IN MEMORIAM

MATTHEW SCHOFFELEERS (1928-2011)

by Wim van Binsbergen (http://shikanda.net; e-mail: wimvanbinsbergen@gmail.com )

With deep regret we announce the death of a leading anthropologist of Malawi and of African religion, Matthew Schoffeleers – sometime Deputy Chairman of the African Studies Centre (1980-1984), and for decades an important figure in Africanist research and teaching in Malawi as well as in the Netherlands.

Life

Matthew Schoffeleers was born as child of a peasant family in the hamlet of Geverik, near Beek, in the extreme South East of the Netherlands, then still a wholly and emphatically Roman Catholic region. For a boy of his background a religious career was the obvious channel to bring his talents to fruition, so in 1942 he joined the minor seminary, in 1949 he took his first vows within the religious congregation of Montfort, and in 1955 he was ordained priest and went off to Malawi as a missionary. In Malawi he was stationed in the Lower Shire Valley, where rather than unreservedly proselytising for the Roman Catholic faith, he increasingly became involved with the local cult of the martyr / demigod Mbona, and with the well-known nyau mask society. A conflict with his bishop ensued, and (like so many members of his generation, including Johannes Fabian, Sjaak van der Geest and René Devisch) Matthew Schoffeleers was brought to redefine his increasingly intimate relationship with Africa, from being a missionary, to being an anthropologist cum local participant. At the time, the Jesuits’ Lovanium University at Leopoldville (now Kinshasa) offered (as a branch of Louvain Catholic University, Belgium) an anthropology curriculum geared to missionaries’ mounting needs for critical intercultural (self-)reflection, and here Schoffeleers studied for a year (1963); one of his class mates was the, now prominent, Congolese / American Africanist and classicist / Romanist Valentin Mudimbe, while soon also the leading Belgian Africanist René Devisch would also begin his anthropological career there. Schoffeleers went on to Oxford University, where with amazing rapidity he took a BA in 1964, and a PhD in 1968 (main supervisor Rodney Needham), both on the Lower Shire Valley and the Mbona cult. In the same year he returned to Malawi, as teacher at the Nguladi Roman Catholic seminary (1968-1970), subsequently as director of the Catechetical Training Centre in Likulezi (1970-1971), and finally as Senior Lecturer at the University College, Zomba, Malawi (1971-1976). In 1976 he was appointed Reader in the Anthropology of Religion at the Free University, Amsterdam, the Netherlands – a post to be converted, like all other Dutch readerships, into a full professorship in 1980. It was then, also, that he acted, for a few years, on the Board of the African Studies Centre, Leiden, the Netherlands, as Deputy Chairman. In 1989 he exchanged his Amsterdam regular chair for a personal chair in Religious Anthropology at Utrecht University, the Netherlands, from which he retired in 1998 at the age of seventy. After his retirement he continued his research and publication activities, including a history of the Dutch Montfortan missions worldwide, until Alzheimer’s disease made it impossible for him to do so, forcing him to give up his apartment in Leiden and to live with his Montfortan confratres in the South East of the country again, back to where he was born. His eightieth birthday (2008) was still celebrated in great style, with a solemn celebration of the Holy Mass and a festive diner for dozens of relatives, friends, colleagues and former students. He passed away on Easter Day, 24 April 2011.

Work

In the work of Matthew Schoffeleers the following major strands may be distinguished.

(a) Religious anthropology

As an anthropologist, he saw it as his first task to put the ethnography of the Malawian Manganja (a subdivision of the Chewa) on the map, and in particular to give an adequate account of their religious life. Here he rather avoided the reductionist, outsider perspective en vogue in religious anthropology in the second half of the 20^th century, and instead he strove to encounter and understand the members his local research population in their own, irreducible spirituality. In his attempts to make sense of the religious phenomena he studied and unreservedly shared in Southern Malawi, his main sources of inspiration were the communitas-centred religious anthropology of Victor Turner (the subject of his inaugural address as a Reader at the Free University) and the anglicised forms of structuralism as mediated by Needham (the subject of his surprising inaugural address for his Utrecht chair, 1991: Waarom God maar één been heeft, ‘Why God has only one leg’, – a discussion of mutilation and asymmetry as hallmarks of the sacred, thus situating the Mbona figure in a global comparative, and especially in a universalising and timeless, typological perspective.

