By the early 70s, the Ninety-Sixth Annual Session of the Burnt Swamp Association of North Carolina reported a membership of more than six thousand members in forty-two churches. The majority of church members who attend Lumbee churches are Lumbee (Dial and Eliades 1996:107). The largest denomination among Lumbees is the Baptist Church. The second largest is the Methodist Church. Methodists themselves are split into two groups: a split that does not reflect doctrinal differences, but a self-determinist stance established along ethnic lines. In 1900, the Lumbee Methodist Church sought, by breaking away from the existing North Carolina Conference of the United Methodist Church, to form a completely self-determining, self-governing body established to work solely on behalf of Lumbees (Smith 1990: 16-17).
The church plays a critical role in our community today; it defines individuals, family groups, histories, and places in our cultural and physical landscape. It reinforces the values we pass on to our children and grandchildren, allowing for a structure within which to explore and understand one's individual relationship to God and to the community.
Many other churches of various denominations are being formed today in the Lumbee community, each church suiting the particular needs of the family or group that forms it. Just as in the 16th and 17th centuries we were determined to find a place of spiritual and physical sustenance, we are still on a pilgrimage, searching for the right combination of religious practice and cultural custom to better define our relationship to the world we live in and to our Creator.