Various facts announced by the mass media mainstream and, especially, by the Antena 3-CNN media family, which in recent days have caused many emotions, reactions and debates in the evangelical religious space in Romania and in the diaspora. The fact itself is not at all extraordinary: we are talking about a news related to the alleged drug trade (I don’t know how much in Romania!) in which Volodymyr Pushtan Jr., a former police officer in Bucharest and then in Beișu, the son of Pentecostal pastor Volodymyr Pustan from Beyush. Pustan Jr. is in custody on suspicion of trafficking drugs and prohibited substances, which are sold mainly to minors.

A variety of factual news in general inflames the media and increases the audience, if we recall only the format of the well-known magazine “Jurnal at 5 o’clock”, which was launched many years ago by ProTV on the model of Western television. Their creepy, black, hidden nature misleads the Romanian television audience. If the international tendency of the public is to try to lose interest in various negative facts, in Romania there is still time for various black facts, knowing that not all various facts become news if we look at the daily number of crimes and criminality. Then why is it that it is becoming news on the agenda of the mainstream media in Romania? There can be many answers, and one seems to stand out immediately: because it is about the son of a famous pastor, the human child of “God”, himself a religious and Christian vlogger. But, apart from explaining that this diverse fact can fascinate the public, because it reflects the reality of some deviations in the religious world that we can think of as existing or that actually exist, or that the news summarizes the problems of social life, the possible excesses of man in a community disturbed by it impulses, like all of us, we can advance another scenario, quite possibly, in the electoral context of 2024, which will be strongly marked by the presence of religion in the elections in Romania (I wrote about this before in Hot news & Contributors and in Shop Labyrinth). Thus, this diverse fact becomes exceptional because it evokes strong emotions in the Romanian religious environment, in the context of which the father of the person involved is directly involved in campaigns in support of some political figures in the electoral races of the year.

In short, Father Volodymyr Pustan is a very successful media preacher, the founder of the “big church” church system in Romania and Great Britain, with a financial empire and capital of influence in a very well-stabilized evangelical environment. He is also a media owner, influential not only in the religious sphere, but also in politics. He is very good at the “digital pulpit”, being a religious figure who, among other things, supports the political leader of the AUR, George Simion, as well as the actions of populist “patriots” such as Mykhailo Neamtsou, who promote populist ideas of a national religious (Christian) identity, but built on the background of Marxist ideological speculations, as it follows from Marx’s analysis: “Religion is the sigh of the oppressed being, the soul of a heartless world, just as it is the spirit of social conditions from which the spirit is excluded. She is opium for the people. Abolition of religion as an illusory happiness of people is a requirement of their real happiness. To ask him to give up illusions about his situation is to ask him to give up a situation that needs illusions. Thus, the criticism of religion is, in its germ, a criticism of this vale of tears, the halo of which is religion” (Karl Marx, 1843).

Pustan Sr.’s son is also a religious influencer, an activist who flirted with politics, ran for local and district councilors, but to no avail.

The drug scandal involving Volodymyr Pustany’s son has caused a number of favorable reactions from other religious figures who hold financial empires and “big churches” in their hands, because they all have one thing in common: they are involved in the promotion of parties. , some politicians and agents of political influence in the upcoming elections in Romania. We are talking here about a phenomenon similar to the one in the United States and Brazil, when for the first time, very obviously, through digital media, there was an explosion of the phenomenon of successful evangelical preachers who have political goals and penetrate the political field has a clear experience in Romania to campaign, directly or indirectly, for current or future political candidates. This phenomenon, which originated in the United States in the second half of the last century and about which I spoke in detail here, was first brought to Brazil through the figures of preachers Jerry Falwell, Billy Graham and Pat Robertson. Then Brazil had its own religious leaders, politically influential, who later led Jair Bolsonaro to victory. This neo-Protestant model, derived from an echo of the American revival, exported to Brazil as a reaction against Catholicism in order not to become too powerful politically (Gutwirth, 1988), eventually spread in Europe. In Romania after 1989, it is almost not visible, but it exists thanks to the initiatives of the Baptist pastor from Timişoara, Petar Dugulescu, deputy of Timiş in 1992 on the lists of PNȚCD, supporter of the political lobby of Romania’s accession to NATO, initiator of political ecumenism, organizing in 1990 the Resurrection March with Timisoara This phenomenon becomes more and more evident as a “caste” of leaders of religious influence is formed, that is, as successful preachers who build real fortresses appear, especially in the context of the development of the consumption of digital media by churches, on which money grows. a business that allows them, above all, to create important political alliances, more or less based on personal interests. If after 1989 the figure of Dugulescu was inspiring from the point of view of socio-political, religious and moral content, today at least two preachers of such magnitude as the Americans and the Brazilians are becoming visible for Romania and its diaspora, who obviously have the character of the current times, more media and more sweetened: it is about Volodymyr Pustan and Tony Berbeche. They matter in the upcoming elections because their power of influence today is a real political support of the level of various clerics of the Romanian Orthodox Church (BOR). Volodymyr Pustan clearly supports the leader of the Ukrainian SSR and the actions of this populist party. Toni Berbeche goes around politicians, from AUR to PSD politicians, the last option is to support the incumbent senator Titus Corlacean, known for his political-populist instrumentalization of religion in the neo-Protestant environment and his demonstration in the neo-Protestant environment. Protestant churches of all denominations. _

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