“Is There No Balm” In Ghana?

This book examines how the modernization of African ethnomedicine through Ghana’s Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) Herbal Medicine program is reshaping longstanding debates about safety, efficacy, and the association of traditional healing with magic and witchcraft. Focusing on the Church of Pentecost (CoP), it explores how Pentecostal healing theology and medical mission practice might engage scientifically validated herbal medicine within contemporary healthcare systems. Drawing on missiology, medical anthropology, Pentecostal studies, and development studies, the book argues that Pentecostal spirituality can embrace both divine healing and the healing potential embedded in God’s creation. Through the lens of “eschatological sacramentalism,” it proposes a theological framework for integrating herbal medicine into Christian healthcare mission without recourse to magical worldviews. In doing so, it offers one of the first sustained interdisciplinary studies linking the scientific development of ethnomedicine with church healing theology and mission practice in Africa. It is an excellent read for scholars of Health and Religion, Theology, and the Social Scientific Studies of Christianity.