In Separation of Church and Hate, Fugelsang challenges the habit of using isolated verses to defend personal or political hostility. The book argues for a clear order of authority in scripture that places Jesus’s compassionate teachings and the New Covenant at the center. Fugelsang questions selective readings of the Old Testament and the Pauline epistles and argues that anyone who follows Christ should move away from legalistic appeals to Leviticus and read Paul’s letters in their historical setting rather than treating them as equal to Jesus’s words. This shift positions Jesus’s teachings as the primary reference point for interpreting scripture and reframes the emphasis of the faith toward love and mercy, influencing how scripture is interpreted in discussions of judgment and exclusion.

Fugelsang targets the selective use of Leviticus, which he calls the “Holy Grail of scriptural picking and choosing” (37). He notes that Christians who quote Leviticus 18:22 to condemn same-sex relationships often ignore the book’s prohibitions against shellfish, tattoos, or mixed fabrics. This narrowing reflects a patterned emphasis on certain verses while leaving other parts of the same text unaddressed. Fugelsang adds that these laws do not apply to Christians because Jesus created a “New Covenant”, a theological framework that establishes a renewed relationship between God and believers through Jesus’s teachings, that replaced the old Holiness Code, a set of religious laws governing ritual and moral conduct in ancient Israelite society.