The United Methodist Church of Eagle Lake is the oldest Protestant congregation in the community. By 1864, Emma Tracy Rhine started the first private school in Eagle Lake, and in 1872 the one-room schoolhouse became the first church meeting house when circuit rider Orceneth Fisher organized a Methodist church and Sunday school there. That same year, Emma Rhine organized the First Ladies Aid Society, establishing a tradition of women’s groups in the church. The Methodists met in the schoolhouse until 1880, when the community built a Union church shared by the Methodist, Baptist, Episcopalian, and Christian congregations until each could build its own sanctuary. In May 1899, J.K. Davidson, James A. Harbert, R.B. Dobbins, and W.Y. Westmoreland, trustees of the Methodist Episcopal Church South, bought land on Lake Street, and the Rev. R.E. Nunn directed construction of a brick sanctuary and parsonage. In 1939, John Robert and Otera (Fussell) Colly donated land and money for a new Methodist church, named Colly Memorial Methodist Church in memory of their 17-year-old daughter Bobby, who had died the year before by electrocution in a swimming pool; a stained glass window behind the altar was given in memory of A.W. Braun, who died trying to save her. The church facilities later expanded with educational buildings and a new parsonage, and in 1976 the congregation moved one block away to the former Eagle Lake High School site, taking the stained glass window and a historic bell and changing its name to the United Methodist Church of Eagle Lake. More than a century after its founding, the church continues to play a significant role in the community.