The earliest Native American church in Robeson County was documented as being the Saddletree Meeting House in 1792. In the late 1800's, most Lumbees were either Methodist or Baptist. In 1875, Mary Norment wrote that:

…[T]he Methodist denomination had a circuit in the county [and] the ministers of that denomination preached regularly to [the Lumbee], and seemed to outsiders to take an unusual interest in their spiritual welfare…The Baptist denomination also sent their ministers in among them to impart spiritual instruction to their benighted minds.

In the 1880's, a group of Lumbees decided to form an entirely Indian Methodist Conference, and in 1900 the Lumbee Methodist Conference was formed. In "The Only Land I Know", Adolph Dial and David Eliades state:

The reason for the formation of the Lumbee Methodist Conference was to bring self-determination to the Lumbee people, to create an organization in which the Lumbees made the decisions from top to bottom. At their organizational meeting on October 26, 1900, they stated that their purpose was to organize a "Conference for the Indian descent".

In January 1881, representatives from three Baptist churches met at Burnt Swamp Baptist Church, chose officers, approved a constitution and a name: The Burnt Swamp Missionary Baptist Association. Over the next twenty years the association grew to a total of eighteen churches. The association placed great emphasis on the concepts of orthodoxy, education, and the dangers of alcohol.

Presently, the Lumbee churches are grouped into four categories: The Burnt Swamp Baptist Association, the North Carolina Conference of the United Methodist Church, the Lumber River Holiness Methodist Conference, and non-affiliated.

Lumbee churches share a fundamental Christian outlook, and almost all ministers in the churches are members of the Lumbee tribe. It has been noted that "[s]ince the late war between the States, [the Lumbee] have shut the doors of their churches against all ministers of the white race and installed in their places in the pulpit persons of their own race" (Mary Norment, 1875).

Prospect United Methodist Church

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