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. He describes this change as a move from “Law 1.0 to Love 1.0” (39), which means Christ-followers no longer answer to those ancient rules, and appeals to them require interpretation within their historical and theological setting.

He then shows how Jesus takes authority to reshape and deepen the law. Fugelsang returns to Jesus’s phrasing in the Sermon on the Mount: “You have heard that it was said […] But I tell you” (40). With this formula, Jesus reorients the law toward restoration and places emphasis on inward transformation alongside outward conduct. He expands the ban on murder to include anger and turns “eye for an eye” (149) into a call to “turn the other cheek” (229). These moves show Jesus acting as the final interpreter of God’s will, and his teachings on love and forgiveness are presented as carrying interpretive priority within the framework of the text.

Fugelsang extends this point by examining how readers often treat Paul’s letters as equal to the Gospels. He critiques the misreading of 2 Timothy 3: 16, where Paul writes that “All Scripture is God-breathed” (50). According to Fugelsang, Paul refers to the Hebrew scriptures, since the New Testament had not formed yet and his own letters would not gain canonical status for three centuries. Interpretations that use this verse to place Paul’s views on the same level as Jesus’s teachings do not account for this historical context. Fugelsang maintains this distinction so readers can value Paul as an early church leader while recognizing that Jesus’s direct teachings form the steady moral center of Christianity.