Dr. Rodica Mocan is a Baptist from Cluj (officially Cluj-Napoca), the largest city in the Transylvania region of northwestern Romania. For more than two decades, she has taught journalism, cinematography, and new media arts at Babeș-Bolyai University in the city. Dr. Mocan holds PhDs in Sociology as well as Theater and Performing Arts from the same university. In November 2023 the editor of the East-West Church Report met her in Cluj to hear about her broad experience navigating dynamic changes within the spheres of church, media, and education. The interview took place in English.

Were you raised in a Baptist church?

Yes. In fact, the very first Baptist church in our town was started in the house of my great-grandfather. Following the First World War, a young man called Ioan Dan who had fought in the war and somehow become Christian was working at the agricultural university in Mănăștur, which is now a suburb of Cluj, but at that time was a nearby village. He began going into the village to try to evangelize the local people, but they were strongly opposed, sometimes even violently. My greatgrandfather was among them. Following a serious fight, he and a few others ended up in jail. He was converted by a Reformed pastor he met there. After my great-grandfather was released, he went looking for Ioan Dan—he knew he worked at the agricultural university—and told him, “Now you can come to my house and talk to me about God.” He gathered his family, opened a house church, and that is how a Baptist community was started. Very soon they organized women’s meetings, a brass band, choir, and so on. In 1926 they built the church that is now known as the First Baptist Church in Cluj. My parents went there, and I grew up there. There are now more churches that started from the First Baptist Church, and I attend one of the more contemporary ones.

Does the historical variety of church traditions in Transylvania generally mean that there is tolerance towards Protestants here?

Yes and no. Romania has a majority Orthodox population, but Transylvania became part of Romania only in 1918. Before that it was part of the Austrian and then AustroHungarian Empires, so there are greater Catholic and Reformed influences here. Historically, these remained within the German and Hungarian minorities who were the rulers, while the general population was Orthodox.

But you do find more Protestant communities in Transylvania.

Protestant churches were legal at all times, even during Communism—Romania was party to the relevant charters on human rights, and so churches could not be closed down completely. But they were severely controlled—the authorities tried to crush them by persecuting their members. It was very hard to become a professor, for example—you would be kicked out for being a believer. That was not effective, however: On the contrary, I think the churches strived more, and we had more members then than we do right now.

Today, as part of the European Union, I think we are part of a free-thinking country. There is more freedom and openness. Locally, there are sometimes personal animosities: There are certain Orthodox priests who not only discourage but also incite their people against Protestants. But there are also other areas where they respect one another and participate in each other’s events. We also see a surge in more devout Orthodoxy that we didn’t see before. I do hope more Protestants will stop thinking of themselves as Christians and of everyone else as non-Christians, as it used to be. During Communism especially, the Orthodox Church was perceived as very much a formality: People would go there to get married, but they didn’t want to have anything more to do with church. That is why the Protestant community developed this language of their being Christian versus the rest being non-Christian. This needs to be abandoned, especially as there are now many Orthodox who are even more devout than some of the Protestants.

Growing up in the Baptist community, did you personally encounter any pressure from the state authorities during the Communist period?

Yes, I did. Within the Protestant—and especially Baptist—Church, you are baptized and become a full member only when you are mature. But my family was very involved in our church—my father was a choir leader—so even before I had my own convictions, I grew up absolutely terrified that there would come a moment when I would be confronted and recant the convictions of my parents. I wasn’t confronted, but I was constantly afraid, because there were political discussions in high school every week. Probably more than 50 percent of the time, these were about looking down upon and mocking those who were Christians. There was a lot of indoctrination against the church, so you felt threatened all the time.

When I was baptized a few months before graduating high school, I told myself that from now on, I would need to own my faith for myself. In my third year at university—that would be 1984—I was confronted privately by the dean. He stressed that it was important for everyone to be discreet about their faith, and that all he wanted was for me to sign a piece of paper saying that I would not go to church anymore. He also said that in reality no one would check up on me, so that I could do whatever I wanted. He was very shrewd in the way he put this, and I didn’t understand at the time—only many years after Communism— that it was one of the ways in which the Securitate [secret police] controlled people. What he wanted me to sign would have been a commitment of collaboration. You would then have to tell who else went to church, and so on. In addition, there was a very discreet threat of being expelled—it was around a two-hour discussion in all.

I remember listening to the dean and saying to myself, “This is it, this is the moment you have been fearing all this time.” I also realized how important it was for me that my parents were also Christians—if I were expelled, I would not lose my relationship with them. Very often young people had to choose this: their family over their commitment to God. In the end, when the dean said that nobody else would know, I replied “I would know, and I wouldn’t be able to sleep at night. I won’t sign.” In the event, nothing happened after that, and I was able to graduate without a problem.

Were you involved in the 1989 Revolution that overthrew the Communist regime?

