Alison is noted for his application of René Girard's anthropological theory to Christian systematic theology and for his work on LGBT issues.

[2] 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".

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"[3] and "a wonderful teacher, and something of a father figure to me".

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.

[3] 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.

It was the first book in which Alison attempted to set Catholic theology and Girardian insights into the context of the experience of a gay man and the wider LGBTQ+ community.

He admits this task was not an easy one: “There is nothing elegant about inhabiting a space which has historically, socially and theologically been regarded at best as risible and at worst as evil”.

[6]: xi In the following years, three more collections of essays and talks appeared: On Being Liked (2004), Undergoing God (2006) and Broken Hearts and New Creations (2010) - written broadly from the same perspective as the Faith Beyond Resentment.

Since 2008, Alison has been awarded a fellowship at Imitatio, the organisation set up by the Thiel Foundation for researching and promoting René Girard's thought.

[3] In 2013, he produced the Jesus the Forgiving Victim, a multimedia course of induction into the Christian faith for adults which follows on from the insight into desire associated with René Girard.

In 1996, he wrote to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith telling them that he believed his vows to be null[1] as they been taken while under a conscience based on the "false premise of gay people being objectively disordered and thus celibacy being obligatory".

[1] Instead, the congregation asked him to seek laicisation, but Alison declined: "The form for doing that also required that lies be told, so, on the advice of a canon lawyer, I did nothing and heard nothing.

[1] A year later, a letter from the Congregation for the Clergy arrived announcing that Alison had been dismissed from clerical status, forbidding him from teaching, preaching, or presiding.

"[1] Alison understood from this that Pope Francis did not perceive the congregation's decision as binding; that he treated him as a priest giving him universal jurisdiction to hear confessions and preach, the two faculties traditionally associated with the power of the keys.

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.

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.

[9]: 79–80  Jesus' mind was formed not by rivalry and the need for victory over others, but by the complete trust in the vivaciousness of God enabling him to live his life in self-giving.

[9]: 83  Intelligence in Alison's usage is "operative" as its use is determined by its source – either the vivaciousness of God or the satanic lie that violence is necessary for survival and peace.

[8]: 48  Jesus enacted God's love toward humans and all creation by undergoing death both as the end of life and as an extreme form of exclusion and victimisation.

[14]: 97  Yet our "darkened, senseless, and futile minds and imaginations"[8]: 40  struggle to comprehend that "his full human imagination was capable of being fixed on the ineffable effervescence and vivacity, power and deathlessness of God"[8]: 40  The fear of death leads humans to maintaining group peace and solidarity by excluding odd or inconvenient "others" on the false assumption that their death is the basic means for achieving peace and cohesion.

There, after sacrificing an animal representing the Lord, the high priest acting in the person of Yahweh would come through the Veil – meaning the Creator entering into the created world.

[19]: 2–3  In the ancient Jewish liturgical tradition of atonement, God takes the initiative of breaking through towards the creation[19]: 4  to restore it, out of love for the people.

Alison comments extensively on the Church's pronouncements about homosexuality and same-sex relationships[20][21][22][23] 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.