What I Want For Christmas
Posted on December 4, 2006 by Tito
Amazon’s plot synopsis of A Time for Burning:
In the mid-1960s, 1200 White people attend Augustana Lutheran Church in Omaha, Nebraska. Nearby, Negro Lutherans worship at Hope Lutheran Church. Reverend Bill Youngdahl, Augustana’s pastor, proposes that ten couples visit ten Negro families from Hope. It’s a controversial idea; within weeks, Youngdahl resigns. The camera observes: Augustana parishioners discuss the idea, the social ministry committee meets with Hope leaders, and Hope youth talk about race and religion. Ernie Chambers, a Negro barber, predicts Youngdahl’s failure, and Chambers’ implacable questions help lead Ray Christensen, an Augustana social ministry member, to a conversion.
I never knew one of my favorite Nebraskans, Ernie Chambers (earlier on BMK), was previously a barber, though I’m not surprised to hear he has long been considerd “articulate”:
The film includes a meeting between Youngdahl and an articulate black barber named Ernie Chambers who tells the minister that his Jesus is “contaminated”. At one point another Omaha Lutheran minister, the Rev. Walter E. Rowoldt, of Luther Memorial Lutheran Church, states that “This one lady said to me, pastor, she said, I want them to have everything I have, I want God to bless them as much as he blesses me, but, she says, pastor, I just can’t be in the same room with them, it just bothers me.”
» Filed Under Race, Religion, Turf Wars