Not directly—my husband and I did not go out into the streets. We had two small children at the time, and it was clear that people were being shot and killed. I was not prepared to die for my country, and I am not ashamed to say that. Being committed Christians, we developed a mindset in which we were citizens of two worlds: For the time being we are citizens of this world, but actually we are citizens of the kingdom of God. I was prepared to lose my life for the kingdom of God, but not for this earthly kingdom. Our thinking was also that we had to learn to live in times of oppression—actually, I continue to say that, because nowhere in the Bible are we promised that we will be the ones who will make the rules; who will ensure that the world is healthy and fine. On the contrary, we are promised the narrow path [Matthew 7:14].

A pro-freedom movement did exist among Christians in Romania under Communism, but after its members were arrested, they were expelled from the country; they moved to the States in the early 1980s. There was no significant movement in that vein because of this attitude that we needed to change ourselves on the inside, not the world outside.

Do you feel that the impact of the Communist regime upon the churches, as well as general society, has been resolved in Romania?

Unfortunately, many of the people who should have been kept out of politics because of their relationship with the regime, were able to stay in power. There were also people who engaged in forms of collaboration that had no consequence for others, or who had duties related to their job. Mona Muscă, for example [Minister of Culture and Religious Affairs, 2004-5]— in my opinion, she could have been the first female Romanian president. During the Communist period she taught Romanian to foreign students, and so she was asked to sign a document saying that she would report if any of them caused a problem. To me, that makes sense: If you had Muslim students, for example, wouldn’t you want to know if any of them were radicalized? Mona Muscă was accused of collaborating with the Securitate because of that, and she ended up resigning—that is how the post-Communist law on collaboration has been used to taint people.

In my view, certain things are not worth dwelling upon, while other things should have been resolved at the time. If, during the first five or 10 years after the 1989 Revolution, we had had a moment when everything came out and was criticized—i.e. lustration—things might have been different. The fact that we did not do that means that we are still in a situation where things are not very clear. Communism has also impacted generations in terms of worldview and values—or the lack of them. If you remove Communist ideology, what do you put in its place? Savage capitalism came to Romania, and with that came individualism and greed. People wanted all the things that they had missed out on, so they ended up neglecting their children while they pursued those ends. You adopt all kinds of morals that are foreign, as you do not have the grounding to refuse them.

You are an educator of post-Communist generations of Romanians. Could you describe your work at BabeșBolyai University?

Babeș-Bolyai University is the largest and overall highest-ranking university in Romania. It is huge: We have 22 faculties and close to 50,000 students. Since 2006 I have taught in the Department of Cinematography and Media within the Faculty of Theater and Film. I specialize in digital media, with an emphasis on digital interactive performance. I also teach a course on new media documentary, or non-fiction storytelling. My focus is mainly technology and how it has changed the face of various aspects of life: journalism and the visual arts. One focus of our master’s degree in digital interactive arts is performance, and how technology is enabling new means of expression through new genres of arts. Some of these fall into the category of art performance, some visual arts, and others non-fiction storytelling, but all are based on technologies.

Technologies from the past 50 years, say? Or as far back as the early 20th century?

The past five to 10 years! Everything is changing so fast. Two years ago Adobe Flash, the technology that fueled most of the fabulous interactive documentaries in one course I introduced, was discontinued. Luckily, I had just started to look at virtual reality (VR) and how it is starting to engage in storytelling. That is the focus of most of my course now, because most of the other technologies are gone. This has become a very ephemeral type of art, but it is nonetheless something that students must understand, because it gives them an edge in the marketplace.

We have VR headsets and 360-degree cameras that allow us to decode the new language of virtual reality storytelling. You cannot use the same means of expression as previously. For example, I show my students a VR documentary about Roma people from Romania living in an illegal settlement in Paris. It is interesting to look around while wearing the VR headset and to see the whole environment. But then, all of a sudden, you come face to face with a person talking, because you use close-ups in conventional filmmaking. In VR, however, the proportions are different—when you move around, you would not normally be so close in proximity to this person. In VR, the close-up is an error—you cannot just translate what you do in linear film. Also, not all subjects are worth producing in VR. It must be something where immersion in the environment is worthwhile and will give you certain perceptions.

Viewing VR sounds more intense than traditional documentaries.

Yes, it is physically challenging to watch. When I started to research it, I felt sick. After an hour, you are sometimes sweating and tired. I also had to close the door and tell my family not to creep in on me, because you completely disconnect from reality.

Interestingly, I have observed that I have to push my students to put on the VR headsets. I thought their response would be, “Oh yeah! Let’s get these headsets on. We’re going to play,” but they don’t want them. I have to explain that this is part of the assignment and they need to get past the initial feelings of nausea. There is also the immersion of the story—sometimes the experience can be too strong. This is why new media formats are much shorter: Documentaries are usually around seven minutes long—20 minutes at most.

