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Brian Foote works as a chaplain at Weill Cornell Medicine during the day and teaches Witchcraft and Religion during the evening. He wasn\u2019t always a fan of religion, or even considered it as a professional pathway.<\/p>\n
Foote grew up in a small evangelical town in Texas, where he found himself (and his family) different from the average person living there. He recounts his experience growing up there as uncomfortable, if not dangerous. One of those instances was when Foote and his family ended up being used in a strange video made by the local church to call people to Jesus and away from sin. All it took was Foote allowing an ex-girlfriend to borrow his father\u2019s book about natural magic, without thinking much of it. Somewhere down the line, information about the book reached a teacher at Foote\u2019s highly religious old high school, which he had already transferred out of, who relayed it to the church. Some legal threats were made, and the video was taken out of circulation.<\/p>\n
His negative experience didn\u2019t dispel him completely from religion, though. Foote was getting his bachelor’s at Hunter, with a focus on pre-law, when he took a Faith and Disbelief class taught by Barbara Sproul to fulfill an elective credit.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was the most interesting thing I had ever done,\u201d says Foote. \u201cThe material was not at all what I expected.\u201d<\/p>\n
So, he took another class, and another, and eventually became a religion major. He says it was complete happenstance, but it worked out for the best, especially when he got into Harvard\u2019s Divinity School for his master’s. The experience was gratifying, but he didn\u2019t jump into teaching straight away.<\/p>\n
Life circumstances and his financial situation led him to, surprisingly, a job in finance. Though it made good money, it didn\u2019t satisfy Foote as he yearned for a career in teaching, something more closely related to religion. However, deeply saddening family circumstances got hold of him. Foote\u2019s mother got sick, and then his brother, Charlie, got brain cancer.<\/p>\n
While Charlie was sick, a part of his care was receiving chaplaincy services. Charlie was an atheist, but the chaplaincy care he was provided was not tailored to his beliefs and needs.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe got really poor spiritual care for somebody whose illness was gradual and then sudden. [His health] went poorly, really quickly,\u201d says Foote. \u201cWatching him not get the full breath of care that he needed, I felt like, man, he really deserved better than that.\u201d<\/p>\n
This experience made Foote realize that he can be the one to plug that gap for others in similar situations.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you see a problem, you can\u2019t just complain about it,\u201d says Foote.<\/p>\n
So, he got a severance package from his job and took up his friend on an offer to be a teaching fellow for a Social Determinants of Health class at Harvard. Foote\u2019s teaching career took off then. After his teaching fellowship, he came back to Hunter as a professor.<\/p>\n
Then the pandemic happened, and chaplaincy became more needed than ever. Foote enrolled in chaplaincy training while teaching religion at Hunter, balancing both things when the state of the world was uncertain and terrifying.<\/p>\n
\u201cGrowing up in Texas, there was a phrase\u2013riding two horses at once, which is like a rodeo trick. For a long time now, I\u2019ve been riding two horses at once,\u201d says Foote.<\/p>\n
Foote was an intern during the pandemic, so he was protected from a lot of the brutality of sickness and death in the hospital. By the end of the worst of COVID-19, Foote was mostly there as support for staff rather than the patients. The pandemic completely wrecked the nurses, primary physicians, and anyone on staff who were on the frontlines. They were completely burnt out, if not scarred from the amount of time they spent in the presence of death.<\/p>\n
\u201cEveryone at Cornell talks about it like it was wartime for them, and I don\u2019t think they\u2019re being hyperbolic,\u201d says Foote.<\/p>\n
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Witchcraft and the Lack of Magical Culture<\/strong><\/p>\n Now, Foote is teaching during another, though different, unprecedented time when young people are the ones in need of guidance. Witchcraft and Religion is a new addition to a list of courses Foote teaches. His usual rotation is Religion and Healing, Religion and Psychology, and introduction level religion courses.<\/p>\n Witchcraft and Religion might sound intimidating, but the class mostly deals with power structures and the role of witches in society.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat do we do with this concept of a witch? More importantly, who has the power to determine who is a witch? At some level, at heart, all my classes are ultimately about power structures and who actually gets to navigate the levers of power in society,\u201d says Foote.<\/p>\n Foote finds the practice of magic culturally fascinating. He believes that magic is a very overlooked part of society, specifically how it relates to human ingenuity and our ability to find ways to regain control in situations where we\u2019re powerless. Ultimately, that\u2019s the point Foote is trying to get across with this class. Who practiced magic and why? And how did the people in power treat them? Oftentimes, magic and witchcraft were helpful tools for those who were oppressed or faced general unfavorable circumstances.