The Blue Collar Scholar

Knowing about the Roman Empire is key to understanding the context of the New Testament. Jesus, His disciples, and the Apostle Paul all ministered in the Roman Empire. Judea, Galilee, Asia Minor, Greece, Egypt, and (obviously) the Italian Peninsula were all part of the Empire. Every person who heard one of their sermons, received healing, or joined the growing church was a subject of Rome. This ep...

In this episode we take a brief look at the world created by Alexander the Great's monumental conquests, and by his early death and the fracturing of his empire. We will then focus in on the Jewish people living in this time, and add another layer to our knowledge of the world that the New Testament was introduced to.

This is a valiant attempt at a thorough overview of the Old Testament in a single lecture. In this episode, we examine the story of the Old Testament in chronological order as presented in the texts of the Old Testament. We also take a look at major themes of the Old Testament.

This episode is a brief survey of the major civilizations and empires that constitute the appropriate context for the Old Testament, which itself is the most important bit of context for the New Testament.

This fall we are starting a new class as we dig into the New Testament. In this episode, we preview the order of topics we will cover along the way, look at the Koine Greek text that the New Testament was originally written in, and discuss the importance of reading the texts in chronological order so as to identify and assess theological development in the New Testament.

This is a sermon given at a local United Methodist church in my hometown on 8/21/2022. This sermon acts as an introduction, of sorts, to the New Testament class that will dominate this podcast feed for the next few months. I hope you enjoy!

In this episode, we wander into dangerous, controversial waters: namely, current events. The events of January 6, 2021, have put Donald Trump in hot water and in danger of criminal prosecution. Once upon a time in the '70s, another former President was in a similar situation. Back then, President Ford chose to pardon Nixon, almost certainly ending his chances to win in 1976, but saving us all from...

The Civil War changed the United States of America. Just how the war changed our country is explored in this episode of the podcast. We will also take on many controversies related to the Civil War, like the Confederate battle flag and Confederate statues.

Reconstruction was the process by which all the states that had seceded from the United States were reintegrated into the Union. It is also the time when Constitutional Amendments were ratified that laid the framework to give Civil Rights to African-Americans. Those amendments, thankfully, proved to be resilient as nearly every other bit of social justice progress made in the Reconstruction era wa...

Even before the Civil War was over, the attempt to reframe the entire Confederate project was underway. The result was "The Lost Cause," which asserted that the South was a superior culture with superior warriors, and that the war was only lost because the North had overwhelming numbers and supplies. But mostly, The Lost Cause begs us to believe that slavery was not the cause of secession or the w...

What if the South had won the Civil War? What if Stonewall Jackson had not died at Chancellorsville? What if Abraham Lincoln was never assassinated? What if McClellan had taken Richmond and won the war in the Peninsular Campaign?

This episode documents the final battles and offensives that resulted in the surrender of the military forces of the South and the collapse of the Confederate States of America. We will also look at the assassination of Abraham Lincoln.

In this podcast episode, we examine the African-American experience in the American Civil War. Early in the war, Blacks were not allowed to fight, and Union Generals struggled with crafting policies regarding escaped slaves who were fleeing from the enemy's land. Eventually, African-Americans were given opportunities to show their value to the Union war effort, and they performed spectacularly. Un...

Nearly every combat engagement of the American Civil War occurred on land. But let us not forget the extraordinary contributions by the US Navy. Without their increasingly successful blockade of the Confederate coastline and their indispensable assistance to the US Army on the Virginia Peninsula and on the Mississippi River, it is unlikely that the Union would have succeeded as they did. Any study...

Gettysburg & Vicksburg represented perhaps the greatest individual victories for the Union Army in the Civil War, and those battles ended at virtually the same time. Lee's retreat from Pennsylvania and Pemberton's surrender of Vicksburg to Grant represented the high water mark of the Confederacy.

This episode examines the most significant Generals for the United States of America (the "Union") in the Civil War.

This episode is a quick glance at the most consequential Generals of the Confederate States of America.

From Bull Run to Chancellorsville, we will look at all of the significant battles of the first half of the American Civil War.

South Carolina was the first to secede from the United States, in late 1860. But they were not the only state to do so. For the first half of 1861, nearly half of the states in the United States left the Union. This podcast tracks the momentum that led to each state's decision to secede.

This episode summarizes political developments that have already been discussed in previous episodes, explaining how these developments led directly to the founding of the Republican Party. We spend most of the podcast talking about Abraham Lincoln, the second man that the Republican Party nominated for President, and the first Republican to win a Presidential election. But opposition to Lincoln w...

The American Civil War had a warm-up game in Kansas, as Free State Advocates and Pro-Slavery Advocates rushed into the territory to influence its development. Political war figuratively broke out, and literal war also reared its ugly head as scores of men on both sides of the debate died. Many Pro-Slavery Missourians inserted themselves in both the voter fraud and violence. Yet, in the end, the se...

Antebellum (from the Latin for "before the war") America was a significantly different place than the United States of America that emerged from the American Civil War. This episode examines the culture, economy, religion, and society of Antebellum America.

The Civil War nearly began in South Carolina almost 30 years before the Civil War actually did begin in South Carolina. This was the "Nullification Crisis," where South Carolina made the strongest possible case for states' rights, attempted to nullify federal law, and nearly sparked a war with the Jackson Administration. ... Also, many of the big names of the American Civil War got valuable combat...

The this debut episode of The Blue Collar Scholar, host Will Reitz begins his series on The American Civil War by looking at the seeds of civil war that were planted in the revolutions of both the United States and Haiti.