(b) Historicising anthropology

Like many anthropologists in the second half of the 20^th century, Schoffeleers was fascinated by the historical implications of his (necessarily present-day) fieldwork data. He was greatly inspired by the movement of the Historical Study of African Religion, initiated by the leading historian Terence Ranger (then University of California Los Angeles, later Manchester and Oxford) with a generous subsidy of the Ford Foundation. Here Schoffeleers was to occupy, in the 1970s-80s, a leading role, with impressive papers on historical aspects of the nyau society and of the Southern African cult organisation around the High God, Mwali – culminating in his editorship of the collection, still authoritative, on Guardians of the Land (1979), on Southern African territorial cults. Realising that the retrieval of (glimpses of) the distant past through the analysis of oral traditions and of the details of ritual arrangements could only be taken seriously if based on an explicit and sophisticated methodological basis, Schoffeleers joined the small number of scholars (including Roy Willis of Edinburgh, and Wim van Binsbergen of the Leiden African Studies Centre) who sought to forge the necessary methodological and theoretical instruments for this purpose. This endeavour also characterises Schoffeleers’ own contribution to the collective work he was to publish with van Binsbergen in 1985 on the basis of a high-powered international conference the two of them organised on behalf of the African Studies Centre, 1979: Theoretical explorations in African religion (1985, African Studies Centre series with Kegan Paul International). This line of Schoffeleers’ work reached its culmination in River of Blood: The genesis of a martyr cult in southern Malawi (1992, Wisconsin UP). A related field of study is that of legends and folk tales as a form of historically-relevant oral tradition, and also in this field of oral literature Schoffeleers has made several contributions as far as Malawi is concerned.

(c) African religion and the state

While the political impact of the Mbona cult on the Malawi national scene appear to have remained minimal, the same cannot be said for the nyau cult; the latter, for instance, was reputedly instrumental in the perpetuation of the Banda regime (1961-1994). While Schoffeleers disliked the imposition, upon African religion, of analytical theoretical models that sought to reduce religion to the social, economic or political field, he became more and more interested in the relations between religion and the state. From this concern stemmed, for instance, his major article (in the journal Africa, 1991) on political acquiescence as a conspicuous feature of African Independent Churches; here he revisited and revised a famous classic analysis by the pioneer analyst of African Independent Churches, Bengt Sundkler.

(d) Religion and development

Having realised the Christian roots of much of the development endeavour into which North-South relations were to be redefined after World War II and especially after the demise of colonialism, Schoffeleers and his Free University colleague Philip Quarles van Ufford went one step further, and set out to study development as religion, bringing to bear upon that institutional complex the entire analytical and methodological apparatus of religious anthropology. This made for an original and inspiring collective work (Religion and development, 1988) that still makes relevant reading.

(e) African religion and Christian theology

In the beginning of his career, as a missionary, Matthew Schoffeleers explored, with painful but productive results, to what extent one could identity with African forms of religion and still remain within Roman Catholic orthodoxy and church hierarchy. The struggle to arrive at an existential perspective in which Christianity and African religion could exist side by side, could meet each other and could cross-fertilise each other, has characterised his personal spiritual life and increasingly formed the underlying inspiration of his more theologically-inclined explorations later in life – even though he has remained remarkably silent on this personal, existential dimension. In this connexion he explored the relevance of the South Central African indigenous model of the nganga (diviner-priest-healer) for a better comparative understanding of the figure of Jesus Christ as treated in Christian theology. From the same perspective, also the figure of Mbona appears in a new light, as a mutilated martyr figure mediating between heaven and earth for the sake of crop fertility and human healing. Here we can understand why Schoffeleers did not think it preposterous to combine his active role as a Roman Catholic priest (and as such entrusted with the pastoral care of specific Dutch communities, while passionately discharging that role) with being, for decades, the main driving force behind the survival of the Mbona cult. While most anthropological colleagues have had difficulty to follow him in his Christological explorations, Schoffeleers’ insistence on taking African religion profoundly serious at the personal, existential level, and his distrust of all North Atlantic analytical imposition and deconstruction, made him a trusted ally, and an inspiring friend and teacher, for a whole generation of religious anthropologists who during fieldwork had come rather closer to African religion than their freshman handbooks of anthropology had stipulated.

