The morning sun shone through the church’s stained glass windows as the preacher’s voice rang throughout the sanctuary. Senior Bernice Kwong’s attention was fading in and out, as the pastor’s words went over her head. Looking over at her twin sister Ashley, she saw her seated upright, nodding to the pastor’s voice and occasionally looking down to annotate her Bible. Bernice took a deep breath and returned to her Sunday service daze, biding her time until service ended.
Despite being brought up by the same Christian teachings, twins Ashley and Bernice Kwong recognize their differing levels of faith. For as long as they can remember, a Christian lifestyle has been an integral part of their lives, with their religious journeys beginning with weekly family church visits and progressing when they began attending a Christian after school during elementary school. One milestone in Christianity is baptism, an event both Ashley and Bernice had planned for two years ago but only Ashley ended up completing.
“We spent two years in quarantine taking baptism classes, reading other people’s testimonies where they shared how there were miracles that happened in their lives that made them want to get baptized,” Ashley said. “Before I had to get baptized, I had to make a testimony and I had to really think it through before being dunked into a pool of water. At that time, I really thought of all the instances in my life that made me feel like I should be faithful to God fully.”
However, since middle school, Bernice struggled to understand her pastor’s sermons in the same way Ashley did. Bernice saw her faith reflected in her morals and did not feel she had the strong central belief in God necessary to get baptized. After viewing how seriously her peers interacted with their faiths in her baptism classes, Bernice says she began reconsidering the strength of her faith and eventually pulled out of baptism.
“I realized that, if I were really to attend church every day, what’s the meaning behind that?” Bernice said. “I sit there in a chair every single day — what am I doing with my life? And so I thought, ‘I can’t back down.’ I realized that I’ve been in the same room talking to God for so long — I need to figure out what’s wrong with my life. I was having an existential crisis at that point.”
Since deciding not to get baptized, Bernice has focused on answering these questions and searching for a deeper meaning of her Christian faith. Previously, she felt some pressure from her peers to make this decision, but ultimately was reminded by her family that this was her choice and her religious journey.
“If I was going to do something, I was not going to do it forced,” Bernice said. “I had a talk with my pastor and I realized that I need to change my trajectory and my thinking in my life. I realized that talking to God is like opening a gratitude journal every single day and writing down three things that I feel grateful for. I’m trying to change my mindset about faith, and that’s why I haven’t gotten baptized.”
Before the day Bernice planned to be baptized, she says she received a call from her older sisters, Gwyneth and Emily, who encouraged her to reflect more on her baptism. As Gwyneth had also noticed peer pressure in their church, both she and Emily also also wanted Bernice to make the decision to get baptized on her own without feeling forced.
“Ultimately, I was quite proud that she was able to say, ‘I changed my mind,’ because that’s something I feel like is really hard to do,” Gwyneth said. “I’m really proud that she was able to really sit herself down and think about her feelings in the moment. I wanted her to go to college and experience different things before she realizes, ‘I am true to my Christian faith.’”
The call from the twins’ older sisters also prompted Ashley to reflect deeper on the role peer pressure plays in baptism and faith, ultimately leading her to affirm her baptism as a personal action. However, despite being deeply rooted in her faith, Ashley notes she is often hesitant to outwardly display her Christian faith in secular spaces in fear of being set apart. She recognizes a polarizing contrast between the pressure she feels in Christian spaces to present a very religious version of herself and the pressure she feels at school and with peers to hide her faith.
“They look into my faith and they’re in disbelief, like, ‘Aren’t you being indoctrinated? Aren’t you being peer pressured?’” Ashley said. “I tell them about my experience at my Christian afterschool, and they say, ‘Oh, it sounds like a cult.’ So since then, I’ve stopped talking about Christianity at school, because I feel like people will judge me for it.”
While navigating these complexities that come with a Christian identity, the twins say they continuously turn to their older sisters for guidance because of their personal experiences integrating their faith in secular settings. Gwyneth recalls transforming her own outlook on Christianity after moving to LA, realizing interpretations of the Bible varied. Through her own lessons, she makes an effort to pass the same values on to Bernice and Ashley.
“Most of the older folks in our church are very traditional, and I’m very glad that the twins came to me and Emily,” Gwyneth said. “I let them know that as a Christian, you’re supposed to spread love, and that’s how I want them to grow up. There’s a lot of liberal ways to interpret the Bible and everyone has a different journey. Everyone has a different timeline, so don’t always compare yourself to others, because others are walking in a different path than yours.”
With the support of Gwyneth and each other, Bernice and Ashley say they continue to grow into their faiths. Ashley says that especially with their different stages in faith, their closeness aids them both in navigating their religious identity while reconciling it with other parts of themselves.
“As a twin, I will always be supportive of Bernice,” Ashley said. “We don’t voice these things out loud to each other — it’s more like we’ve known each other for so long that it’s kind of unconscious. I think faith is very personal. Everyone has different levels of it. I know that she’s got it in whatever she does.”
