Union American Methodist Episcopal Church

Heritage

The Union American Methodist Episcopal Church shares its root with the African Union Methodist Protestant Church: Peter Spencer's Union Church of Africans, organized and incorporated in Wilmington, Delaware in 1813 after Spencer and William Anderson led Black Methodists out of white-controlled congregations — three years before the AME Church, making the Spencer movement the first fully independent Black denomination in the country. A division in the 1850s–60s left two continuing branches; this one took the episcopal path and the name Union American Methodist Episcopal Church, incorporated in 1865. Its congregations remain concentrated in the mid-Atlantic — Delaware, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Maryland — near the ground where the story began.

Theological family

Wesleyan doctrine in the Spencer tradition: standard Methodist teaching on grace and holy living, carried in an independent Black church whose founding grievance was standing, never doctrine.

Who decides what

Episcopal: bishops and a conference structure on the Methodist pattern, scaled to a small connection where leadership remains close to the congregations.

What a first-time visitor would find

Worship in the Black Methodist tradition — preaching, prayer and congregational song — in mostly small and long-rooted congregations; the Spencer heritage, including the August Quarterly tradition, is part of the connection's living memory.

What it has always cared about

First-generation independence, held continuously since 1813; the mid-Atlantic corridor as home ground for over two centuries; and the keeping of Peter Spencer's memory alongside the better-known founders of Black Methodism.

Its gift to the wider church

With its sister AUMP Church, the standing correction to the American church story: independent Black Christianity in this country begins in Wilmington in 1813, incorporated and self-governing. Honoring both branches keeps the record straight.

Commonly confused with

With the African Union Methodist Protestant Church, its sister branch from the same 1813 root — related, and distinct for a century and a half; with the AME Church, a separate and much larger Philadelphia-born denomination; and the two Spencer bodies are routinely conflated with each other in directories, including data sources like ours.

Range of views inside it

A small connection with modest published documentation; congregations differ in size and local practice, and this record does not go beyond what is recorded.

Where Union American Methodist Episcopal Church churches are on the map

2 Union American Methodist Episcopal Church congregations appear on The Church Map, across 1 states.

• Pennsylvania — 2