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# The Dueling Citizen & Christian
- URL: https://www.loganmartinisaac.com/dueling-citizen-christian/
- Published: 2011-07-05T07:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-06-27T19:10:27.000Z
- Author: Logan Martin Isaac
- Tags: RELEVANT, Public Writing

*\*Originally published July 5, 2011, by* [*Relevant Magazine*](https://relevantmagazine.com/current/dueling-citizen-christian-2/?ref=loganmartinisaac.com)*.* 

About 1,600 years ago, a French priest was declared Bishop of Tours  
by public acclamation. The priest’s name was Martin, after Mars, the  
Roman god of war. His father managed to get him into an elite military  
unit, the one that protected Caesar himself, but Martin had wanted to be  
baptized into the newly legalized Christian religion, which had for  
centuries forbade the use of the sword. Young Martin was a reluctant  
recruit, not too unlike the soldiers who are drawn into the U.S.  
military for economic reasons.

In my six years on active duty in the U.S. Army, I never met anyone  
who joined for the passionate and patriotic reasons you would expect.  
Most saw the military as a means of escape; from the pressures of gang  
initiation, social distress, abject poverty or situations of violence.  
Their choice was often compromised by difficult circumstances.

I can hear the objections already: “Those recruits didn’t have to  
sign the contract, right? Martin could have gone AWOL if he really  
wanted to—right?”

There is a deep crisis of conversation with how the Church has been  
wrestling with dueling identities these days. The American Church seems  
divided between patriots and pacifists. In one corner, we have  
isolationist arguments that insist the world of statecraft is outside  
the realm of faith, that the military in particular is too compromised,  
too "this-worldly." In another corner, nationalist rhetoric venerates  
service and subordinates radical Kingdom living as too idealistic. In  
the ring wearing the gloves are those reluctant recruits, trying to do  
good within an incomprehensibly complex and unjust world of war and  
conflict.

Having just celebrated July 4th, we know this is one of those days  
when our bickering and disunity can come out most strikingly—are we for  
God, or country? Martin, though conscripted against his will into the  
Roman army, would serve honorably, as many of our nation’s service  
members do today, regardless of how zealous or reluctant they might be  
in serving the country. He saw the thin red line between Church and  
state and refused to cross from a measured patriotism into a blind  
obedience.

Protecting the life of Caesar was not what we would call a "combat  
assignment." But that changed in 336 CE, when Julian, Martin’s commander  
in chief, found himself in the midst of battle, his guards by his side.  
Roman custom insisted the superior offer money to his troops to secure  
their loyalty before battle. Martin had become a Christian, and knew  
well that he could not, as a Christian, wield the sword against an enemy  
he was commanded to love.

With the most powerful man in the world standing before him, he  
declared loudly: “I have served you long enough, let me know serve God. I  
am a soldier of Christ, it is impermissible for me to fight.” Julian  
was thrown into a rage, accusing Martin of cowardice and locking him  
behind bars. Martin knew his real Commander would protect him, and  
offered to be sent to the front lines unarmed. Preparations were made,  
but by dawn, the Gauls had negotiated a peace treaty. Despite the  
opportunity, Martin went on to serve his entire 25-year military service  
obligation.

Martin was consecrated Bishop of Tours on July 4th, 370 CE and would  
serve as until his death in 396 CE. The day he was buried would become  
his feast day in the ancient church, and to this day he remains the  
patron saint of soldiers and chaplains. In fact, the day we celebrate  
the memory of our veterans in America, Nov. 11, is the same day the  
Church has celebrated, for 1,600 years, the memory of a conscientious  
objector.

Martin forces us to question our own easy assumptions about war and  
peace, about limited mutuality of faith and service. He made clear to  
those around him that his service to country was finite, not absolute or  
automatic. Ultimately, he would obey God rather than people, like  
presidents and prime ministers.

Today, we hear from every corner how complicated it is to be genuine  
to our pacifist roots as Christians, but the early Church lived in a  
different social situation. Namely, one in which agents of the state had  
explicit orders to kill us. In our day, the theological landscape has  
evolved; we cannot withdraw from a system as easily when our lives are  
not constantly at stake. We can try to wash our hands like Pilate did,  
as though a little hand-wringing will solve our identity crisis, as  
though we can somehow escape our own culpability for things our nation  
does with our money and in our name, but it won’t do anyone any good.

On the other hand, we also need to be on guard to keep the Liberty  
Bell from becoming a golden calf. Christ brings our freedom, and He  
demands a very different kind of death for us to attain it than our  
country does. We do not need to physically shed our blood to gain His  
freedom, but our sin, our ego, our self-centricity. This should bring us  
pause when we hear things like “freedom is not free,” because it can  
cheapen the grace God offers us by assuming the temporal freedom of life  
on earth is equivalent to the true and free grace that cost only one  
Man the ultimate price.

It is a challenge to live an authentically Christian witness as an  
American citizen, but the two do not always have to be mutually  
exclusive. If we recognize the importance of mediating our other  
identities (student, male, sibling, parent, etc.) through our identity  
as Christians, if we can articulate, even just for ourselves, where the  
threshold is between the sacred and the secular, then I think we are on  
the right path. After all, God is greater than all of those things that  
make us who we are, even our citizenship.

[*\*Logan Mehl-Laituri*](https://docs.google.com/document/edit?id=1w6WFDoQLdQ4FrztkACB5C9GF-6SM09f2Iank6xmKS-Q&pli=1&ref=loganmartinisaac.com) is an Iraq veteran, a pacifist and a student (in that order). As an MTS student at Duke Divinity School and co-founder of [Centurion’s Guild](http://www.centurionsguild.org/?ref=loganmartinisaac.com), he assists fellow students and service members discern between faith and service.\*