Robert Culpepper

RICHMOND, Va. - Robert Harrell Culpepper second son of James Pickren and Leona Wansley Culpepper, was born in Tifton, Georgia, on De-cember 8, 1924.

After a remarkable life of service on two continents, he died on August 10, 2012.

Bob was a lifetime learner. His formal education after graduation from the Tifton High School, was at Mercer University with a bachelor's degree in 1944, a B.D. from the Southern Baptist Seminary in 1947 and a Th.D. degree from the same institution in 1950. He studied at the Union Theological Seminary in Richmond, Virginia, in the Southern Baptist Seminary in Louisville, at the Ruschlikon Seminary in Zurich, Switzerland, and at Southeastern Seminary in Wake Forest, N.C. where he later served as a professor. He was a brilliant scholar in the Baptist denomination, serving as a professor of the-ology in the Theological Department of Seinan Gakuin University, at the Japan Branch of the Asia Baptist Theological Seminary, and at Southeastern Seminary in Wakeforest, N.C. While the classroom was the focus of his vocational ministry, he was a servant of many churches. He loved to preach. His pastorates varied from his one in Shiloh-Lama Baptist Church in the summer of 1943 while he was a student at Mercer to the ones he helped to establish in Japan, at Hirao, in Tobata, and at Nagazumi. Since Dr. Culpepper was the author of
Interpreting the Atonement, Evaluating the Charismatic Move-ment, and God's Calling: A Missionary Autobiography, his scholarship is preserved. However, his greatest influence is found in the lives of his students whom he taught and of his parishioners to whom he preached.

In April 1980, Dr. and Mrs. Culpepper completed their thirty year service as missionaries of the Foreign Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Con-vention and moved from Fukuoka, Japan to Wake Forest, N.C. where Bob became a professor at Southeastern Seminary. After more than twenty years in Wake Forest, they moved to Lakewood Manor, a Baptist retirement community in Richmond. There Kay died in 2007. In addition to his devoted wife, Dr. Culpepper was predeceased by his mother, father and brother.

He is survived by his daughter, Cathy Harvey and her husband, Ken; six grandchildren, Shelton, Beau, Charlotte, Chip, Laurel and Matthew; and a niece, Sarah Christopher.