FUKUOKA, Japan (ABP) — A Japanese university founded by Southern Baptist missionaries has named one as its new president.
Trustees of Seinan Gakuin University in Fukuoka, Japan, have elected Gary Barkley as the school's ninth president. Barkley will be the third American-born president at Seinan Gakuin, which the American missionaries founded in 1949.
A graduate of Samford University in Birmingham, Ala., Barkley received a doctorate degree from Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in 1984 and immediately moved to Japan to begin working as a missionary for the Southern Baptist Convention's International Mission Board, then known as the Foreign Mission Board. Barkley joined the school's faculty in 1987 and is currently its dean of religious affairs. He will assume his new position Dec. 15.
Seinan Gakuin, which is located in a metropolis of 1.3 million people, has 7,600 students. Less than five percent of them are Christian. Those figures mirror Japanese society as a whole, where less than one percent of the population professes Christianity.
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