Dr Bill Oliverio explores a Pentecostal vision of human flourishing—one that is Spirit-empowered, intellectually robust, and deeply rooted in love. In a diverse and divided world, he believes Christians bear their strongest witness when they genuinely see, value, and care for others.
At the Asia Pentecostal Summit 2026, Dr Bill Oliverio invited Pentecostals to think more deeply about what it means to live a Spirit-filled life in today’s world. Through his idea of “Pentecostal Christian humanism,” he brings together spiritual formation, intellectual engagement, human flourishing, and love for others.
In this interview, he reflects on why Pentecostals must resist anti-intellectualism, how Christians can engage a diverse world with humility and conviction, and why love must remain at the centre of our witness. He also shares how these convictions are shaping him personally—not only as a theologian and teacher, but as a husband, father, and follower of Christ.
CITY NEWS: Dr Bill, you’ve spent many years studying, teaching, and serving the Pentecostal movement. For our readers who are meeting you for the first time, how would you introduce yourself, and what continues to fuel your passion for this calling?
DR BILL OLIVERIO: Well, I’m Bill Oliverio. I’m an American, originally from the Midwest. As I shared at the conference, I grew up on the west side of Cleveland, Ohio, an old industrial city. But for the past nine years, I’ve lived on the West Coast—first in Seattle, and now back in Northern California.
I went to Bible college with a simple call to pastoral ministry. But while I was there, perhaps like some of the students here, I fell in love with theology, philosophy, and Christian ethics. That led me to pursue a master’s degree and eventually a doctorate, and before long I found myself teaching.
I spent about 11 years at Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, a Catholic Jesuit university, where I taught theology as a Pentecostal scholar. During the last seven of those years, I also pastored an Assemblies of God church. Later, I moved to California to serve as Associate Academic Dean at the School of Urban Missions Bible College and Theological Seminary, before joining Northwest University near Seattle as Associate Professor of Public Theology for five years.
This past year, I’ve returned to Northern California, where I’m involved in a number of projects. Since 2020, I’ve served as editor of Pneuma, the journal of the Society for Pentecostal Studies, an international interdisciplinary journal in Pentecostal scholarship. I’ve also written two books, co-edited three others, and published a couple of dozen journal articles. It’s been a very rewarding journey.
Your paper proposes what you call a “Pentecostal Christian Humanism”. For those unfamiliar with the term, what does it mean, and why do you believe the Church needs this vision today?
I think Pentecostal Christianity needs a unified, well-developed Christian social ethic that we can share across the continents, and I believe Pentecostal Christian humanism is a good candidate for that.
Sometimes, especially in places influenced by the British tradition, the word humanism is associated with secularism or atheism. But historically, the humanist tradition actually emerged from Christian thinkers during the late medieval period and the Renaissance. At its heart, it was a movement concerned with human flourishing.
In late medieval Europe, most people were serfs—labourers with little education, living in conditions that were often close to slavery under local lords. While the Renaissance is best known for its art, Christian humanism was its intellectual wing. It was led largely by Christians who believed that human beings were created for far more than mere survival or labour. Christian humanists argued that both Scripture and the wisdom of the ancient philosophers pointed to a much richer vision of human vocation—one that embraced human flourishing, the enjoyment of life, the pursuit of art, education, health, and the full development of human potential. That was the original Christian humanist tradition, even though the term has since been secularised.
What I’m proposing builds on that heritage. Much of my own work has been in theological hermeneutics, and that’s probably what I’m best known for as a scholar. But in recent years, I’ve been thinking a great deal about the relationship between Christianity—particularly Pentecostal Christianity—and the modern world. As a Westerner, I naturally think about these questions in Western contexts, but I’m also thinking globally, thinking a lot about the way Christianity interacts with the modern world.
I’ve organised this idea around three main tenets. First, it has to be Pentecostal. It begins with a Spirit-baptised faith, where Spirit baptism becomes a work of spiritual formation. We are deeply changed, deeply transformed. If we are to have any power to do good in the world, it is because God is transforming us, filling us with His Spirit, empowering us, and reshaping the kind of people we are.
