The Scottish Episcopal Church is the representative of the Anglican Communion in Scotland. It is the result of a history in the Scottish Church of struggles throughout the 16th and 17th centuries between congregational and episcopal forms of liturgy and government. When the dust finally settled, in 1689, Scotland was left with an established church, the Church of Scotland, which is Presbyterian and has no bishops, and an unestablished, independent, Scottish Episcopal Church, which retained the traditional episcopal (meaning, with bishops) forms, and the traditional liturgy. This Church, while closely related to the Church of England in liturgical, structural, and many other ways, nevertheless was often at odds with the English government, as may be seen in the history of one of its parishes, Old St. Paul's in Edinburgh.

The Scottish Episcopal Church was thus the first of the many Churches in the Anglican Communion to be independent of the Church of England.

The Scottish Episcopal Church is important to the history of the Episcopal Church in the U. S., as its independent nature allowed the consecration of the first Episcopal bishop, Samuel Seabury, in 1784, without his having to swear allegiance to the British crown. As a result, the Communion rite adopted by the Episcopal Church in 1790 was closely based on the Scottish liturgy, rather than the English.