The twins turning faith into a living voice

When Giovanni and Charbel speak about faith, there is no pressure to convince. Only presence. Only continuity. At 21, the twins behind “Eastern Christians” have gathered over 700,000 followers by doing something rare: showing Christianity as it is lived: embodied, communal, and deeply resilient. Their beliefs are translated into videos, faces, gestures, bible tales, and the stubbornness of communities that kept going when history gave them every reason to disappear.

Their beginning is the kind that sounds ordinary until you realize it is precisely what is missing for many people now: roots. “We can’t point to a single defining moment. Instead, it was a journey, one that began the moment we were born into this land. The history, faith, and struggles we inherited shaped us long before we chose this mission.” That line carries their whole project. They are documenting an inheritance, then insisting it still matters.

What pushed them from personal love into public mission was a memory that would not leave, a scene they had known their whole lives. “What sparked our move to social media… was something deeply familiar: attending a feast day in our local village, a celebration we’ve known since childhood.” They describe seeing the community gathered, fully present, and feeling a sense of responsibility awaken.

“Seeing the entire community gathered, alive, and fully present in its faith stirred something in us.”

A mission born from love

 “Our motivation came from love… It never came from a victim mentality or a sense of resentment.” A lot of “awareness” pages survive on grievance. They cultivate anger because anger spreads. The twins reject that model outright. That is a high bar, especially in a region where Eastern Christians often feel unseen, misunderstood, or reduced to headlines.

But they are explicit about their fuel: “It came from a deep desire to preserve the beauty that already exists here and to give Eastern Christians a renewed voice.” They are amplifying the voice that already exists, but is fading under noise, migration, and the quiet erosion of meaning. “We felt a responsibility to protect this heritage and to actively do something with it, not just speak about it.”

When they talk about young people drifting from faith, they do not blame youth. They blame the environment and the modern condition: overstimulation, confusion, synthetic reward. “We believe we are living in a very messy and confusing time. There are endless distractions.” Their diagnosis is blunt: “You open your phone and everything is there: trends, noise, temptation, instant gratification. Many young people feel lost and overwhelmed. Stability feels rare.”

Then they name what most people feel but do not articulate: the replacement of depth with quick chemical comfort. “Phones create fake dopamine, something quick and artificial replacing something deep and real.” They are fighting the internet using the internet but refusing to imitate its emptiness.

Their weapon: Emotion.

The Eastern Christians page uses short scripts, visuals, storytelling. But the twins insist the real strategy is feeling. “Our main focus is emotion.” Human emotion. The kind that makes people stop scrolling because something in them recognizes a truth they miss.

They see the Church as biographies. “We try to show that every smile carries a story, that every face in the church represents a life, a struggle, a journey.” That is the heart of it: they are not selling religion; they are making the Church visible as people.  “In a world full of chaotic sounds and trends, we believe Christians can create their own trends: healthy content, meaningful stories, and truth.” Then they land on the immense power of the platform they are using, how one image, one clip, one scene can cross borders instantly. “Today, one video can take the Church into someone’s home.”

The biggest moments

When their audience reacted strongly, it was surprisingly not always to grand declarations or complex theology. Often it was the simplest scenes, daily rhythms Eastern Christians barely notice anymore because they grew up inside them.

“We were surprised by how simple moments went viral, things Eastern Christians do daily without thinking twice.” Then came the deeper realization: what felt normal to them felt rare to many watching. “It made us realize that many people in the West have lost this sense of community and sacred rhythm. They miss it. They long for it.”

That longing is bigger than Christianity. It is a longing for meaning that shows up in calendars, rituals, gatherings, songs, food after prayer, elders and children together in one space. “That is what made those videos resonate so deeply… people genuinely wanted to see that way of life continue.”

At the Vatican

Invited by the Dicastery for Communications, the twins spoke at the first Jubilee of Catholic Influencers and Digital Missionaries, standing on a Vatican stage as representatives of Eastern Christianity. “It was an honor for us to be on the stage of the Vatican representing Eastern Christianity,” they say. Their message centered on unity between Catholics and Orthodox, and between tradition and mission.

“As Christians, we are strong, and we must carry our mission together.”

They were later selected for EWTN’s Summer Academy, a ten-day program with the world’s largest Catholic media network. There, they were trained in covering Church life through digital media. As part of the program, the twins joined media coverage of the Jubilee of Youth, an event that brought together nearly one million young people.

Faith under pressure

Running a page like this creates pressure: expectations, criticism, obstacles, the weight of representing something larger than yourself.  “It has strengthened our faith, and of course, many obstacles came our way. But we see them as challenges.” They are not naïve about hardship; they just refuse to treat it as a reason to quit.

“Through Christ we can overcome anything.” And the mission has given them a community. “Our faith has grown tremendously because of our mission. This mission has brought like-minded people into our lives, and we have learned so much from their faith.”

The deeper they study heritage, the more rooted they become. “Getting to know our history and heritage in detail has helped us understand our roots and has made us realize how proud we should be of our faith.”

Their message to the young

When asked what they would tell a young Christian struggling with doubt or identity, Charbel goes straight to the heart: “Remember that you are the Church, not the stones.” “Jesus died for you, and that is how precious you are. “He frames identity as inheritance, slow built across generations. “Your identity was not formed overnight. You carry your ancestors’ history…and you have superpowers from the moment you were baptized. You are powerful.” Finally, he turns heritage into a demand: “Your ancestors fought for this, not so that you would abandon it, but so that you would carry it forward.”

Giovani answers from another angle: not identity first, but suffering, because many young people leave because pain feels like proof that God is not there. He refuses that conclusion. “Don’t be afraid of your cross… it might make you sad, it might make you despair…but our crosses are an opportunity for us to grow, an opportunity for us to learn how to aim to sainthood.” And he ends with a line that speaks for itself: “Christ tells us with faith as little as a mustard seed we can move mountains!”