Appraisal

If, at this most premature stage, we must reluctantly come to some provisional judgment of Matthew Schoffeleers’ work, what stands out and will remain of lasting value is a splendid and extensive, profound and unique contribution to Malawian ethnography and to Malawian studies in general.

Beyond that, I submit that Schoffeleers’ career may be understood as an expression of fundamentally irreconcilable contradictions arising from various processes of profound change taking place, during his lifetime, in West European society, in the relationship between Africa and the North Atlantic region, in the world of scholarship, and in the Roman Catholic church. A lifespan of over 82 years is far too long than that we can expect that most of the concerns and values governing its beginning, will remain valid and relevant to the very end. Starting out in a milieu where Christianity was absolutely taken for granted as the paroxysm of human spirituality, it has been very much to Matthew Schoffeleers’ credit that, as a missionary, he could respond to African religion in the existential, inclusive, largely unconditional way he did. Here he showed himself a man of high principles, and a visionary, ahead of his time, who recognised true spirituality wherever he met it, and who would not compromise that insight, at whatever costs. As Schoffeleers said at an historical occasion:

‘It is my task to make my God visible, wherever, and in whatever form under which he is permitted to manifest himself’,

implying that he was also fully prepared to perceive and recognise his God under whatever cultural trappings, also in Africa. However, meanwhile in Western Europe the tide of secularisation could not be turned. As a result, the automatic reverence he was brought up to expect and to solicit from non-priests in his priestly role, seldom came his way after his return to the Netherlands in 1976. In many ways an outsider (as a priest, a Southerner, and one who took African religion seriously for its own sake), he ventured into the fortress of Dutch Protestantism that the Free University was at the time; here he found that, despite his controversial nomination, there was less and less institutional and national support for the study of African religion and religious anthropology, and that the number of his co-workers was dwindling. He also found that he was more of a teacher and a writer, than of an administrator. When he had vacated his Amsterdam chair, this was soon redesigned into a focus for the study of Protestant church dynamics from a cultural-studies perspective. Increasingly, also, Schoffeleers sought to resolve his personal existential dilemmas by theological experiments that risked to estrange him from his fellow anthropologists. Meanwhile tables were turned in the relation between Africa and the North Atlantic region in the production of Africanist knowledge. The politicising of that relation by vocal and highly educated African colleagues was clearly regretted by Schoffeleers; and although he did teach in Africa and did publish with African scholars, most of his life he appears to have lived the old-fashioned, typically anthropological – and by now totally obsolete – illusory division of the world between a South were fieldwork was being done and communitas with one’s ‘informants’ was being generated, and a North were writing was to be done, in splendid Northern isolation and unaccountability. Schoffeleers’ active career ended before international scholarship had re-dedicated itself to the study of religion, including African religion, from such new perspectives as postmodernism and globalisation; also because of his reluctance to discuss his personal spirituality, he largely missed the boat of spirituality studies that was taking aboard much of what formerly went under the flag of religious anthropology. Finally, the 1990s saw (much to the dismay of Schoffeleers) a virtual collapse of the once cutting-edge intellectual industry of the retrieval of the distant past through the structural analysis of oral traditions and ritual. Meanwhile a new comparative mythology has arisen, that traces and compares local oral traditions including myths and folktales along much more extensive and much more complex trajectories of space and time – and in this light (as C. Wrigley already argued in 1988 in the Journal of African History), to reduce (!) the history of Mbona to the local and relatively recent facts of Portuguese expansion in the 16^th century CE, appears, on second thought, somewhat myopic, although sympathetically Afrocentrist, in a way. After all, a martyr associated with crop fertility can only remind us of Osiris, Tammuz, Dionysus and Christ in the Mediterranean region, the Japanese goddess Uke Mochi 保食神, several Meso American crop deities, and, in Africa, Chihamba of the Ndembu as described by Victor Turner, of all people, etc.

