Omaha doc ‘A Time for Burning’ offered an honest look at race in 1960s America. It’s still relevant today.

When Omaha’s Augustana Lutheran Church agreed to participate in a church-sponsored documentary, no one knew the firestorm it would soon set off — or that its legacy and relevance would continue to burn nearly 60 years later.   

But “A Time for Burning” has endured.

The film, which documented the failed attempt at racial outreach by the white Omaha church in 1965, continues to inspire filmmakers and activists. It received critical acclaim and helped launch the career of Nebraska’s longest-serving lawmaker. And it captured pain and tension that, for many, feels as relevant today as it did 60 years ago.

“The film remains prescient, honest and heartbreakingly relevant,” said Ashley Howard, an Omaha native and assistant professor of history and African American Studies at the University of Iowa. “It is both agonizing and surreal to watch this film in 2025 knowing less than a year after the crew departed, North 24th Street was engulfed in uprising and 60 years later conversations about race in this country are shaped less by the right pace forward but by erasure.”

“A Time for Burning” was fraught from the beginning. Lutheran Film Associates, a media company founded by two different Lutheran denominations, was tasked with creating a film to help church members navigate the societal upheaval of the ‘60s, according to a history prepared for the National Film Preservation Board. It hired director Bill Jersey, who chose Omaha out of a desire to show that racial issues extended into the country’s heartland.

Jersey focused on Augustana Lutheran and William Youngdahl, its new progressive pastor, as he attempted to orchestrate outreach to two nearby Black churches, Calvin Memorial Presbyterian and Hope Lutheran. 

Youngdahl faced resistance almost immediately from his church members, who largely opposed the pastor’s push for racial reconciliation. He also encountered skepticism from the likes of Ernie Chambers, a young Black activist and barber who Youngdahl visits early in the film. 

With the congregation on the verge of splintering, Youngdahl is forced out and the film ends without resolution — a powerful and appropriate ending given the subject matter, said Kathryn Lofton, Yale University professor of American studies, religious studies and history.

“The film should be viewed as a record of how difficult social change is,” Lofton said.

“For most people,” she said, “keeping the peace is usually preferred more than raising any kind of ruckus. ‘A Time for Burning’ shows trying to achieve racial reconciliation is very difficult.”

Even during its making, Augustana’s church council expressed concerns about the film’s critical focus. Jersey and producer Bill Lee appealed to let them finish. Upon completion, some national Lutheran officials were reluctant to release it because the film put rank-and-file white Christians in a bad light. 

“It came as a real shock when it aired the dirty laundry with their Sunday best outfits,” said present-day Augustana member Mark Hoeger. 

Jersey refused to change a thing, saying that his express purpose was “to show people who they really are.” What they did with that, he said, was “their business.”

Nebraska Lutheran leaders lodged a protest with the national executive council, branding the film “a disgrace.” It was released anyway. 

In the end, “officials felt it was more important to see the church wrestling with the problem than to have a pat solution … because it generated all kinds of discussion and still does,” Lee said. 

It was personal. Old-line member Deryl Hamann still feels “betrayed” and “set up” by the national Lutheran Church for making a point at Augustana’s expense. However, he stayed through the crucible. 

Some church members changed their thinking. The film shows a tortured church board member, Ray Christensen, come around to the ideas Youngdahl espoused — albeit too late to prevent Youngdahl’s firing or the parish’s rupturing.

“The whole point Jersey was trying to make was not to expose the sins of a uniquely racist Omaha congregation,” Hoeger said. “Its impact on America was to expose our collective sin. In that sense, all Americans share the resentment and shame of ‘A Time for Burning.’”

“A Time for Burning” also made waves at Calvin, recalled the Rev. Carolyn Grice, who was a teenager and church member when the film was released. The church’s leaders expressed “a willingness to make sure the story was heard because that’s how Calvin operated back in the day — ‘Let’s get the whole truth out there and make sure you understand all sides of it.’” 

As the film reveals, a proposal for adult couples from Augustana and Calvin to visit each others’ homes got nixed after a Sunday School exchange went sour. While Augustana youth were warmly received at a Calvin worship service, the mere presence of Calvin youth at Augustana prompted some members to complain and stay home. 

