Who Started August Quarterly?

The African independent church movement began some years before the Big Quarterly festival. In 1805, Peter Spencer, born in captivity, but who at that time had his freedom, led a group of approximately 40 people out of the predominately white Asbury Methodist Episcopal Church. Although Spencer and the others started a separate church at that time, they remained connected to the white denomination under uncompromising guidelines. by 1813, Peter Spencer and William Anderson, another leader with Spencer, led a group of persons to leave the church to organize the Union Church of African Members in September 1813. The Big Quarterly is a commemoration and celebration of that religious exodus.