Osborne Ink
Skeptic Spirit
The Missionary Life Of Johnny Appleseed (Audio)
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The Missionary Life Of Johnny Appleseed (Audio)

And the history of extraterrestrials in American religion
May 26, 2024
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This is the audio version of my recent essay on the influence of Emanuel Swedenborg on early American religion. John Chapman, aka Johnny Appleseed, was a Swedenborgian missionary. William Kerrigan’s book Johnny Appleseed and the American Orchard: A Cultural History offers a spiritual biography of the legendary frontier planter.

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Skeptic Spirit

The Missionary Life Of Johnny Appleseed

Matt Osborne
·
Apr 28
The Missionary Life Of Johnny Appleseed

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…

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Osborne Ink
Skeptic Spirit
Essays on the supernatural, especially the transition of Theosophy into flying saucer cults.
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