For all the mythology surrounding cherry trees and his military prowess, somewhere in the middle was President Washington. Our nation’s first president, no other person has done more to shape the decorum of the office than him.

Theologically speaking, there is just as much mythos surrounding Washington as there is elsewhere in his life. The first President was a Deist through and through—believing that God had indeed created the world, but to suggest that such a God would interfere with the world was preposterous to him and many Deists that made up his era. Even still, Washington was an Anglican (Episcopal in the Post-Revolutionary country) vestryman his entire life. He was “known” to the church through his giving and attendance. Yet what makes Washington so compelling was his own personal subjugation below such matters—because to many he was viewed as almost god-like.

Yet it was that idea that Washington resisted the most. The fledgling nation had just gained its independence had just gained its independence from a tyrant king, and he dare not repeat the same mistakes. His decision to run for only two terms of office had reverberations we feel to this day. When he died in 1799, my ancestor Henry “Lighthorse Harry” Lee, Washington’s Lieutenant eulogized him as “First in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen.”