Second, Christians are called to engage in social action for the sake of human flourishing. Wayne Choong gave an excellent response to my paper today and pointed out that there are many different understandings of human flourishing, and that’s exactly right. I briefly gave examples from different parts of the world because ideas of flourishing vary across cultures. But wherever we are, Pentecostals should be concerned with human flourishing. Wayne also rightly noted that we must never lose our sense of God’s transcendence. That’s essential, because Christianity can easily be reduced to little more than social activism. But genuine Christian concern for doing good, caring for others, and loving our neighbours must always flow from our relationship with God.
Third, I believe Pentecostalism must become a robustly intellectual movement and tradition. This Pentecostal Christian humanism is also a movement of Pentecostal intelligence. It challenges the anti-intellectualism that has been a strong strand within parts of Pentecostalism, and this is perhaps where I most want to challenge our tradition.
I see this as a matter of maturation. As I shared today, I believe Pentecostal theology has now developed to the point where it can carry the whole of the Christian tradition. I don’t mean that Pentecostals are the only true Christians. Rather, I mean that Pentecostal theology has matured enough to give a full account of the Christian gospel and the core truths of the Christian faith, while respecting other Christian traditions and engaging other religions thoughtfully and respectfully. The theology is there. What we now need is a corresponding intellectual tradition. Whether someone is an architect, a technology professional, a businessperson, a shop owner, a hawker, or any other vocation, how do they live faithfully as a Christian in that setting? How do they articulate a Christian understanding of their work? What does it mean to do good, to flourish, and to integrate faith with everyday life? Those are the kinds of questions we need to help Christians answer. We need to develop a tradition that thoughtfully engages vocation, family life, and the social issues of our day.
You contrast Martin Buber’s “I-Thou” relationship with treating people as “I-It.” Looking at today’s culture—from social media and AI to political polarisation and consumerism—how can the Church recover a more deeply Christian way of relating to others?
I think this is a really important question. It begins with a basic conviction: when I encounter another person, they are not simply an experience for me or someone whose value lies only in what they can do for me. Take a simple example. You buy a cup of coffee from a café. You hand over your money and expect the barista to make your coffee well. But the deeper question is: do you actually see that person as a whole human being? Do you encounter them with your whole being, recognising their full dignity and humanity? After all, that’s how each of us hopes to be seen by others.
I think this is a fundamental expression of what it means to love our neighbour as ourselves. Martin Buber developed this idea in the 1920s in his influential work I and Thou. He argued that there are two basic ways of relating. We never simply exist as an isolated “I”; we are always in relationship. That relationship is either I-Thou or I-It.
An I-It relationship treats something as an object. For example, I have an I-It relationship with this table we’re sitting at. It’s useful, but I don’t ascribe personal worth to it. Buber even uses the example of a tree, suggesting that one can have a profound encounter with creation. But ultimately, his point is that God is the absolute “Thou”, and because every human being is created in God’s image, every person is also a “thou”.
That changes how we see people. The person serving me coffee may simply be doing their job, and I’m not suggesting we have to turn every interaction into some mystical spiritual experience. But what if that person is going through a crisis? What if something devastating has happened in their life? Am I able to see beyond the transaction and recognise the person standing before me? That, I think, is where the Church has an opportunity to recover a genuinely Christian way of relating to others.
This has become very personal for me over the past year. I’m 49 years old, and I’ve been teaching since I was 24. This past year, I decided to take a break from teaching and serve as a hospital chaplain at a University of California hospital in Sacramento, one of the largest regional medical centres in Northern California. I’ve been assigned as the primary chaplain in the emergency department. Day after day, I’ve encountered people in some of the worst moments of their lives. That’s really where this idea of I-Thou becomes real. It’s about seeing people in those moments—not as problems to solve or cases to process, but as whole persons. It’s about listening to their stories, hearing their fears, hopes, and dreams, and genuinely caring for them in their humanity.