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re not really a magical culture anymore. I worry about it,\u201d Foote says, contemplating.<\/p>\n Foote is a Buddhist, but he strays away from discussing his personal practice in his classes.<\/p>\n Though Witchcraft and Religion had a great running start this semester, it\u2019s unlikely that it will make a return next fall. The demand from the students is simply not there; a saddening turn, especially during the current political climate.<\/p>\n The class itself came about in an interesting way. Wendy Raver, the director of the religion program, was looking for ideas for new class offerings, which often happens by going through old syllabi of inactive classes. That\u2019s how they stumbled upon a syllabus of a witchcraft class from the 80\u2019s. Coincidentally, during that time Foote was sorting through archival records at Cornell, and found one about a loosely organized group of young Wiccan practitioners who worked on hexing the Trump administration, during Trump\u2019s first go around. He felt like the class would be worth reintroducing to Hunter students, and Raver agreed.<\/p>\n Foote greatly cares about his students, which comes through in the way he speaks about what he wants students to remember from his classes.<\/p>\n \u201cYou are the authority in your own life for your own meaning-making process. You\u2019re not just an agent of other arms of power. Who are you? What is your life actually about? If you don\u2019t spend your life investigating that question, then somebody\u2019s gonna figure it out for you,\u201d says Foote.<\/p>\n The Student Perspective<\/strong><\/p>\n His care is not just seen in his words, but also felt by his students in his Witchcraft and Religion class. Julia Matlak, an English and biology major, recommends the class to others and praises Foote\u2019s approach to teaching.<\/p>\n \u201cOne of the things I most admire about Professor Foote, besides his wonderful intellect and his interdisciplinary approach to this class, is just how much he respects students and their perspectives. He makes the classroom a collaborative environment and never shuts anyone down,\u201d says Matlak.<\/p>\n Franny Lopez Hernandez, a studio arts major, couldn\u2019t agree more.<\/p>\n \u201cHis teaching style is really about informing the next generation and encouraging us to use our critical thinking skills. It is truly magnificent to see that kind of commitment to educating the future generation, especially in this political climate,\u201d says Hernandez.<\/p>\n Maybe young people should take into account Foote\u2019s worries about the lack of magic and celebration of human ingenuity in today\u2019s culture. Connecting to one another, learning from the past, and acknowledging one\u2019s autonomy in a world seeking to strip it away can be a magical experience.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" “We’re not really a magical culture anymore. I worry about it,” says Brian Foote, a chaplain at Weill Cornell Medicine and a professor of Witchcraft and Religion at Hunter. During such tumultuous political times, perhaps the return of magic is what our culture needs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":160,"featured_media":7640,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[708,710,691,707,709],"class_list":["post-7625","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-brianfoote","tag-professorprofile","tag-profile","tag-religion","tag-witchcraftandreligion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brie.hunter.cuny.edu\/hunterathenian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7625","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brie.hunter.cuny.edu\/hunterathenian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brie.hunter.cuny.edu\/hunterathenian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brie.hunter.cuny.edu\/hunterathenian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/160"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brie.hunter.cuny.edu\/hunterathenian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7625"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/brie.hunter.cuny.edu\/hunterathenian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7625\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7703,"href":"https:\/\/brie.hunter.cuny.edu\/hunterathenian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7625\/revisions\/7703"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brie.hunter.cuny.edu\/hunterathenian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7640"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brie.hunter.cuny.edu\/hunterathenian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7625"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brie.hunter.cuny.edu\/hunterathenian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7625"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brie.hunter.cuny.edu\/hunterathenian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7625"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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