Sacred Deviance: A Sociotheological Analysis of Sex Work, Religious Stigma, and Embodied Agency in Colombia

This article examines sex work in Colombia, particularly among transgender workers, as a form of deviance constructed socially, morally, and religiously. Placing theories of deviance and stigma in dialogue with queer, decolonial, and liberationist theologies, especially Marcella Althaus-Reid’s Indecent Theology, it argues that deviance is not inherent but produced through processes of social, moral, and religious boundary-making. Drawing on works by Raúl Vidales (2022) and Carlos Motta (2023), it develops the concept of “sacred deviance”: bodies marked as deviant can become sites of embodied agency and alternative theological and epistemic production, revealing religion’s ambivalent role in both producing and contesting deviance.