Roger George Patrick Lamburn was an Anglican missionary in Tanganyika (Tanzania). Lamburn was known as Robin Lamburn, born in London, and studied pathology at Cambridge. After theological training and a curacy, he went to the Diocese of Masasi in 1930 with the Universities’ Mission to Central Africa. He served at Chidya and Luatala, Tanganyika, and then at Lukwika, where he supported circumcision rites for boys in a Christian framework. He was warden of St. Cyprian’s Theological College, Namasakata (1936-1949), then archdeacon, and finally education secretary. In 1961 he moved to the Rufiji Delta for an itinerant ministry, and from 1965 until his death lived at Kindwitwi, a leprosy village, founded under German rule. In addition to a modern clinic, he provided it with cultivated land and thousands of cashew trees for self-support. In 1985 he was awarded the Albert Schweitzer Prize. In his acceptance address he declared, “If you go to give, you must also be prepared to receive from those to whom you aspire to give; if you wish to teach, you must be prepared to learn from those whom you teach.” And, “My friends, we do not go into the Third World to give or to teach, but to share.”

Gavin White

Bibliography

R. Lamburn, “Some Notes on the Yao,” Tanganyika Notes and Records (1950). A. G. Blood, The History of the Universities’ Mission to Central Africa, vol. 3 (1962); N. Q. King and Klaus Fiedler, with Gavin White, Robin Lamburn-from a Missionary’s Notebook: The Yao of Tunduru and Other Essays (1991).

This article is reproduced, with permission, from Biographical Dictionary of Christian Missions, copyright © 1998, by Gerald H. Anderson, W. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, Grand Rapids, Michigan. All rights reserved.