From lat lustration, an ancient Roman ceremony meaning purification, lustration became, after the fall of the Berlin Wall (1989), a term to denote the “cleansing” of key sectors—political, economic, cultural, etc.—of former communist countries. alleged or real collaborators and activists of the political police and special services involved in the functioning of the communist system. Apart from the legal, legal aspects that have been brought up for public debate in these countries, including Romania with its lustration law passed 20 years after the fall of the communist regime, the main issue raised by lustration is not necessarily one of political justice, but one of from memory More precisely, lustration requires a prior memorial before any legal act, which can be expressed as: how to look at the past in the present and how to interpret that past when the present is focused on other emergencies rather than on correcting the wrongs of the past?

Unlike the few countries (Germany, Poland, Hungary…) that have carried out this polishing exercise by which former communist leaders and collaborators have been removed from public life, Romania, despite some attempts, suppressed lustration from the front, because the first political structures created to govern the country immediately after 1989 actually meant the recomposition of the old networks of Security collaborators. Apart from the political field, other spheres of reality were not exempted from the restoration of old networks. The religious sphere also suffered the same “trauma”. Neither the Romanian Orthodox Church (OR), nor the religious majority, nor the religious minorities have “reconciled” with their past “collaborators” of Bezpeka. They did not produce from within, only very partially, the gospels of religious lustration, in other words, widely distributed books that, on the one hand, prevent old members or members of Security in churches from assuming responsibility in leadership and public policy, and on the other hand, create places of remembrance that honor the sacrifice of individual and collective victims of communism, in debt for their faith. The few works published from within were not accepted institutionally, that is, officially, not even through the opening of an internal discussion that would help religious organizations to have the opportunity to internally honor their martyrs, victims and reconcile with internal “spiritual tormentors” in the light of their own dogmas and doctrines.

We mention here some of these gospels only in order to symbolically celebrate in the month of December the overthrow of the communist regime in Romania, memory and not forgetting. Not forgetting those directly affected by the lack of religious lustration, not forgetting the collateral victims who are today’s believers, because while access to the memory is there, the gate to the meaning of that memory has been closed: cleaning. The transformation of networks through the “reintegration” of former collaborators and the “challenge” of epigones blunted the need for lustration and turned it into a generalized “ecumenical” tolerance of Judas’ selling of Christ.

Three examples of religious denominations from Romania will be given here, without pretending to be exhaustive. But they all experienced “lustration” in a similar way from project to effect. We will not mention the case of the Romanian Orthodox Church, because there are no such initiatives. Books published in connection with the BOR and the communist period are not included in this category. Let us note only that the reaction of the BOR to the appearance in 2023 of the book by Oliver Jens Schmitt, professor of history at the University of Vienna, entitled State church or church in the state? History of the Romanian Orthodox Church, 1918-2023, which documented the institutional history of the BOR, was received by the latter with hostility and publicly criticized. In this context, it seems unlikely that the BOR will encourage and produce lustrational “Gospels” in the near future. Finally, another caveat: this analysis does not take into account doctoral theses or other papers written by members of religious cults, as the aim is to focus on a selection of published books written mainly by those who are or have been clergymen (pastors) in examples of cults, books popularized after appearing inside the cult.

