Shining a Beacon of God’s Light in Charleston and to the World

Our Mission and Beliefs

Who We Are

Who We Are

Founded in 1680 and located in the heart of Charleston, South Carolina, St. Philip's Church is the oldest congregation in the United States south of Virginia. We are a vibrant community of faith that confesses and proclaims the crucified and risen Christ and God's unconditional grace, love, and forgiveness for sinners. We strive to make disciples through biblical teaching, authentic fellowship, and transformative worship, continuing our legacy as a beacon of God’s light in Charleston and to the world. 

We stand in the mainstream, both globally and historically, of Christianity, seeking the biblically faithful way of following Jesus and being part of the “one holy catholic and apostolic Church.”

St. Philip's is a part of the Anglican Diocese of South Carolina, a diocese of the Anglican Church in North America.

Our History

What We Believe

We believe and confess Jesus Christ to be the Way, the Truth, and the Life: no one comes to the Father but by Him.

Anglican orthodoxy is defined by and centered on our church’s classic foundations, the Book of Common Prayer and the Thirty-nine Articles, which all point back to the authority of the Holy Bible and articulate foundational principles of the Anglican tradition throughout the world. We wholeheartedly embrace the Jerusalem Declaration, the founding declaration of the Global Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans (GAFCON). 

Our worship, which is steeped in The Book of Common Prayer, is intended first and foremost to glorify God in Jesus Christ, and we stand in that theological tradition which owes a debt of gratitude to the great reformers of the English Reformation. With them, we ascribe to the following:


A belief in the Triune God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; three distinct Persons co-equal in Glory and co-eternal in majesty and of one substantial Godhead, such that there are not three gods but one God.

A belief in the Holy Scriptures as divine revelation, inerrantly inspired (theopneustos) by God, carrying the full measure of His authority, containing all things necessary to salvation, and to be submitted to in all matters of faith and practice of life.

A belief in the One Savior of mankind, Jesus Christ, who in His person is both fully God and fully man; of one substance with the Father as regards His Godhead, and at the same time of one substance with us as regards His manhood.

A belief in the perfect obedience of Christ, His true and actual suffering, His substitutionary and atoning death on the cross, and His bodily resurrection and ascension as the only means given for our salvation and reconciliation with God.

A belief in faith alone as the only grounds for the merits of Christ being imputed to us for our justification before God (justification by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone).

A belief in the consummate return of Jesus Christ in glory to judge the living and the dead, and a belief in the bodily resurrection of the dead and their entrance into either eternal damnation or everlasting blessedness.

A belief in the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church as those souls that have been redeemed entirely by the work of Christ and called out of bondage into freedom, out of darkness into light, out of error into truth, out of death into eternal life.

A belief that the visible Church is best organized under the historic and biblical offices of Bishop, Presbyter, and Deacon; and that the Church exists to worship the Triune God and to lift up the Savior Jesus Christ before all people through the faithful preaching and teaching of the Gospel, through prayer, and through the faithful administration of the sacraments of Baptism and the Lord’s Supper (Holy Communion or the Eucharist).

A belief in the historic Nicene and Apostles’ creeds of the Church as accurate representations of the essence of the Christian faith, and in the Thirty-Nine Articles of the Anglican Church as a coherent and concise expression of Anglican doctrine.

Construction notice:
The graveyard and sanctuary are closed to weekday visitors due to construction and renovations taking place as part of our Shine the Light capital campaign.