For Buber, this vision was deeply rooted in the Hebrew Scriptures. Although he did not accept the New Testament as Scripture, he believed this way of encountering others flowed from the biblical understanding of human beings. His idea of I-Thou profoundly influenced many of the twentieth century’s most important Christian thinkers. Karl Barth, often regarded as the leading Protestant theologian of the twentieth century, was deeply influenced by Buber. Martin Luther King Jr. also drew on this tradition through Christian personalism. Although not directly a disciple of Buber, King’s ethical vision was shaped by thinkers influenced by him, and this became one of the moral foundations of the American Civil Rights Movement.
Touching on this point of love, you repeatedly describe Christianity as an “agapeism”—a faith fundamentally shaped by self-giving love. Why do you think love, rather than power or even truth, should be considered the defining centre of Pentecostal spirituality?
I think Scripture itself gives us the warrant for this. 1 John 4 tells us twice that “God is love”. Then you have 1 Corinthians 13, and of course the Great Commandment—to love God with our whole being and to love our neighbour as ourselves.
I try to be generous towards other theological traditions that may disagree with my own, and I believe we can have healthy theological disagreements. But I do strongly disagree with any Christian theology that attempts to decentre love. When that happens, something essential to Christianity is pushed to the margins. Sometimes love is displaced by an emphasis on power, doctrine, or even a particular theological system or set of ideas. I do think this has happened within parts of the Christian tradition. The problem is that when you make love secondary, you are taking something that Scripture presents as essential and treating it as though it were optional.
For me, love is not merely one Christian virtue among many. It is at the very centre of the Christian faith, because it is at the very centre of God’s own character.
You challenge Pentecostalism to overcome its anti-intellectual tendencies. Why do you think this tension between spirituality and scholarship has persisted, and what might a genuinely Spirit-filled intellectual culture look like?
Pentecostals are people of action, and I actually appreciate that. I’m intellectual, but I’m also very action-oriented, and that is part of what attracts me to Pentecostalism. We tend to be pragmatic. We want to get things done, and we can become impatient with just sitting around and reflecting.
But I think that strength can also create some bad habits. Sometimes we are so busy doing that we do not spend enough time reflecting. Pentecostals invest an enormous amount of time and energy in our faith, and I sometimes wonder why we do not invest the same kind of energy in understanding it intellectually.
Part of it may simply be habit. Sometimes we resist something because it is unfamiliar, only to discover later that we have been missing something valuable all along. I think engaging the Christian intellectual tradition can be like that. There is a richness there that many people may not realise is available to them.
Of course, not everyone is going to be academically inclined. Not everyone loves reading or intellectual study, and that is okay. The body of Christ has different members with different gifts.
But I do think the church is also a kind of school. The church has a responsibility to teach the faith and to help people understand what they believe. So a genuinely Spirit-filled intellectual culture would not require everyone to become a scholar, but it would encourage all believers, according to their abilities and God’s leading, to think more deeply and reflect more carefully about their faith.
For Christians who may not naturally be readers or academics, what are some practical ways they can grow intellectually and think more deeply about their faith?
I think one of the great things today is that there are so many resources available. Of course, I would add a word of caution: be careful where you get your information from. I don’t want to simply send people into the “Wild West” of the Internet. It can be a little like asking family or friends for a good restaurant recommendation. Find people you trust and ask them to recommend good books, podcasts, teachers, or other resources that can help you think more deeply about your faith.
I have actually been very impressed and blessed by the people studying here at City Harvest. There are some really promising thinkers here, so you may even want to begin with people and resources within your own church community.
Let me name one person as an example. Stephen Félix-Jäger is one of my associate editors at Pneuma and a good friend of mine. He is a theologian, but he is also a visual artist, musician, and writer. He has written several books in Pentecostal studies and also engages contemporary issues through podcasts and other forms of media. He is someone who can make theology interesting and accessible, especially for people who connect more easily through culture, art, or contemporary issues.
So intellectual growth does not always have to mean sitting down with a heavy academic book. There are many ways to learn. And this goes back to what I said earlier: the church is also a school. We learn our faith through preaching, teaching, conversations, and the people around us. The important thing is to stay curious, find trustworthy voices, and keep taking small steps towards understanding your faith more deeply.
