Walter Russell Lambuth (November 10, 1854 – September 26, 1921) was a Chinese-born American Christian bishop who worked as a missionary establishing schools and hospitals in China, Korea and Japan in the 1880s.

[1] Born in Shanghai, China as the eldest son of James William Lambuth and Mary Isabella McClellan, he was sent to his relatives in Tennessee and Mississippi for his early education.

Walter graduated from Emory and Henry College in 1875, and later received theology and medical degrees from Vanderbilt University.

Bishop W. M. Wrightman appointed Walter R. Lambuth as the first pastor of Woodbine United Methodist Church in Nashville, Tennessee in 1875.

[2] Lambuth was ordained an elder in the Tennessee Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, and returned to China with his wife Daisy Kelly as a medical missionary in 1877.