The real difference between Christians and non-Christians lies in how God is present within the church and is eschatological in character. That is to say, Christians are involved in relations of simultaneous distance and belonging with their non-Christian neighbours. Such relations occur because the church is to be a people specified by its relationship with Jesus Christ, and at the same time it is to display a given culture’s eschatological possibilities. Therefore, Christians cannot stand outside their culture, or against it, but must participate in their culture and the enterprises of their neighbours as those transfigured. In this age, no clear dividing lines can be drawn. Instead of clearly demarcated lines separating Christians and non-Christians, questions about what to reject and what to retain confront Christians constantly as they participate in, and bear witness to, God’s transfiguration of their context.

… when confronted with moral problems the church develops specific patterns of thought and action. However, the response of the church is not developed in isolation from the life together of its neighbours. As it develops its response, the church will be engaged with the life of those around it, who will inevitably be involved with and inform its discernment. In conjunction with the life of its neighbours, the church will also seek to establish patterns of sociality which bear witness to how a particular moral issue is transfigured by the actions of God. The patterns of thought and action that constitute the response of the church to a particular issue are constantly open to further specification in the light of who Jesus Christ is. Such specification and alignment is a constant and ever-present task… some its its neighbours will participate in the church’s response to the issue, some will reject it, some will ignore it, and some will actively oppose it. Mediating disputes over moral problems which confront Christians and non-Christians is not a question so accommodating each other’s view, nor or compromise between two positions, nor of rivalry as one tradition seeks to vindicate its answer against the answer given by other traditions. The only criterion by which the church can accept or reject the thought and action of its neighbours is whether such thought and action accords with thought and action directed to god. Empowered by the Spirit, the only response the church can make to moral problems is to bear witness to their resolution in and through Jesus Christ. The church must either invite its neighbours to follow its witness or it must change its own pattern of life as it discerns in the life of its neighbours patterns of thought and action that bear more truthful witness to Jesus Christ. The church, following after Jesus, is both the guest and the host of its neighbours and in being a good guest and a faithful host the holiness of the church is shown forth.

Bretherton, Hospitality as Holiness, p. 197-8.