Ralph D. Winter

Right.

And so I began to ask around a few people, and, uh, some people like Ralph Winter and the US Center for World Missions and, and some other people I knew in th- that world, and, and they said, "Well, no one in scripture ever called themself a Christian," you know?

Yeah.

So I think it's okay.

but that doesn't make a nation any less real.

And to my mission-minded brothers, notice that the people group movement in missions, I'm talking Ralph Winter, the Joshua Project, Lausanne Congress on World Evangelization in the 70s, all of that context depends on exactly this realist definition of peoplehood.

peoples defined by language, heritage, culture, and the like.

Missiologists have been operating on a biblical doctrine of nationhood for 50 years, while the political theologians argued about whether or not that definition even exists.