On Christmas Eve in 1824, an association was formed to promote the circulation of correct opinions on Religion, Morals, and Education & excluding Sectarian Theology and Party Politics.

The old Chi Phi constitution was discovered in 1854 by some undergraduates who emphasized the social and disregarding the religious purpose reorganized the society into the modern Greek letter fraternity of the same initials.

While the Chi Phi Fraternity of today was founded in 1854, the members place great emphasis on the 1824 date because of many aspects that were carried over from the original records discovered in 1854.

[5] The founders of the Southern Order were: On November 14, 1860, the third independent fraternity to be named Chi Phi was founded at Hobart College, Geneva by twelve men who took the initiatory oath and received a badge.

Except for a brief period in 1911, three Chi Phis (Joseph Mackey Brown, John Marshall Slaton, and Nathaniel E. Harris) held the office of governor in the State of Georgia from 1909 to 1917.

[citation needed] Chi Phi's conservative expansion philosophy that only the old, well-established schools were suitable for a chapter led to the denial of a petition for a charter by a group of students at the University of Richmond in 1901.

[10] The Chi Phi chapter at Cornell was suspended after an individual reported an incident of being drugged and sexually assaulted by multiple assailants on October 25, 2024.