Missionary Positions: Sex Workers, Faith-Based Outreach and a Postcolonial, Feminist Perspective

This thesis explores faith-based outreach to sex workers, using feminist theology and post-colonial theory to take into account the different perspectives of sex workers, ensuring a more respectful pastoral practice. A postcolonial matrix is constructed and six outreach groups in Australia are examined in light of agency, otherness, hybrid identity and the politics of rescue. Faith-based practitioners and feminist theologians are challenged to reconstruct dynamic theological spaces that allow for multiplicity and the humanity of sex workers to be prioritised.