[1] In 1663, Charles II granted the Lords Proprietors the Province of Carolina and gave them "Power to build and found Churches, Chapels, and Oratories" for use according to the "Ecclesiastical Laws" of England.
In 1702, the newly incorporated Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts sent Samuel Thomas as its first missionary to South Carolina.
While the colony was dominated by immigrant planters from Barbados who tended to be Anglican, there were significant numbers of Presbyterians, Baptists, Quakers, and French Huguenots.
[4] On May 6, 1704, Anglican governor Nathaniel Johnson called an emergency session of the General Assembly where a bill was introduced to require all members of that body to subscribe to the Test Act, effectively excluding non-Anglicans from the legislature.
[5] In November, the General Assembly passed the Establishment Act, making the Church of England the state religion of the Province.
Minister salaries and church construction were to be financed by an export and import tax, while local vestries were empowered to raise revenue by assessing the real and personal property of Anglicans and dissenters alike.
On the Establishment Act, they argued that it violated the Church of England's episcopal polity by giving lay commissioners powers to discipline clergy.
[2] His role was to supervise the clergy and the affairs of the church, and Johnston was a strong advocate of episcopal and clerical authority and adhering to official Anglican doctrine and form.
[14] Concentrated in the lowcountry, with its center at Charleston, the colonial church's membership included the plantation gentry, the professional class, urban merchants, and skilled craftsmen.
From the 2000s until 2012 a large number of clergy and laypeople in the diocese became more and more dissatisfied with decisions made by the Episcopal Church, and increasingly supported Anglican realignment.
Similar controversies occurred in four other Episcopal Church dioceses: San Joaquin, Fort Worth, Quincy, and Pittsburgh.
[23] The diocese opposed actions of the Episcopal Church that it viewed as contrary to scripture (see Homosexuality and Anglicanism).
[24] The convention passed a resolution authorizing "the Bishop and Standing Committee to begin withdrawing from all bodies of the Episcopal Church that have assented to actions contrary to Holy Scripture, the doctrine, discipline and worship of Christ as this Church has received them ... until such bodies show a willingness to repent of such actions."
At these consecutive diocesan conventions, accession clauses to the canons of the Episcopal Church were removed from the diocese's constitution.
This was in response to revisions of Title IV, the canons of the Episcopal Church governing the ecclesiastical discipline of priests and bishops.
The diocese claimed the revisions gave the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church too much authority in internal diocesan affairs.