St. John’s grew from a mission of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Newport, to independent parish status in 1873.
St. John’s remained the only Episcopal church in the Bellevue-Dayton area within the Episcopal Diocese of Lexington, Kentucky. When the 1976 General Convention of the Episcopal Church made such radical changes to the faith, worship, and ministry of its Anglican and Catholic inheritance many Episcopalians could not, in good conscience, remain communicants of the church. The Anglican Catholic Church came into being as a result of the Church Congress in St. Louis, Missouri, in September 1977. The members of St. John’s Church, disapproving of the changes made in the 1976 General Convention, officially withdrew from the Episcopal Church and was received into the Anglican Catholic Church in 1978. Since that time the parish has continued to grow and currently draws its membership from the entire Tri-State area.