I’ve been reading John Fugelsang online for years, so I was well acquainted with his writing before I listened to Separation of Church and Hate. It had been repeatedly recommended in one of my book groups and was in my to-be-read pile, so I pushed it to the top and gave it a listen.

Fugelsang repeatedly contrasts the teachings of Jesus with political positions concerning immigration, poverty, racism, LGBTQ rights, women’s rights, abortion, guns, capital punishment, and other contentious issues. The publisher describes the book as an attempt to expose the ways fundamentalist arguments distort or selectively employ scripture. This approach gives the book a useful structure. Instead of arguing exclusively from contemporary political ideology, Fugelsang attempts to meet biblical literalists on their own ground. His argument is essentially: If the Bible is going to be used as a political authority, then it should at least be represented accurately.

Fugelsang emphasizes the difference between the teachings of Jesus and the broader collection of biblical texts. One of his recurring points is that Christians sometimes attribute particular ideas to Jesus when those ideas actually come from other biblical writers or later interpretations. The distinction matters because Fugelsang’s conception of Christianity is centered heavily on Jesus’s emphasis on compassion, forgiveness, service, humility, and care for vulnerable people.

Fugelsang’s background clearly informs this argument. Fugelsang was raised by parents who had religious vocations. His mother was a former Catholic nun, and his father was a former Franciscan friar. He describes an upbringing emphasizing service, compassion, nonviolence, and social justice. That background helps explain why the book is not simply an attack on Christianity. In fact, one of its more interesting characteristics is that Fugelsang is trying to reclaim Christianity rather than reject it. His target is not faith itself. His target is what he sees as the political exploitation of faith.

This distinction is important. A book written by an atheist arguing that Christianity is inherently harmful would be making a very different argument. Fugelsang instead argues that some of the loudest political advocates for Christianity have abandoned the ethical center of the religion they claim to defend. That gives Separation of Church and Hate an unusual position in contemporary religious commentary.

Fugelsang is a comedian by profession, and Separation of Church and Hate makes no attempt to hide that fact. The prose is sarcastic, irreverent, occasionally profane, and deliberately confrontational. His humor can make difficult theological arguments considerably more accessible. Rather than writing like an academic theologian, Fugelsang writes like someone having an animated conversation with the reader. At its best, the humor performs an important function: it punctures the solemnity that can surround political religious rhetoric. Fugelsang refuses to treat every religiously justified political claim as automatically deserving reverence simply because the speaker invokes God. There is also something liberating about his willingness to laugh at hypocrisy. But the humor is a double-edged sword.

Readers who already agree with Fugelsang are likely to find his sarcasm entertaining. Readers who are the book’s intended opponents may find it insulting. And that raises one of the book’s fundamental contradictions: Is the purpose to persuade people who disagree, or to give people who already agree better ammunition? I tend to think it’s the latter.

Fugelsang wants to provide readers with tools for engaging fundamentalists and Christian nationalists. The publisher explicitly presents the book as a guide for debating people who use the Bible to support political positions. But the book’s combative tone may make it difficult for the people most resistant to his argument to hear it. There is an important difference between criticizing Christian nationalism, criticizing fundamentalism, criticizing evangelical political movements, and criticizing conservative Christianity generally. Fugelsang knows that distinction exists, but his rhetorical style sometimes compresses these categories for effect.

Fugelsang discusses biblical passages relating to issues such as immigration, poverty, violence, sexuality, racism, women, and marginalized communities. He argues that the larger ethical trajectory of Jesus’s teachings repeatedly points toward compassion and inclusion rather than exclusion and domination. This is where Separation of Church and Hate is potentially most useful for readers who know little about the Bible. Rather than simply saying, “Christian nationalism is wrong,” Fugelsang encourages readers to understand the biblical passages being invoked in political arguments.

Ultimately, though, hypocrisy is the book’s recurring villain. Since that’s one of the biggest problems I have with people on the Right, it resonated deeply with me. Fugelsang is fascinated by the gap between what certain political Christians say they believe and what their political positions appear to produce. What does it mean to call yourself a follower of Jesus while supporting policies that seem to contradict Jesus’s teachings about the poor, the stranger, the prisoner, the sick, and the marginalized?

Separation of Church and Hate is unapologetically political, and its rhetorical style will sometimes reinforce the divisions it wants to overcome. Its broad characterization of its opponents and its limited engagement with conservative theological scholarship weaken its claim to comprehensive analysis. Those are legitimate criticisms, particularly for readers seeking intellectual balance. Perhaps the most compelling aspect of the book is that Fugelsang does not believe Christianity needs to be rescued from religion. He believes it needs to be rescued from power without compassion.