;—but I will here copy the letter, as containing a better account of all about him, than it is possible for me to write.

“Dear Lawrie,

“I indite these few lines with all haste, to relieve your anxieties. Last night, towards the gloaming, just as we were preparing to begin the worship, a young lad came to the door, enquiring for me. He said he was your son Robert; and, upon asking him several questions, I have no doubt by his answers he is. We took him in; but he had not been many minutes at the fire-side, when he began to weep bitterly; and then he told us he had run away from New York, having killed one of his companions in a duel. My heart was broken to hear this. May the God of power and compassion support you, my son, under this heavy affliction! I need not assure you that we will take good care of the lad; and I would fain hope the thing is not so bad as he says, for his adversary was not actually dead when he left him. It is in the power of the Lord to cause him to recover; and while there is life, there is hope. Oh, Lawrie, this is a dreadful drawback on the great accounts we hear of your prosperity. Alas! what availeth all the riches of this world, or the honours thereof, if with them there are such taxes on the heart? I pray to Heaven that your affliction may be softened, and that I may be comforted with a sight of you before I quit this earthly tabernacle.

“We had a letter not long ago from your brother: he was then well, and content; though he says he has not been so lucky as you. How much reason have you to be thankful; for in what, before God, are ye better than your brother? The fly on the wall is an agent of Providence, and may have been created for greater ends than you both.

Troubled as I was with the mystery in my family, I yet did not neglect my public duty. At the time appointed, the session met, and I repeated what had passed with Mr. Dinleloof, expressing my persuasion that we would find him a man of more efficacy than we suspected from the simplicity of his demeanour. But when it was proposed to issue the handbill which I myself had suggested, I was startled; the bare possibility of a connection between my family and Mr. Bell's shook me; and under the constraint of that apprehension, I blemished mine own esteem by weakly persuading the elders to abandon the intention.

It was, however, a lesson of awe and wonder to see how rapidly one humiliation after another came to stir up the worst sediment of Mr. Bell's nature. I sometimes thought of it with alarm, for it was as if Fate were giving pledges for the performance of some dreadful thing. In all the instances wherein I was myself the agent, an irresistible impulse was upon me, an impassioned necessity to do as I did, which could not be withstood.

When he heard, which was not until late in the afternoon, that the handbills were not to be circulated, he believed the design was only postponed in order to be executed with the greater effect on the Sabbath morning, and his ire against me became as the unquenchable fire. It may, therefore, easily be conceived how the furnace raged, when in the course of the evening Mr. Oliver Cockspur waited upon him from me regarding the clandestine conduct of his son towards my daughter. The immediate cause of sending that message was this:—

During the time I was absent on the business of the minister, my wife found an opportunity to let Mary know of the discovery I had made; and the maiden, unable to equivocate with the circumstances, acknowledged that Walter Bell had been with her.