詹姆斯·艾利森

詹姆斯·艾利森（James Alison，1959年10月4日—），是英国罗马天主教神父和神学家。

生活和工作

早年和家庭

詹姆斯·艾利森于1959年10月4日出生于伦敦。他有一个兄弟和一个姊妹。

James Alison (born 4 October 1959) is an English Catholic priest and theologian. Alison is noted for his application of René Girard's anthropological theory to Christian systematic theology and for his work on LGBT issues.

Life and work

Early years and family

James Alison was born on 4 October 1959 in London. He has a brother and a sister, director Rosie Alison.

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.

Conversion to Catholicism and education

Alison left the Church of England at the age of eighteen to join the Roman Catholic Church.

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.

"For cultural and temperamental differences", he left Mexico in 1983 to complete novitiate in England, at Blackfriars, Oxford. There, his novice master was Herbert McCabe, in Alison's opinion, "probably the most significant Thomistic thinker in the English language in the 20th century" and "a wonderful teacher, and something of a father figure to me".

Pastoral ministry and ordination

In 1986, Alison took part in a conference organised by the English Dominicans to propose Catholic pastoral involvement with AIDS. This led to his first publication, a CTS pamphlet, Catholic and AIDS: Questions and Answers.

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 who – in Alison's words – "it would be more accurate to say were dying with AIDS than living, because this was before any of the cocktails [...] 80% died within five months of first symptom, so a lot of what I was doing was giving people last rites and burial."

René Girard and early works

In 1985, Alison came across René Girard's book, Things Hidden since the Foundation of the World. This encounter with the French thinker has produced a seismic and lasting impact. 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 1997, Alison produced a monograph, Living in the End Times (also published as Raising Abel), which was an adaptation and translation of the course on Eschatology delivered at the Instituto Pedro de Cordoba, Chile, in 1994. In 1998, the English-language version of his doctorate was published under the title The Joy of Being Wrong.

Author, preacher, lecturer and retreat giver

Since 1995 onwards, Alison remained a priest, though not incardinated in any diocese. In the following six years, he moved countries seven times living in Latin America, the United States and the UK.