The Missionary Life Of Johnny Appleseed

And the history of extraterrestrials in American religion

The Disney vision of Appleseed is un-self conscious of itself as a story of faith

Walt Disney’s 1948 The Legend of Johnny Appleseed presents John Chapman as a devout Christian, but the film does not say what kind of Christian he was. Popularizing the mythic Appleseed, poet Vachel Lindsay called Chapman “a New England kind of saint,” yet as I recently wro…