Linda Lubbe

The Revd Dr Linda Mary Lubbe is an Anglican priest, theologian and writer whose ministry has taken her from South Africa to rural Norfolk.

Her interest in the relationship between Christianity and African culture long predates the experiences described in her memoir, Sand in My Shoes. In 1997 she completed a dissertation at the University of South Africa examining oral communication during the Easter Vigil at St Augustine’s Anglican Church in Thaba ’Nchu. The study drew on theories of oral communication to examine the way Christian belief was expressed and transmitted within a predominantly oral culture.

She subsequently studied Christian Spirituality at the University of South Africa, completing a Doctor of Theology degree in 2003. Her doctoral thesis, A Comparison of Celtic and African Spirituality, explored two traditions in which the physical and spiritual worlds are closely interconnected. Among its subjects were oral tradition, art, the natural world and the particular importance of power and powerlessness in African spirituality.

Lubbe went on to serve in the Anglican Diocese of St Mark the Evangelist in Limpopo Province, in the north of South Africa. As priest-in-charge at Modimolle, she ministered in an unusually mixed religious environment. Her home church brought Anglicans, Methodists and Presbyterians together, alongside Dutch Reformed, Afrikaans and charismatic congregations, while differences of language—not least the use of Sepedi—added another dimension to parish life. These encounters with the practical realities of Christianity in rural South Africa became the subject of Sand in My Shoes.

Her responsibilities eventually extended considerably beyond a single parish. By 2018 she was Archdeacon of Waterberg South, while simultaneously serving as priest-in-charge of both Ga Seabe and Modimolle and as minister-in-charge of St Michael’s United Church. She was also closely involved in the training and selection of clergy: she helped run the Guild of St Mark, which provided fellowship and training for people considering ordination and post-ordination training for newly ordained clergy, and served on the diocesan Vocations Conference, advising the bishop on candidates for ordination and their training.

In September 2018 Lubbe left the Diocese of St Mark the Evangelist and moved to Britain. By early 2019 she was serving in the Diocese of Norwich, working among the small rural parishes around Mundford, Hilborough and Oxborough. Parish records show her continuing this ministry through the Covid period, when she also wrote regularly for the local community, and the Diocese of Norwich was still listing her among the clergy serving the Hilborough and Mundford groups in 2025.

Sand in My Shoes: Memoirs of a Priest in Rural Africa was published by PostcardBooks in 2021. It draws on Lubbe’s years of ministry in northern South Africa and on a career spent negotiating the boundaries between different churches, languages, cultures and understandings of Christian life.