Organized in 1762 by German colonists, Bethel Lutheran Church was one of the first Lutheran congregations in the Dutch Fork region. Incorporated in 1788 as the German Lutheran Church of Bethel on High Hill Creek, it first met in a log church 3.5 miles south near the juncture of that creek and the Saluda River. It built later churches about 1800, in 1843, and in 1881 farther up High Hill Creek. Bethel was an original member of the South Carolina Lutheran Synod when the synod was organized in 1824, and it was forced to move when Lake Murray was constructed. In 1929 it merged with Mount Vernon Lutheran Church, organized in 1893 at White Rock, to form a new Bethel Evangelical Lutheran Church. This Gothic Revival church, designed by J.B. Urquhart of Columbia, was dedicated in 1930.