Recently, Veronica Gerace shared an alignment chart someone made about various email sign offs, and in the post, Veronica called for someone to make a similar chart for Christian email sign offs. This inspired me to make this alignment chart with biblical characters.

I only briefly thought about how various characters might loosely represent the various alignments. Jesus I see as a bit chaotic good because of their disregard for the laws of the day to the point of crucifixion, yet all for . Jesus was a charismatic leader, not a bureaucratic leader, in the Max Weber sense of charismatic leaders. “Audiences and followers believe that charismatic leaders have a close connection to a divine power, have exceptional skills, or are exemplary in some way. … charismatic authority is revolutionary in a way that traditional and legal-rational authority are not” (https://oyc.yale.edu/sociology/socy-151/lecture-19). Jesus’ authority in the eyes of followers did not come from typical expertise in the law at that time.

Lucifer I thought of as lawful evil in that they probably know the law of God better than all of us, especially with their start as the highest angel of light, but their pride and willingness to harm others along the way led to their downfall.

Jonah I see as initially not terribly committed to a particular high ideal, at least at first where we see Jonah running from God’s call in a way that is hiding without hurting others.

I thought of a Dungeons and Dragons class that might roughly fit various alignments, and then sought art of black women as those roles. I chose black women partly out of inspiration from the play Hamilton’s telling a story casting the figures in different demographics than their typical portrayal. We see a lot of white man Jesus, but not a lot of black woman Jesus. Like many black women, Jesus experienced being a scapegoat who had the violence of a community turned towards them to palliate their own inner turmoils and conflicts.

I am thinking here of René Girard’s description of scapegoating in Violence and the Sacred (1972) and bell hooks’ account of black women’s experience in Talking Back: Thinking Feminist, Thinking Black (1989).

Art sources

moral alignment: christian parallel: class
source

lawful good: Archangel Michael: paladin
Paladin by Basil Bürgler

neutral good: Martyr Stephen: cleric
Across the Sea by Eelis Kyttanen

chaotic good: Jesus: monk
Freedom isn’t Free v2 by Rhytz

Lawful neutral: Saint Paul: judge
Lanyra by Sam Hogg

True neutral: Jonah: druid
Sophia, Aasimar Druid, by Primordial Squid

Chaotic neutral: Gideon: bard
Mirrin by Rakugaki

Lawful evil: Lucifer: sorceror
The shaman witch by jemexal

Neutral evil: Cain: rogue
Warrior Priestess by Jenny Grote

Chaotic evil: Nebuchadnezzar II: warlock
avatar portrait for Magic: Origins Duels by Wesley Burt