English: The statue of John Calvin in the the Wilson Bay of the south nave of the Washington National Cathedral in Washington, D.C.

Wilson died on February 3, 1924, almost three years after his second term as president ended. He was buried in a private service on February 6, 1924, in the burial vault beneath the Bethlehem Chapel at the Washington National Cathedral in Washington, D.C.

A sacrophagus-shaped cenotaph was placed in the chapel in November 1924.

In 1956, which the cathedral nave finally nearing completely, the cenotaph was moved from the Bethlehem Chapel to the center of the Wilson Bay arch facing the nave. Wilson was interred inside the sarcophagus.

French theologian John Calvin was just six years old when Martin Luther nailed his Ninety-Five Theses to the door of the Roman Catholic Church in Wittenberg. Calvin, who had studied Latin, Greek, theology and law, had a deep religious conversion at the age of 24 and broke with the Roman Catholic Church. Persecuted, with the possibility being burned at the stake, Calvin fled Paris for Basel, Switzerland. In 1536, Calvin published his "Institutes of the Christian Religion," which strongly defended Protestantism and laid out his views on predestination and the rejection of the clergy as necessary for successful intercession and salvation.

The Presbyterian Church traces its history to John Calvin and the Reformed Church which he established in Geneva. Woodrow Wilson was a Presbyterian, and his father was a Presbyterian minister.