For nearly four decades, I have been very close to Matthew Schoffeleers, not only as a friend, colleague, co-convener and co-editor, but also as formally his student (I was the first person upon whom he was to confer a PhD, in 1979), and as beneficiary of his pastoral role – he solemnised my second marriage in 1985, and in recognition my eldest son was named after him. A sympathetic personal appraisal is therefore expected from me, rather than the above assessment with some pretensions of objectivity. Most will remember Schoffeleers for his kindness; his occasionally slurred speech betraying the former stammerer; his hypersensitivity; his meticulous attention to details of social etiquette; his insistence on celebrating major events in his life with crowds of friends and colleagues; his attention to significant dates in his own life and that of his loved ones; his very productive scholarly life for which he made extremely long hours but which was yet to be combined with the – more invisible – tasks as a pastor and gardener in the convent garden; and the peculiar habit of keeping a full file of correspondence on everyone around him – a file from which he would lavishly quote during his unrivalled laudatory allocutions (gems of oratory, psychological and pedagogic skill) at the conclusion of each of the long series of PhD defences under his supervision. His PhDs include such prominent Africanists as Gerry ter Haar, Simon Simonse, Rijk van Dijk, Annette Drews and Ria Reis. Perhaps Schoffeleers’ main characteristic traits were his sense of religious mystery and of the miraculous; his tragic sense of loneliness and homelessness; and his lifelong struggle against what he considered – largely without grounds – his main sin, pride; and in which others who knew him well would merely detect the lifelong contradiction between the successful drive for achievement, and his very modest family background. With great charisma and charm, for many years he constituted the living core of the ‘Werkgroep Afrikaanse Religie rond Schoffeleers – WARS’ (Working Group on African Religion Around Schoffeleers), where many of his PhD students met, and found lasting inspiration that brought them to internationally recognised publications. Many of their testimonials can be found in the Festschrift Getuigen ondanks zichzelf (1998), which was prepared for his 70^th birthday. It may well be as a passionate teacher that Matthew Schoffeleers will yet have the most lasting impact.

Matthew Schoffeleers and Wim van Binsbergen

· Van Binsbergen, W.M.J., 1979, ‘Malawian suitor studies: some comments’, paper presented at the Africa seminar, November 1979, Leiden: African Studies Centre, 11 pp; at: http://shikanda.net/publications/WIM%20ON%20MALAWIAN%20SUITORS.htm

· Van Binsbergen, W.M.J., & J.M. Schoffeleers, 1985b, ‘Introduction: Theoretical explorations African religion’, in Theoretical explorations in African religion, W.M.J. van Binsbergen & J. M. Schoffeleers, eds., Kegan Paul International, London, pp. 1-49, at: http://shikanda.net/publications/ASC-1239806-232.pdf

· Van Binsbergen, W.M.J., 1991c, ‘Religion and development: Contributions to a new discourse’, Antropologische Verkenningen, 10, 3, 1991, pp.1-17; at: http://shikanda.net/publications/ASC-1239806-248.pdf (a review article of Schoffeleers & Quarles van Ufford’s 1988 book); the version as published in Antropologische Verkenningen was greatly shortened for editorial reasons – the full version is: van Binsbergen, Wim M.J., ‘Religion and development: Reflexions on the work by Philip Quarles van Ufford and Matthew Schoffeleers’, at: http://shikanda.net/african_religion/reldev.htm

· van Binsbergen, W.M.J., 1997, Virtuality as a key concept in the study of globalisation: Aspects of the symbolic transformation of contemporary Africa, The Hague: WOTRO [ Netherlands Foundation for Tropical Research, a division of the Netherlands Research Foundation NWO ] , Working papers on Globalisation and the construction of communal identity, 3; also at http://www.shikanda.net/general/virtuality_edit%202003.pdf

· Van Binsbergen, W.M.J., 1998b, ‘Sangoma in Nederland: Over integriteit in interculturele bemiddeling’, in: Elias, M., & Reis, R., eds, Getuigen ondanks zichzelf: Voor Jan-Matthijs Schoffeleers bij zijn zeventigste verjaardag, Maastricht: Shaker, pp. 1-29; at: http://shikanda.net/publications/ASC-1239806-118.pdf; greatly revised English version: van Binsbergen, Wim M.J., 2003, ‘Sangoma in the North Atlantic region: On integrity in intercultural mediation’, in: van Binsbergen, Wim M.J., Intercultural encounters: African and anthropological lessons towards a philosophy of interculturality, Berlin/Muenster, LIT, pp. 195-234, also at: http://shikanda.net/intercultural_encounters/chapter_6.pdf

