The Spencer Churches (less commonly called the Union Churches) are two African-American Christian denominations in the United States that resulted from a 1860s schism in the Union Church of Africans (also known as African Union Church). That denomination was founded by Peter Spencer, a freed slave, in Wilmington, Delaware in 1813.
History
The Union American Methodist Episcopal Church was formed in 1865. The following year, a church in Maryland joined the African Union Church, and it was renamed as the African Union First Colored Methodist Protestant Church and Connection, known as the A.U.M.P. Church.
In May 2012, these two denominations and three other black denominations (the African Methodist Episcopal Church, African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, and Christian Methodist Episcopal Church) entered into full communion with each other and with the United Methodist Church, which had been predominantly white for much of the late 19th and 20th centuries. The churches had been negotiating such action for ten years, after the United Methodist Church had formally apologized for racial discrimination of the past.