President Martin Van Buren is considered a lackluster president, and began a long period of placeholder and lackluster stewards of the nation’s highest office. However under the economic panic of 1837 and his poor handling of that crisis, there was a man deeply committed to the work of anti-slavery. His stance was commendable albeit rare given his immediate predecessor and subsequent successors were often accommodating to the slaveholding Southern States.

Much of Van Buren’s faith and theological underpinnings are lost to history. We do have records of his membership at a Dutch Reform Church in Kinderhook, New York. That said while in the District of Columbia, the eighth president enjoyed the convenience of the proximity of St. John’s Episcopal Church, Lafayette Square.