· van Binsbergen, W.M.J., 2001b, 'Witchcraft in modern Africa as virtualised boundary conditions of the kinship order', in: Bond, G.C., & Ciekawy, D.M., eds., Witchcraft dialogues: Anthropological and philosophical exchanges, Athens (OH): Ohio University Press, pp. 212-263; also at: http://www.shikanda.net/african_religion/witch.htm

· and search the Shikanda portal http://shikanda.net with its internal search facility, with the search term ‘Schoffeleers’

on the occasion of Matthew Schoffeleers’ 80^th birthday Wim van Binsbergen published, in Dutch, a short book of poetry entirely devoted to his old friend, colleague and supervisor: van Binsbergen, Wim, 2008, Braambos: Een gedicht, Haarlem: Uitgeverij Shikanda, also at: http://shikanda.net/literary/braambos.pdf

Kees Brusse’s obituary for Matthew Schoffeleers, ‘In de ban van de heidenen’, Vrij Nederland, 4 June 2011-06-10, at: http://shikanda.net/topicalities/brusse_on_schoffeleers.pdf

A provisional bibliography by Jos Damen © Jos Damen / African Studies Centre Leiden

Soon after Schoffeleers’ death, Jos Damen, the Librarian of the African Studies, Leiden, the Netherlands, compiled the following provisional bibliography (all or nearly all items available in that electronically searchable library, see: http://www.ascleiden.nl/Library/Catalogue/

· Malawi : a special issue in honour of Matthew Schoffeleers / Brill / 1999

· In search of truth and justice : confrontations between Church and State in Malawi 1960-1994 / Schoffeleers, Matthew / CLAIM / 1999

· Religion and the dramatisation of life : spirit beliefs and rituals in Southern and Central Malawi / Schoffeleers, Matthew / Verlag für Kultur und Wissenschaft / 1997

· Montfortians in Malawi : their spirituality and pastoral approach / with Reĳnaerts, Hubert / Christian Literature Association in Malawi (CLAIM) / 1997

· River of blood : the genesis of a martyr cult in southern Malawi, c. A.D. 1600 / Schoffeleers, J. Matthew / University of Wisconsin Press / cop. 1992

· Religion & development : towards an integrated approach / with Quarles van Ufford, Philip / Free University Press / 1988

· Land of fire : oral literature from Malawi / Schoffeleers, Jan Mathijs / Popular publications etc. / 1985

· Pentacostalism and neo-traditionalism : the religious polarization of a rural district in Southern Malawi / Schoffeleers, Matthew / Free University Press / 1985

· Theoretical explorations in African religion / with Binsbergen, Wim van / KPI, Kegan Paul International / cop. 1985

· Christ as the medicine-man and the medicine-man as Christ : a tentative history of African christological thought Schoffeleers, Matthew / Institute of Social Research and Applied Anthropology / 1982

· The rainmaker : a play / Chimombo, Steven / Popular publ. etc. / [1979] (introd. J.-M.S.)

· Bookreviews, articles in popular press and a conference report (1972-1979) / Schoffeleers, Jan Mathijs / Vrije Universiteit, Vakgroep Niet-Westerse Religies / 1979

· Trade, warfare and social inequality : the case of the Lower Shire Valley of Malawi, 1590-1622 A.D. / Schoffeleers, Jan Mathijs / Repr / s.n. / 1979

· Oral history and the retrieval of the distant past : on the use of legendary chronicles as sources of historical information / Schoffeleers, M. / Afrika-Studiecentrum / 1979

· Guardians of the land : essays on Central African territorial cults / Schoffeleers, J.M. / Mambo Press / 1979

· Particularism vs. universalism : an unresolved problem in Durkheim's theory of religion : paper delivered at the Durkheim session of the IXth World Congress of sociology, Uppsala, Sweden, August 10-1-1978 / Schoffeleers, Jan Mathijs / s.n. / 1978

· A martyr cult as a relfection on changes in production : the case of the Lower Shire Valley, 1590-1622 A.D. / Schoffeleers, Jan Mathijs / Repr / Afrika Studie Centrum / 1978

