A Lutheran Story We Still Need to Confront: A Time for Burning

This fall, participants in the Grand Canyon Synod’s Fall Gathering will watch the landmark Lutheran documentary A Time for Burning, followed by guided conversation led by Pastor Amalia Vagts. You can now watch the fully restored film online through the ELCA. Watch the full restored film: A Time for Burning.

Commissioned by Lutheran Film Associates and released in 1966, A Time for Burning documents the efforts of the pastor of Augustana Lutheran Church in Omaha, Nebraska, to persuade his all-white congregation to build relationships with Black Lutherans in the city.

Filmed in cinéma vérité style, the documentary captures uncomfortable and remarkably candid conversations about race, faith, segregation, property values and what Christian discipleship requires. The congregation’s effort ultimately fails, and Pastor L. William Youngdahl resigns.

The film does not offer the church an easy story about its past. Instead, it preserves Lutherans wrestling—sometimes painfully—with the distance between the Gospel they profess and the racial divisions they are unwilling to cross.

The documentary was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature in 1967 and was selected for the Library of Congress National Film Registry in 2005 for its cultural, historical and aesthetic significance.

The Academy Film Archive has now restored the film, with support from the ELCA, including 4K scanning and image restoration and restored audio. The restored film premiered at the Academy Museum in Los Angeles in December 2023.

As we prepare to encounter this film together at Fall Gathering, we encourage rostered ministers, lay leaders and congregations across the Grand Canyon Synod to watch—or rewatch—it and consider the questions it continues to place before the church nearly 60 years later.

Watch the full restored film:
A Time for Burning