The Gown Speaks First: Drag, Vesture, and the Aesthetic Performance of Preaching

ABSTRACT This article begins from a simple claim: in preaching, the gown speaks before the word. I develop two analytic tools for that pre-semantic labor: choreosonics (microtemporal craft of breath, cadence, timbre) and homiletic drag (curated staging of clerical persona through silhouette, gesture, reveal). I argue that corporate glam—polished, institutionally legible style—can stabilize obligation and trust, while disidentificatory styles that work on and against clerical pageantry open counterpublics. Taken together, these tools frame vesture and sound as infrastructures through which religious performances make publics and redistribute recognition. Four composite cases—a Black revival whoop, a mainline pastor preaching in drag, a gown–suit contrast, and the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence—demonstrate these dynamics. Methodologically, I pair material analysis with coding of gesture, voice, and room, translating emic theologies into a comparative idiom of mediation, affective surplus, visibility, and atmosphere.