· Sourcebook on the Mbona cult in Malawi, South-Eastern Africa / Schoffeleers, Jan Mathijs / Vrije Universiteit / 1978

· Rock art and Nyau symbolism in Malaŵi / Lindgren, N.E. / Government Press / [ca.1978]

· Religion, nationalism and economic action : critical questions on Durkheim and Weber / Schoffeleers, Matthew / Van Gorcum / 1978

· An outline history of territorial mediumship in a Malawian district : paper read at the International Conference on Southern African History, Lesotho, 1977 / Schoffeleers, Jan Mathijs / National University Lesotho / 1977

· Cult idioms and the dialectics of a region / Schoffeleers, Jan Mathijs / Repr / Academic Press / 1977

· The Nyau societies : our present understanding / Schoffeleers, Jan Mathijs / Repr / s.n. / 1976

· The interaction of the M'Bona cult and christianity, 1859-1963 / Schoffeleers, Jan Mathijs / Repr / Heinemann / 1975

· Crisis, criticism and critiques : an interpretative model of territorial mideiumship among the Chewa / Schoffeleers, Jan Mathijs / Repr / s.n. / 1974

· The prophets of Nsanje : a history of spirit mediumship in a southern Malawian district : paper read at the conference on the history of eastern African religions, Nairobi, 1974 / Schoffeleers, Jan Mathijs / Repr / s.n. / 1974

· From socialization to personal enterprise : a history of the Nomi labor societies in the Nsanje district of Malawi, c. 1891 to 1972 Schoffeleers, Jan Mathijs / Repr / Michigan State University, The African Studies Center / 1973

· An organizational model of the Mwari shrines : paper read at the annual conference of the association for sociology in Southern Africa, Lesotho, 1973 Schoffeleers, Jan Mathijs / Repr / Association for Sociology in Southern Africa / 1973

· Towards the identification of a proto-chewa culture : a preliminary contribution / Schoffeleers, Jan Mathijs / Repr / s.n. / 1973

· Seven centuries of Malawi religion/ Schoffeleers, Jan Mathijs / s.n. / 1973

· Livingstone and the Mag 'Anja chiefs / Schoffeleers, Jan Mathijs / Repr / Longman / 1973

· The Chisumphi and Mbona cults in Malawi : a comparative history : paper read at the conference on the history of Central African religions, Lusaka, 1972 Schoffeleers, Jan Mathijs / Repr / s.n. / 1972

· Masks of Malawi / Schoffeleers, Jan Mathijs / University of California, African Studies Center / 1972

· Myth and legends of creation : 7 / Schoffeleers, Jan Mathijs / Repr / s.n. / 1972

· The resistance of the Nyau societies to the Roman Catholic missions in colonial Malawi Schoffeleers, Jan Mathijs / Repr / Heinemann / 1972

· The history and political role of the M'Bona cult among the Man'Anja Schoffeleers, Jan Mathijs / Repr / Heinemann / 1972

· The religious significance of bush fires in Malawi Schoffeleers, Jan Mathijs / Université Lovanium / 1971

· The meaning and use of the name 'Malawi' in oral traditions and precolonial documents / Schoffeleers, Jan Mathijs / Repr / Longman / 1971

· Social functional aspects of spirit possession in the Lower Shire Valley of Malawi : paper read at the University Social Sciences Council conference, Kampala, 1969 / Schoffeleers, Jan Mathijs / Repr / University Social Sciences / 1969

· Symbolic and social aspects of spirit worship among the Mang 'Anga / Schoffeleers, Jan Mathijs / Michaelmas Term / 1968

· Evil spirits (afiti) rites of exorcism in the lower Shire Valley of Malawi / Schoffeleers, Jan Mathijs / Repr / Monfort Press / 1967

· M'Bona the guardian-spirit of the Mang'Anja S/ choffeleers, Jan Mathijs / St. Catherine's College / 1966

· Evil spirits (Afiti) and rites of exorcism in the Lower Shire Valley of Malawi / Schoffeleers, J.M. / s.n. / [ca.1965]

· More: http://opc-ascl.oclc.org/REL?PPN=069380740