A snack-sized introduction to the congregations along the Spirited Brunch route
Calvary Episcopal Church
Organized in 1847 as the city’s first Episcopal congregation for enslaved and free Black worshippers, Calvary was housed in a stuccoed brick church acclaimed as “a bit of old Rome,” for nearly a century; it was forced to move when the Charleston Housing Authority wanted the land beneath the building for a housing project for white people. Throughout its history, Calvary has stressed education, once running the only preschool and kindergarten on the peninsula for African-American children.
In 2006, Calvary was the site of the ordination of three Black priests, an occurrence without precedent in the South Carolina diocese.
Cathedral of St. John the Baptist
The Cathedral of St. John the Baptist, founded in 1821, is the only Catholic Cathedral in the state of South Carolina. The current Cathedral was consecrated in 1907. The steeple and bells were added in 2010 and an interior renovation was completed in July 2020.
Central Mosque of Charleston
Central Mosque of Charleston is the largest mosque in the tri-county area and is home to a multinational community of Muslims.
Church of the Holy Communion
A proud stronghold of Anglo-Catholicism within the Episcopal Church, Church of the Holy Communion was founded in 1848; its building dates to 1855, but didn’t gain its most recognizably Anglo element–a hammer-beam ceiling meant to evoke the ceiling of Cambridge’s Trinity Hall–until 1871. That same year, the church rector adopted eucharistic vestments and installed a choir that a local reporter described as right out of Rome.
“Some visitors find our worship-style to be ‘interesting,'” a senior warden of the church which in 1916 established the city’s first Boy Scout troop wrote recently. “We continue to happily cling to our historical liturgical life along with incense, bells and all the ‘fixins’.”
Circular Congregational Church
Charles Towne’s English Congregationalists, Scottish Presbyterians, and French Huguenots, better known as dissenters, in the early 1680s co-founded the congregation that would later be known as Circular.
First Church of Christ, Scientist
Charleston’s First Church of Christ, Scientist, began informally with an 1896 meeting of a small group of Charlestonians. In 1899, the congregation received its charter from The Mother Church in Boston; it’s now housed in its second building, completed in 1955.
The French Protestant Huguenot Church
The only active Huguenot church in the Western Hemisphere, The French Huguenot Church traces its roots to the 1680s, when the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes took away French Protestants’ freedom to practice their religion without fear of state persecution. Refugees and their descendants held services in French into the 1800s.
Grace Church Cathedral
Founded in 1846, Grace Church Cathedral in 2015 was designated as the cathedral of The Episcopal Church in South Carolina diocese. As a preview of its annual tearoom, which annually raises $80,000 for charity, Grace is serving pimento cheese sandwiches, brownies, and iced tea. This year’s tearoom is scheduled for May 25-May 30.
Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Church
South Carolina’s first Greek Orthodox church opened in 1911 on Fishburne and St. Philip streets; while that building was torn down to make room for Interstate 26, the replacement structure which opened in 1953 is on the National Register of Historic Places.
Holy Trinity annually hosts the city’s oldest festival. “Our culture is part and parcel of our faith and heritage,” an organizer says.
Kahal Kadosh Beth Elohim
First founded in 1749, KKBE by 1794 had a home that was described by a contemporary visitor as “spacious and elegant.” But that building was destroyed by a citywide fire in 1838, with the current Greek-Roman structure taking its place in 1840, making it the oldest U.S. synagogue in continuous use. KKBE has earned two prestigious Carolopolis Awards from the Preservation Society of Charleston for its restoration.
The building opened with an organ, a hallmark of Reform Judaism in its early years. KKBE was a founding member of the movement, which emphasizes social justice, inclusivity, and openness to change.
The Louis G. Gregory Baha’i Museum
The Baha’i Spiritual Assembly–the local branch of an almost 200-year-old faith that stresses the oneness of mankind and the oneness of world religions–in 2003 opened the nation’s first Baha’i museum in the Charleston single house that was the boyhood home of Louis G. Gregory. Gregory, a prominent Baha’i teacher, was influential in bringing fellow Black South Carolinians to the faith. A member of the community describes Gregory as “a tireless champion of race amity throughout the U.S.”
Mother Emanuel AME Church
The oldest AME church in the South, Mother Emanuel is home to the oldest Black congregation south of Baltimore. Founded in 1816 by 1000 secessionists from the Methodist Church, the church led by Reverend Morris Brown was terrorized by white South Carolinians following revelations of a planned uprising by enslaved Africans.
In 1865, following decades of covert worship, the congregation purchased the site of its current building, the 1892 successor to a church severely damaged by the 1886 earthquake. A “major restoration project” is now underway.
Mother Emanuel was placed on the National Park Service’s African American Civil Rights Network in 2021, six years after a self-proclaimed white supremacist opened fire on a Wednesday night Bible study group, killing nine of the 12 people gathered.
St. Johannes Lutheran Church
When St. Matthews moved to King Street in 1878, a group of members decided to return to the church’s original location, built in 1841, and conduct services in German; St. Johannes stuck to German until 1910.
St. John’s Lutheran Church
Charleston’s oldest Lutheran congregation was commonly known as the “Dutch Church” when it was organized in 1752. During the Revolutionary War, its pastor was expelled from the city by British officials after he refused to pray for the King of England. One of the oldest congregations of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, St. John’s is considered the “Mother Church of Lutheranism” in South Carolina.
St. Mark’s Episcopal Church
Organized on Easter Day 1865 by free black Episcopalians who had nowhere to worship, St. Mark’s now has a diverse membership. But in honor of its founders, and its members who are descended from them, St. Mark’s is serving pilau and collard greens.
St. Mary of the Anunciation
There are now more than 400 Catholic congregations, parishes, and missions across the Carolinas and Georgia, but St. Mary was the first. An Irish priest was dispatched to the city in 1788, and the congregation had its own brick church by 1801.
While that building was destroyed by the same raging fire that swallowed Kahal Kadosh Beth Elohim’s first synagogue, St. Mary’s current Classical Revival structure was built the following year; the painting above the altar was salvaged from the original church.
St. Matthew’s Lutheran Church
St. Matthews Lutheran Church is no longer known as St. Matthew’s German Evangelical Lutheran Church, but the church remains true to the heritage of the Charlestonians who founded the congregation in 1840.
St. Paul Missionary Baptist Church
St. Paul, a predominantly African American congregation, recently celebrated its 130th anniversary with the motto, “We’re still standing.”
St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church
Distinguished as the first Episcopal church in the U.S. to neither sell nor rent its pews, St. Stephens— founded in 1822 as a racially integrated congregation–moved into its current building after the Great Fire of 1838. This year, it was honored with a Carolopolis Award for its new parish hall.
The Unitarian Church in Charleston
The second oldest church on the peninsula, The Unitarian Church in Charleston is a member of the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations.
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