This chapter examines the healing practices that developed within Ghana's Basel Mission community between 1828, when the Basel Mission was first established in Ghana, to 1918 when the German and Swiss Basel missionaries were expelled from the British colony. The 1880s, however, was the most transformative decade of the first ninety years of Ghana's Basel Mission with respect to health and healing practices within the mission. Prior to the 1880s, the Basel Mission in Ghana was partially enchanted, while after the 1880s, the Basel Mission became institutionally disenchanted. This chapter explains the therapeutic transformation within Ghana's Basel Mission that occurred in the 1880s—and the crisis it produced.

The Development and Growth of the Basel Mission, 1828–1918

The Basel Evangelical Missionary Society (Basel Missionsgesellschaft) was the missionary arm of Württemberg Pietism. The Mission emerged from the German Society for Christianity (Deutsche Christentumsgesellschaft) as a Bible study and discussion group created in 1780 that brought together prominent professionals within the Pietist movement. The members founded the Basel Mission in 1815 as a seminary for the education of overseas evangelists. The first graduates were not sent out as Basel missionaries, but joined older established evangelical missions such as the Dutch Missionary Society, the North German Mission Society, and the Church Missionary Society, with which Basel kept particularly close ties. By 1821, the founders decided that the Mission must establish its own religious outposts abroad to bring the distinctive Pietist worldview to the un-Christianized world.