Being older, we tend to assume that young people keep up with newer technologies.

They generally don’t! However, I have found that those students who are [computer] gamers are much more open to experimenting with it: Virtual reality comes from computer gaming.

Do you think the discomfort caused by VR occurs because, in more traditional forms of media, you are aware at some level that you are a spectator?

Yes—with most media, even if you feel moved, you first approach at a cognitive, rational level. With VR it is very physical. It taps deeply into your emotions, and you are not always willing to have them steered in this way. There is an American journalist, Nonny de la Peña, who has recently started to use the immersive technologies of VR to tell stories in a more compelling way. She essentially coined the term “immersive journalism.” In her VR piece Project Syria, for example, you find yourself in a marketplace in Aleppo at the very moment when a building blows up. It was commissioned for the World Economic Forum in order to convince people about the awfulness of the situation in Syria.

Now, to me this is perfectly valid documentary storytelling, but it is not journalism. Journalism should be neutral and detached, but this type of “immersive journalism” is very manipulative—it taps into your feelings and steers you. That is what I try to explain to my students.

Virtual reality sounds extraordinarily difficult to make.

In addition to filmmaking skills, you also need to know computer programming. Some of my students have very advanced skills. One of my PhD students, Florin-Adrian Marc, was a [computer] gamer who had never done virtual reality but was one of its very eager adopters. In just one year he progressed through two or three VR headsets and is now producing his own stories and games online. At the recent C.S. Lewis conference in Iași, he presented his project, “Halls of Mandos: A VR Expedition into Tolkien’s World.” He is passionate about the works of J.R.R. Tolkien—Lewis’s friend— and he created this VR story using Tolkien’s The Silmarillion as a focal point. It transports you to a cathedral-like hall where there are multiple tapestries hanging. Once you look at them, they start to move and narrate individual stories.

Given your experience with young people, and their experience of such rapid recent changes in media, are there some fundamentally different approaches that they expect in a church context?

Definitely. In more traditional cultures, a person’s worldview is received from close influences in family and the local community. These are usually very direct and within an oral culture. Once humanity moved into a print-based culture, you would read about religion if you wanted to learn about it. Later on, a great deal of information came through audiovisual media. As regards the more aggressive type of Christian evangelism—full-scale televangelism—only the Americans are far advanced in that. In Europe, audiovisual media have been used by congregations more as a means of self-presentation, to identify themselves within the larger context.

With digital culture, things are very different. Now there is information everywhere, and we have returned to the tribal type of influence—influence not even from local tribes, but virtual, online tribes. This means that the amount of confusion— as well as the potential for syncretism—is far greater. Those who are lucky enough to find their face-to-face community are more ooted and organized, but the rest think in increasingly syncretic terms.

I often tell my students that they need to know what they believe. I explain that I am not going to teach them what I believe, but that I am trying to get them to the stage of critical thinking. At that point, they will know where something comes from when they see it, and they can adopt or reject it consciously. Introducing academic ethics and morals, for example, we discuss posthumanism and transhumanism. Very often students come with those kinds of ideas—it can seem cool to enhance the body by adding new senses and so on, but then you realize what the implications are and how, if you enhance something, you are actually losing something else. You see where this could lead and how we may lose our humanity—how transhumanistic thinking can push you towards eugenics. Once students unpack these ideas, their response is generally, “That’s not really what I want to think.”

That’s why you need to know what you think and where your influences come from. Archimedes apparently said, “Give me a firm spot on which to stand, and I shall move the earth.” If you don’t have something that helps you orient yourself, you will drift all over the place. This is what I see most about the young generation. Probably, it is also the reason why there is so much unhappiness and even depression. At least the traditional religion that modern people might refute gives you an orientation point…

…Whereas that is lacking now.

What worries me even more is the official relativization of truth: “This is my truth—if that is your truth, then that is fine for you.” Well, it’s not, because there are certain things that are not relative.

Do the young people you encounter show any interest in church, or is Christianity something completely alien to them?

They would not come to church if they were not interested—that’s one thing I have learned. My generation hung in there even if we didn’t like our pastor or the teaching. The next generation, now in their 40s—didn’t know what they wanted. They were in and out of church. As for the new generation—if they don’t like something, they are gone. So if you see churches full of young people, it is because they want to be there.

There are a number of churches here that have become increasingly contemporary. The whole set-up is cinematic, with a large stage, big screens, and a different kind of music and lighting that is more appealing. This is something that can be a hook for young people, but also a refutation of the attitude that Christians are old-fashioned bigots. So these things can attract young people, but I don’t think they would stick around if they didn’t also find what they were looking for. If they didn’t find deeper meaning and a positive influence on their lives, it would just be one more disco place: “That was a cool club I went to—now let’s find the next one.” They have found something in which they feel grounded. ♦