Given what I outlined in my Conclusions post about the Church and the nature of Evil, I think Alignment and its use in the game warrant further examination.
In my games, I abandoned alignment years ago. For a long time I used a reinterpretation that focused on the philosophical outlook of a character and drew from the writings of John Locke and Thomas Hobbes, among others. Yet even that never really affected the behaviors of players. Without any mechanical incentives or penalties to follow alignment I have found that players pretty much ignore alignment. So I stopped using it.
Now having defined Evil, and knowing its relationship to God and the Church, I feel obligated to reintroduce alignment to my games. However, I am not going to use the Law/Chaos monikers or implement it into every aspect of game play. We know that Evil is cosmological feature, certain creatures are Evil through no fault of their own; this includes enchanted creatures, extra-planar creatures, and all types of undead. A person can also be evil by choice; a Cleric can be an Evil High Priest, and any character with hostile intent toward a Cleric of the Church is also considered Evil.
So I see this as a split between confirmed members of the Church and Evil creatures, and everyone else. This follows the same general trend as the Law/Neutral/Chaos alignment split, but almost everyone who isn't a member of the Church will simply be Neutral. There will still be a few capitol "E" evil people, but they will not be very common, and any unnatural creatures are also 'Evil'. While on the other hand most humans and some demi-humans will be aligned with the Church, at least in civilized lands.
For those aligned with the Church, I would like to have a gradated system showing the person's standing in the Church. So, maybe categories like Good Standing, Probation, and Excommunication. Anyone excommunicated would be considered Evil. A Cleric has to be in Good Standing to perform any rituals/spells. And there would be certain patterns of behavior a character would have to follow to remain in good standing, such as attending worship services at least once a week, praying 3 or 5 or 7 times a days at specific times, not harming another church member, etc. Not following these standards would lead to probation, and a character would have to perform some type of penance assigned by his local church leader to regain his good standing in the church, in addition to following the patterns of behavior of someone in good standing for 6 months or something. Maybe have a standard have 4 total standards in the church, with the highest being reserved for the Clergy?
To sum up, on a character sheet where there is spot for alignment, a player would write in the PC's standing in the Church or Neutral(or allegiance to some other religion like Paganism) or Evil. Though Evil should be very rare, and reserved for those actively fighting to bring down the Church.