“It was a big deal,” Grice said. “Being a Christian, you’re supposed to do the right thing, but that didn’t happen there. Since racism was alive, Calvin’s adult members weren’t surprised. It was just unfortunate that it happened. As Christians, we should know better.”

Soon after the film’s release, it joined America’s civil rights conversation via a public television broadcast and CBS News follow-up. Chambers and Dan Goodwin Sr., whose barbershop is a key film setting, booked a national speaking tour. The former would go on to become the longest-serving state lawmaker in Nebraska’s history. 

More attention came with a 1967 Academy Award nomination. In 2005, it entered the National Film Registry. In 2020, its preservation was ensured with a digital remastering by the Film Archive of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Screenings continue to take place. In 2023, Maryland Public Television aired the film and hosted a panel. With the emergence of Black Lives Matter and more people engaged in anti-racism demonstrations, the timing seemed right, said Kate Pearson, Maryland Public Television’s senior managing director of programming and acquisitions.

In May, the film was part of a “Made in Nebraska” series at the Mary Riepma Ross Media Arts Center in Lincoln. It has screened at Film Streams in Omaha and will again for its 60th anniversary in 2026. 

University of Nebraska at Omaha Black Studies educators are among many scholars and teachers who use it in courses. The film shows in simple terms how white supremacy reacts when it is challenged, and that is unfortunately relevant today, said Cynthia Robinson, UNO Black Studies chair.

“It shows an anti-Black bias of ‘We cannot be with those people, we can’t touch them, we can’t live next door to them, we can’t go to church with them, we cannot integrate with them.’”

It also remains relevant outside academic and activist circles. Filmmaker Nick Beaulieu cited “A Time for Burning” as critical inspiration for his film “My Omaha.” 

New York-based filmmaker Justin Ervin is currently working on a dramatic adaptation of the story.

“It really left an impact for the way it was shot and told,” he said. “It never really left my mind. Part of the documentary hound in me won’t let the story go. It’s evergreen by how Jersey expertly told it but also by being about the unfinished business in America.”

The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America continues to own the rights to “A Time for Burning.” Brett Nelson, the church’s video production manager, has championed the film since first seeing it a decade ago. 

“What stood out to me was a level of honesty,” he said. “It seemed true and important. I immediately felt an appreciation and respect and wanting to be on the side for the voices fighting for something beyond the status quo.” 

Even to this day, “A Time for Burning” inspires some passive but firm resistance within the church. Nelson recalled how a Lutheran Film Associates board member once told him, “I hate that film. It makes Lutherans look bad.” 

When the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences offered to remaster it, Nelson said his supervisors told him, “Don’t really worry about the film — that’s a back-burner project.” 

“They weren’t saying don’t do anything, so I kept nudging it along,” he said. “I feel it needs to be promoted and talked about now.”

Howard, the Iowa professor, said she remains struck by how it captures the behind-closed-doors racism that still permeates society and its institutions, “where well-meaning hand-wringers offer tepid responses.”

“A Time for Burning” left a lasting impact on Augustana. 

“It broke up the congregation,” said Hoeger. “It caused a huge rift. There was lots of pain. People left to join suburban churches, leaving Augustana half its size.”

He joined years after the immediate tumult and found people still hurting. Building on work done there by the Rev. Vic Schoonover and later by the Rev. Johnice Orduña, Hoeger led adult forums to help members accept that Youngdahl’s call for inclusion was the right thing to do. 

“You can’t stand up for what you think is right or the right path or the right side of history without consequences,” Hoeger said. “It’s sad it takes pain, sorrow and trauma, but it does. As Ray Christensen says so beautifully at the end, ‘If the time’s not right now, then when?’”

Eventually, a more progressive Augustana emerged — welcoming Black members and later LGBTQ+ members. Like most mainline denomination parishes, its numbers continue to dwindle.

“I’ve tried really hard as pastor to reframe the experience as Augustana is who you are now because of what happened,” said the Rev. Jan Peterson, Augustana’s current pastor.

Hoeger said it is long overdue for the church to embrace the importance of the story in which the church plays a central role. 

For Grice, the pastor who was a teen at Calvin during “A Time for Burning,” the story itself is a call to conscience — and to action.

“Everybody has to say we stand together,” she said. “Open your eyes, look at what’s happening around you because we’re seeing such a resurgence with racism, and blatant racism.”