MIT student leaders: Q&A with a student of interfaith dialogue (and math)

As a leader in the Addir Fellows Interfaith Dialogue Program, Angeline Peng challenges herself and her fellow students to investigate what they really believe.

Angeline Peng doesn’t come from a strong faith tradition, but she is a believer. In her role with the Addir Fellows Program, she convenes and leads regular, small-group interfaith discussions to help other students—and herself—grapple with big questions.

The Addir Fellows Program was started in 2005 through a grant from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. It is now supported by MIT’s Office of Religious, Spiritual, and Ethical Life. The program has maintained a steady focus on “sharing spiritual values and experiences, not just opinions,” says MIT Chaplain Thea Keith-Lucas.

A fourth-year math major, Peng sees deep connections between what she’s learning in class and the Addir Program. “I think part of why I do math is spiritual,” she says. “There’s a lot of beauty in the truth.”

Q: What is the Addir Fellows program?

A: It’s an interfaith dialogue club. “Addir” comes from the Sumerian word for bridge, and that’s what we’re here to do—build bridges between people from different walks of life. 

We meet every week in small groups of five to eight people. The groups start off with what we call our “spiritual autobiographies.” As much as we can, everyone gives a description of where they’re coming from. After that, every week we pick a topic and discuss it. 

We try to balance faith traditions in the small groups. The biggest limiting factor is scheduling. That turns out to be really complicated. 

Q: What’s your own spiritual autobiography?

A: My family is atheist. I was born in Singapore, which is very multicultural, and we moved to Lehi, Utah, when I was 10. Utah is very homogeneous; most people in my neighborhood were part of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Sometimes in high school I would ask friends about their beliefs, but college was the first time I could really explore. 

At some point I realized it’s important to know myself better, to understand and have my own principles. Exploring different religions is an attempt—and I am still building this—to understand what I think is important, what I value, what I think is right, and what I think is wrong. 

Getting insight from different faith traditions is really helpful. I believe different religions, or different approaches to religion, are all interpretations of universal truth—and so exploring from all kinds of perspectives will give me a better understanding of what that could mean. 

I’ll say, I’m not too sure about it yet. I don’t know if there’s some kind of universal good, or bad, or whatever. But I do think there are some kernels in everything. 

Q: Who participates? Does the program bring together a range of faith traditions?

A: When I signed up for my first Addir event, I met grad students and undergrads from just about everywhere. It was very refreshing, like—“Wow! I didn’t know there were all these people here!” At MIT, you can end up in a kind of bubble. You know people from your dorm or your major. This program’s different.

The people come from a wide spectrum of traditions and backgrounds. Also, we have quite a lot who are somewhat agnostic or less extreme in their beliefs. 

A big part of why people sign up for Addir is they want to listen to other people and learn. Sometimes, this means they don’t talk as much. I do my best to instigate—play devil’s advocate and push at people’s ideas. I believe that’s part of my job.

Q: Do you think participants feel pressure to speak “for” their faiths?

A: I wouldn’t say anyone is trying to represent their faith, because there are so many facets of just one faith anyway. When there are questions, everybody gives an answer like—“This is what I think.” Sometimes people will bring up a text and say—“It says this, and this is how I interpret it, or this is how certain people in my life interpret it.” That can be really helpful.

Also, I wouldn’t say we’re focused on just religion. A lot of people are just trying to find their way in life, whether it’s through spiritual or secular questions. In my small groups, we’ve talked quite a bit about what we can do to just be a better person; exploring different aspects of that, and dealing with more everyday stuff like regrets, guilt, pleasure, pain, punishment. Obviously, religion can help you with answers. 

I like to think: how can we answer those questions as a group, in that room, in that moment? The answers might be different for everyone, but if we can hear what other people think, maybe we can get insight and be persuaded into believing something new. 

Q: How does the mathematician in you come out during these conversations? 

A: I think part of why I do math is spiritual, so they’re connected in that sense. It all relates to how I want to live my life. Some people describe doing math like making art—they’re in pursuit of beauty and some deeper truth. I think math is really pretty, and there’s a lot of beauty in the truth. 

One of the great tools of mathematics is that it teaches you how to abstract and understand which details are just details, and what are the core ideas. Doing a lot of math helps me stay objective, abstracting away things that are less important. 

Q: Can it be difficult to reconcile issues of faith and logic? 

A: You have to always believe in something. It’s like picking your axioms. You start with faith in something, and from there you can extrapolate away what you think.  

It can be very difficult. Gödel’s incompleteness theorem says you can’t prove everything with any set of axioms. You can choose whatever set of axioms you like, and it either is incomplete or inconsistent; incomplete as in, you can’t prove every statement is either true or false, and inconsistent in that you will at some point prove that something is both true and false. So you can’t have both. But we want both! 

Mathematicians live with the incomplete, and this is probably true for any belief system. Some people are deeply unhappy not knowing the answer, and some people are more okay with it. I tend to be very okay with it. 

Q: Do you think this program changes people?

A: Definitely. Over time, people’s opinions really do change. We all have the more “press-ready” opinions we give to others. Even in Addir, it’s got to be half or two thirds of the year before I feel comfortable talking about everything I really believe. This program is genius because you actually become, like, friends by the end. 

To actually care about another person—as a person, outside of what they believe—is really a function of time. You need to be together and have this dialogue for a while. When there’s conflict, finding solutions is very situation-dependent, and maybe not possible. But eventually, you get to know each other. You can talk about controversial issues or opinions that maybe you were scared of sharing before. It’s so nice to have this space as your opinion is changing. 

Because of Addir, maybe one person learns a little bit, and they go back to their own group of people and share that perspective. And when they share it, someone else learns. I’m a big proponent of let’s try to change things locally—very locally; person by person—and maybe we can spread that positivity.