In your presentation, you mentioned St Francis of Asisi’s simple prayer, “May the Lord give you peace”. What can Pentecostals learn from this prayer, particularly about how we pray for and minister to others?
I’ve always loved what is commonly called the Prayer of St Francis—the one that begins, “Lord, make me an instrument of Your peace.” But that prayer was actually written much later, around the early 1900s, and was not written by St Francis himself.
When I was reading Augustine Thompson’s biography of St Francis, I came across a prayer that Francis himself used: “May the Lord give you peace.” It sounds so simple that it can almost seem trite, like a nice blessing someone might casually say at church. But there is actually a lot of depth to it.
For Francis, it was a way of praying for another person with deep humility. In effect, it says, “I don’t know exactly what God is doing in your life, but I know that God desires His peace—His shalom—for you.”
So rather than assuming that I know what you need or immediately giving you advice, I can simply pray that whatever God is doing to bring about His peace in your life would come to fulfilment. There is a real concern for the other person in that prayer, but there is also humility. It refuses to presume too much or to offer too much advice. It simply desires God’s goodness and God’s peace for that person.
Asia is home to tremendous cultural, religious, and ethnic diversity. How might a Pentecostal Christian humanism help believers engage people of other faiths and cultures with both conviction and humility?
I think this is especially important in places where Christians are known by the way they care for others.
After teaching history, logic, and theology for more than 25 years, I have come to a few basic conclusions. When Christianity is expressed through strife, exclusion, rudeness, or as a means for people to gain power or wealth, it tends to cause harm. People are pushed away, and the church’s witness suffers. But when Christians genuinely love people and care for them deeply, that creates a very different kind of witness. And I don’t mean loving your neighbour simply as a strategy—“Have I loved you enough now that you will listen to me share the gospel or come to church?” I mean genuinely loving and caring for someone because that is the kind of person the Spirit is forming us to become.
Northern California, where I live, is also a very pluralistic place. It is obviously different from Southeast Asia, but there is still significant religious and cultural diversity. I think that insofar as Christians genuinely embody Christianity, we become good witnesses. When we embody a malformed version of Christianity, we become malformed witnesses.
To live this way, though, we continually need to return to the source. We need to be filled with the Spirit and immerse ourselves again in the love of God so that we can truly love our neighbours as ourselves. We cannot keep giving out love without also receiving it—from God and from others who share His love with us. And that does not mean we have to be completely healed before God can use us. Henri Nouwen spoke about the “wounded healer.” Even when we ourselves are wounded, God can still work through us. But our own healing also needs to remain part of the work God is doing in us.
After researching and writing this paper, what has God challenged you to change most in your own life? Has this vision of Pentecostal Christian humanism affected the way you pray, teach, or relate to others?
I’ve actually been thinking about Pentecostal Christian humanism for quite a while. This is probably the fourth or fifth thing I’ve written on the subject, and I may eventually write a book on it. So it is something I reflect on a lot.
What strikes me is how holistic it is. It affects so many areas of life that it is difficult to choose just one. But in a very simple and personal way, I think it has challenged me to be a better father to my sons, who are now 20 and 18, and also a better husband to my wife. I want to embody these ideas first in the way I love and care for them.
One area I have become especially aware of is the need for healthy boundaries, particularly with my time. Looking back, I can see that there were times when I did not have good enough boundaries, and my family sometimes paid the price for that. In ministry, it is very easy to keep pouring yourself out—giving here, giving there, taking on one more responsibility—and then realise that you do not have enough left for your own family. There are seasons of my life I look back on with some regret. I invested a lot of time in things that were not necessarily bad; many of them were good things. But sometimes I gave extra time and energy to pushing those things forward, and that time ultimately came out of what I could have given to my wife and children.
So one of the clearest ways this vision has challenged me is to prioritise my family, establish healthier boundaries, and learn to love the people closest to me more faithfully.
