James Alison

Early years and family James Alison was born on 4 October 1959 in London. He has a brother and a sister. His father, Michael Alison, was a prominent Conservative Member of Parliament and minister in Margaret Thatcher's government. He was an Evangelical Christian, a John Stott's convert. His mother, Sylvia Mary Alison (née Haigh), embraced Evangelical Christianity under the influence of Billy Graham's missionary work. Alison described his parents as "part of that generation that sought to redefine Christianity as being a hardline, moralistic and conservative political social movement". Alison went to Eton College, a prestigious boarding school. He studied Spanish and History at New College of the University of Oxford. After the second year of his bachelor's degree, he went to Mexico on student exchange, at the end of which joined the Mexican Dominicans in 1981. There, he completed a postulancy and started the novitiate with Raul Vera as his novice master. In 1987, Alison went to continue his studies at the Jesuit theology faculty in Belo Horizonte, Brazil. He was ordained in 1988. While working on his theology degree between 1987 and 1990, he ministered to people with AIDS Starting from Alison's first monograph, Knowing Jesus (1993), this influence has been made explicit. In this book, he introduced the idea of "the intelligence of the victim" to explain the change taking place in Jesus' disciples after meeting the risen Christ. From 1990 to 1994, Alison worked on his doctoral thesis about original sin at the Jesuit theology faculty in Belo Horizonte. He defended it successfully in November 1994. At Easter 1995, he left the Dominicans realising he was a "guest, not a member" there. In 2020, Alison started Praying Eucharistically, a project exploring the ways of worshipping and Christian living in the COVID lockdown. For this project, he provides the appropriate liturgical texts for people celebrating at home, and offers Gospel readings and homilies in video format for Sundays and main festivities of the liturgical year. Currently he works as a travelling preacher, lecturer and retreat giver, based in Madrid, Spain. Clerical status Alison was a member of the Dominican order – from 1981 to 1995. In 1996, he wrote to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith telling them that he believed his vows to be null Alison noted that this was how Pope Francis had acted towards those he appointed as missionaries during the 2016 Jubilee of Mercy. Pope Francis has never made a written statement to confirm his call and its content. However he did confirm it orally the following year in an audience with Bishop Raúl Vera, O.P., (now Emeritus of Saltillo, Mexico). It is not clear to Alison himself, or to anybody else, where this leaves him canonically. But that the Pope, as the source of the authority on which the Congregation for the Clergy relied in its letter, is able to perform an immediate act of the Universal Ordinary giving a priest such jurisdiction irrespective of any decision by the Congregation, is not in doubt. == Theology ==

Girardian influence To a very large extent, Alison's theology rests on the anthropological – psychological and sociological – insights of René Girard's understanding of mimetic desire, scapegoating, and conversion. He explained this influence as follows:"What has excited me ever since I came across René Girard's thought has been the fecundity for theology of Girard's mimetic insight concerning desire and violence. Thanks to Girard's insight into the scapegoat mechanism at work throughout human culture it has become possible to make sense of Jesus’ death as being salvific for us in a way that is entirely orthodox and takes us away from imputing any vengeance or retribution to God. Girard has also opened up for me a very rich hermeneutic for Scripture, one that avoids the temptations to Marcionism on the one hand and Fundamentalism on the other." Theological method Alison's theological method has been described as inductive: for him, theological reflection is among those actions and practices that induct the person into a new form of belonging. is one of the key terms of Alison's theology. He explains it as "the inner dynamic of the whole life and death of Jesus and what had formed his relationships with his Father". – a gradual transformation by the clearer perspective operating in the mind of Christ. Such was the disciples’ experience initiated by their encounters with the crucified and risen Christ as a forgiving victim, in the process of which their intelligence shaped by the lie of death was dismantled and nurtured back by "the intelligence of the victim". Meeting Christ as forgiveness Neither the number nor severity of one's sins, nor acknowledging the correct doctrines enables one's painful and uncharted process of conversion. Alison believes rather that "being gay is a regularly occurring nonpathological minority variant in the human condition", emphasising their developing nature and the specific contexts, and calling for LGBTQ+ Catholics not to be scandalised by the hierarchy's harsh tone and inconsistent arguments. Instead of being upset by, or fascinated with, never-ending rows and fightings he encourages LGBTQ+ people to engage with a wholesome life of practicing faith, reaching out to the poor, the sick, the imprisoned, and the dispossessed: gay people have been invited to the banquet of the Forgiving Victim in the same manner as their heterosexual brothers and sisters. He challenges LGBTQ+ Catholics to become witnesses of mercy to those who have abandoned faith and the believing community due to mistaking the temporary ecclesiastical constructs for sacred pillars of the faith. ==Books==

English • • • • • • Also published under the title Living in the End Times: The Last Things Re-imagined • • • Dutch • French • • • • Italian • • Portuguese • • Russian • • • Spanish • • • • About James Alison • ==See also==