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The Geneva gown, also called a pulpit gown or preaching robe, is an ecclesiastical garment customarily worn by ordained ministers in the Christian churches that arose out of the historic Protestant Reformation.
Description
The gown, analogous to the Western doctoral robe and similar to American judicial attire, is constructed from heavy material, most appropriately of black color, and usually features bell-shaped sleeves enjoined at the wrists and velvet panels running length-wise down both sides of the front enclosure.
A minister who has earned an academic doctoral degree in any of the theological disciplines (D.D., D.Min., S.T.D., Th.D.) or in the liberal arts and sciences (Ph.D.) may adorn each sleeve with three chevrons or bars of velvet cloth, also most properly black, signifying senior scholarly credentials.
Contemporary choir robes and other expressions of lay vesture are inspired by but remain distinct from the Geneva gown.
Purpose
The simple yet dignified gown is meant to convey the authority and solemn duty of the ordained ministry as called by God to proclaim the Gospel of Jesus and preach the biblical Word of God, the bearer being a learned minister of the Word and teaching elder (presbyter) over the Church faithful.
Worn over street clothes, traditionally a cassock but today more commonly a business suit with or without clerical collar, the gown eschews ostentation, obscuring individual grooming and concealing fashion preferences, and instead draws attention to the wearer's office and not the person.
Usage
By convention a minister may wear the gown only at expressly Christian services of worship wherein a sermon, that is an exposition of Scripture, is delivered.
With the gown a minister may also wear preaching bands and a liturgical stole. Less typically a minister may choose to put on white gloves when distributing the elements of the Lord's Supper, a practice predating the advent of stainless steel chalices and communion trays.
Academic hoods, permissible in Anglican "choir dress" when worn with cassock, surplice and tippet, are not otherwise appropriate outside academic usage and are often mistakenly worn as religious vestment. Cinctures are properly fastened around a hooded alb, and neither is a pectoral cross nor any form of headgear correctly worn with the gown.
For historical and theological reasons the gown is most typical of Congregational, Presbyterian and Reformed churches, that is those congregations primarily influenced by Calvinist formulations of Christian doctrine and church order, and less customary but nonetheless common in the Baptist and Wesleyan traditions. The gown can also be found worn in some "low church" parishes of Lutheran and Anglican communions and in many African-American congregations regardless of denominational affiliation. Rarely, if ever, is this uniquely Protestant attire worn by Eastern Orthodox or Roman Catholic clergy.
Trends
The so-called United or Uniting churches have tended to abandon the Geneva gown in favor of the more symbolically ecumenical alb and cincture, whereas many evangelical congregations have for various reasons done away with distinct ministerial dress altogether.
Some Jewish rabbis and spiritual leaders of other non-Christian faiths have fashioned their modern religious garb patterned after the historic Geneva gown.
References
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