Indeed, hence the sticky philosophical puzzler. I would think that the clerics themselves would start getting affected by the spell. Fortunately (for them), the effect of the spell when cast on someone of the same level as yourself is only deafness for 1d4 rounds. The Church could probably cover that up.

There was another interesting related situation that came up in an actual campaign I was in, involving the Blasphemy spell (a variant that only kills non-evil targets). My party and I were in our "home base", a mansion belonging to an allied NPC noblewoman, planning out our next excursion. A powerful demon we'd been tangling with attempted to scry-and-fry us, teleporting in and nuking us with Blasphemy. Unfortunately there were a lot of low-level NPC staff working in the noblewoman's household and the spell wiped them out instantly... except for one guy, who happened to be of evil alignment. He survived the encounter because of that.

Even though his alignment was evil, though, he'd never done anything wrong and didn't seem like he had any reason to do anything wrong in the future. So we weren't sure if we should fire him or what. It wasn't illegal to simply be evil, you had to actually do something evil before you could be punished. We just warned him we'd be keeping an eye on him, in the end, and kept him on staff.

I feel like there might be interesting ways to deal with it. Perhaps the mass killing of neutrals only ever happened the first time, which could have been many generations ago and under singular circumstances. Since then, only the odd one here or there ever dies during the purge. Perhaps it's been decades or centuries since anyone died to the purge, reinforcing belief in it's effectiveness as a basis for a pure society. It may have been so long that people wonder whether the purge is even real, or just a traditional ceremony carried out annually based on old myths. Then one year, it wipes out half the city. The party investigates?

What is being good except having self-imposed restrictions to avoid doing something evil? This spell seems perfect. There will rarely be a time where a good aligned character could justify using it in an overpowered way. If it were inverted then you would see evil characters using it all the time. It's a self-imposed balance. You have a very powerful tool, but you must avoid using unless absolutely necessary.

I hate these filthy Neutrals, Kif. With enemies you know where they stand but with Neutrals, who knows? It sickens me.

Here's the SRD entry for the spell. It definitely nukes the neutrals.

The evil equivalent is Blasphemy, which nukes all non-evil creatures. Yes, the neutrals get it from both sides.

Then there's Word of Chaos and Dictum, the Law and Chaos equivalents of those Good/Evil spells. Neutrals, believe it or not, death!

Pick a side, you neutral scum!

I hate these filthy neutrals. With enemies you know where they stand, but with neutrals, who knows? It sickens me.

Why explain it in meta, instead of the old trustworthy totally-not-a-witch saying it only affects evil?

No need to lie, have it start to say stuff after awhile and if the other doesn't jump to demon sword that's on them.

The playstyle is stabbing random townsfolk on the off chance you kill a bad guy. Fuck that playstyle.

And for a lore reason, just have the sword be influenced by the morality of the wielder's actions. Stabbing random townsfolk is evil. The sword turns evil.

Yeah, even when alignment is proof enough you still need trials, and a random person's magic sword isn't exactly reliable proof in itself.

Can it fail? Can it be tricked? Is it a magical effect, or a divine one?

What about people who have done horrible crimes but served their sentence?