First, the case of the Seventh-day Adventist Church in Romania, which is more special, since the epic with the publication of books on the history of cooperation with the Securitate of the pastoral corps of Adventists and lay people sometimes continues in the rhythm of elections. for the appointment of the leadership of the Adventist Union of Romania once every five years (elections will be held in 2024, and the 3rd volume has just been published). The gospel of lustration is a book Church through the red baby (vol. 1 1944-1965, 2013 and vol. 2 1965-1975, 2018), which would be based on the doctoral dissertation of the author (although the correspondence is not obvious when reading the dissertation), Gheorghe Modoran, a doctor of history and Seventh-day Adventist pastor who is suspected of ” » with the political police. Far from being a book according to rigorous scholarship, it remains a collection of archival documents, more or less annotated, more or less according to the author’s far-fetched and sparse analysis. Therefore, it has the advantage of: restoring the image of “visible” documents contained in the CNSAS archive of the Ministry of Culture (“Cults” department), the PCR archive, the archive of the Seventh-day Adventist Church in Romania. about the collaborationist past of the Adventist clerical apparatus, in positions of leadership (or not!) that institutionalized a culture of slander and oppression if the behavior did not conform to “helpful” opinion, which was usually opinion strength in exercise. At the same time, two volumes come to the fore the schizophrenia between the doctrine and dogma of the cult and the behavior of whistleblower pastors and laymen, political police officers, which deeply marks the Adventist organizational culture and the current mentality of the clergy and laity, as well as the current relationship between the Adventist cult and the State.

The book (although the first volume was published even in a cult publishing house and even had an afterword by the leader of the leadership of the Adventist Church Union) did not lead, as expected, in the ranks of a certain part of the Adventist community. , to any lustration, to some real act of reconciliation with the past, to the cleansing of the memory of the collaborationist communist period and to the institutional cleansing, to the “honest history of Adventism” (Or. quote). In fact, the book immediately gave rise to visible and invisible propaganda, the main actors and artisans of which were and are collaborationists, who reinforced the myths that the first volume aptly exposes: “informers gave notes but did no harm to anyone”, “leaders agreed to cooperate to save the church “, “all pastors should have cooperated”, “archive documents were forged”, “examination of files is aimed at revenge and abuse of former collaborators”, “disclosure of files is a political weapon. Access to these documents only causes enmity among the brothers,” etc. (Or. quote)

Second, in the case of the Pentecostal church, the book Redemption of Memory: The Pentecostal Cult in the Communist Period, written by the pastor of the Pentecostal church, Vasylicha Kreytor, published in 2010, just saw the light of day, raised problems in the management of the Pentecostal cult, also fertilized by “non-mirrors” in office. In early 2011, for example, a Pentecostal vice president, a self-styled “cult judge,” was forced to admit to the Pentecostal Church Council that he had an obligation to cooperate with Security, against a broader background of some voices, which require every pastor to prove non-cooperation with Security. It is also interesting that the same propaganda is introduced in Pentecostal communities, also led by former informants, who seek to shape and strengthen an opinion dominated by the myths described above by Gheorghe Modoran.

Finally, the case of the Baptist Church through the publications of Danylo Mitrofan, Pygmies and giantspublished in 2007, and Steps – History of the Baptist Christian cult in Romania during this period communist, which appeared in 2009, is consistent with the same parental one. After the appearance of these two “gospels of religious lustration”, which present archival documents and reveal the names of collaborators in the leadership of the church, some of whom are transferring the functions of inheritance to their sons, the community and the leadership are experiencing a period of outpouring and the need to restore “order”, but only until until the propaganda discourse of former security operatives and epigones is established and entrenched. Communication within the community that aims, as in the case of the other two examples, to reinforce the myths of propaganda against lustration in the religious world.

Of course, the books are a form of memory recovery and support for final cleansing, but also a way of memory control, since no cult has used them for polishing and decommunization. The cooperation of the pastoral/spiritual body with the communist authorities is described in these books, but they remain apocryphal gospels of the lustration of cultic religious institutions, because they did not actually serve to restore the truth, but to strengthen institutional propaganda to prevent memory. regarding the communist period. Immediately after their publication, the fact that counter-propaganda begins to work will leave a bitter taste in the minds of the victims. At the same time, the presence of former apparatchiks in the new democratic structures of the church leadership is one of the explanations for these “failures”, the institutional reaction later reveals the fact that collaborative relations with the special services were not limited to the communist period. , but continued even after the revolution. Today, the political police has taken on other forms, it has been transformed according to the institutions of democracy, and the cults continue to write their present history, cooperating both as poll bodies and to shape public opinion in the churches. on various issues and as a structure of political support.

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