I have visited Russia twice. The first time, in 1991, I found a nation in deep chaos. The Soviet Union was rapidly disintegrating, and that year’s news featured a failed coup against President Mikhail Gorbachev and the resulting power struggle led by Boris Yeltsin. Ultimately, Yeltsin would triumph over Russia’s diehard communists, after leading a military attack on the parliament building and introducing a new era of freedom and openness to the West.
On my second visit, in 2002, I traveled to Saint Petersburg in order to attend a Christian book fair, itself an emblem of the changes that had swept across the country. By then, some 7000 missionaries had flooded into Russia, whose citizens now confronted a bewildering array of denominations and cults, each of which offered an alternative to the thousand-year traditions of the Russian Orthodox Church.
One afternoon I toured the renowned Hermitage Museum, spending most of my time in the magnificent gallery devoted to works by Rembrandt. I watched as teachers escorted groups of Russian schoolchildren into the room. They bravely tried to hold the fidgeting kids’ attention while describing the various paintings, especially those with religious themes: David and Jonathan, The Holy Family with Angels, Descent from the Cross, The Sacrifice of Isaac and, most prominently, Return of the Prodigal Son.
Observing the groups of children, it struck me that despite 75 years of militant atheism—during which 42,000 priests had been killed and 98 percent of churches shuttered—Christianity had never departed from Russia. Icons and paintings, such as those by Rembrandt, kept alive the stories that had long been suppressed, and now ordinary schoolteachers were free to explain their message to a new generation.
Little did I know that Russia’s window of religious freedom would soon slam shut. Already a new President, Vladimir Putin, was drafting laws that would result in the expulsion of all missionaries as “foreign agents” and restore the power of Russian Orthodoxy. In return, the Orthodox patriarch would become one of the main cheerleaders supporting the brutal invasions of Ukraine.
In subsequent years I visited other countries in the former Soviet orbit: Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, Czech Republic, Serbia, the three tiny Baltic countries—and Romania. In each of them I found a small but vibrant Christian community still exulting in the freedom to worship. And in Romania I met a remarkable artist named Liviu Mocan.
Hailing from Transylvania, a region known mainly as the setting for Dracula and other vampires, Mocan has gained international acclaim as a sculptor who brazenly focuses on religious themes. While I was speaking at a pastors’ conference, he stood by my side, extemporaneously fashioning sculptures to illustrate what I was saying. Mocan became a dear friend, a larger-than-life artist who specializes in larger-than-life sculptures.
Mocan shatters the stereotype of the reclusive, introverted artist. In a restaurant, his booming voice and infectious spirit often take over the room. I’ve seen him move from table to table shaking hands and introducing himself to total strangers. One evening he hosted a banquet for fifty people in his home and somehow talked me into joining a group of Romanian dancers in local costumes.
Yet in his studio and forge, Mocan is all business. Besides the ancient craft of metal-working, he has also incorporated modern techniques such as computer-aided design, 3D printing, and laser cutting. When Romania held a contest to commemorate the demonstrators who were shot during protests against the dictator Ceausescu in 1989, Mocan’s submission, “The Shot Pillars,” won. It stands in his home city as a memorial to those who helped topple an oppressive regime.
Mocan studied art at a state-sponsored school in the 1970s, when he had to embed his works’ meaning in a kind of code. Public expression of Christian faith was a serious crime under Ceausescu’s rule in Romania. Now free to express himself openly, Mocan is happy to elucidate the messages and symbolism in his artwork.
One professor described Mocan’s work as “reverse dadaism,” a kind of antidote to existential despair. In an era when modern art often centers on themes of meaninglessness, violence, and sexuality, Mocan celebrates freedom, joy, and the lasting contributions of the Christian faith. Among his many awards, he received a national prize for “The Heart of Resurrection.” In 2009 Switzerland commissioned him to create a monumental sculpture in Geneva to commemorate the 500th anniversary of John Calvin’s birth.
A few years later Mocan made a set of brass sculptures to celebrate the essence of the Protestant Reformation—an ironic homage, since some reformers had stripped churches of artistic images. The series, titled “Reformation—The Five Solas” includes these pieces:
- sola scriptura: by scripture alone
- sola fide: by faith alone
- sola gratia: by grace alone
- solus Christus: through Christ alone
- soli Deo gloria: for God’s glory alone
His series of sculptures on scriptura alone brings new life to the normally boring representation of printed books, especially the Bible. And Mocan takes seriously that last motif: “for God’s glory alone,” as seen in “The Trumpet in the Universe,” now displayed at Wheaton College. God is the true artist, he insists, and we simply try to reflect back some of the beauty that God has lavished on earth.
“I am striving to polish mirrors for heaven,” Mocan says about his work. “When my hands touch the marble or the granite or the wood, when my hands deepen in soft clay, I touch God’s hands. God’s hands are there waiting for me.…This is how, resculpting His sculptures, I understand, day by day, how inadequate I am. I am a sculptor, I am a sculpture.”
Mocan’s work harks back to a time when the church both inspired and patronized the arts. Great examples have endured despite the sometimes-hostile history taking place around them. He stands in the tradition of Caravaggio, da Vinci, and Michelangelo, as well as Handel, Bach, Dante, and Milton.
In modern Europe and the U.S., the church is seldom seen as a font of inspiration for the arts. But as I saw in the Hermitage Museum, art can express faith in a durable way even when words are forced to fall silent. Perhaps decades from now Russian schoolchildren will be studying artists like Liviu Mocan as they learn about a faith that decades of atheism—or institutional religion—could not suppress.
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