The Biggest Table

Host Andrew Camp interviews writer and theologian Erik Freiburger about disability, belonging, and hospitality. Erik, a wheelchair user since a 1994 spinal cord injury, describes how his understanding of the word “disabled” matured, and explores whether disability is blessing or curse, concluding it is both/and, shaped by social exclusion, ableism, and human limits. They discuss prejudice and “whitewashing” (“aren’t we all disabled?”), and how churches can treat disability as peripheral. Erik explains his pushback to a prior AI conversation, rooted in his wife Bonnie’s 2014 loss of swallowing and their house church’s struggle to practice Eucharist when she couldn’t eat, leading them to broaden hospitality beyond food toward relationship and communal belonging. He urges churches to create cultures of care, advocate for dignity by going with marginalized people, and let neighbors shape theology (“the room is my theology”). Erik shares painful church experiences, links exclusion to “disgust” and purity logics, and finds hope in disabled Christians’ perseverance.

Erik Freiburger is a writer, theologian, creator, and storyteller whose work explores the intersections of disability, dignity, and hope. Holding a Bachelor’s degree in Theology and a Master’s degree in Religious Education with a focus on Missional Leadership, he brings both scholarly depth and lived experience to questions of belonging, justice, identity, and transformation within the disabled life. Writing on his Substack, At the Bottom of the Well (atthebottomofthewell.com), and hosting the Well Dwellers Podcast, Erik is creating spaces for voices from the margins and reflections on the sacred work of becoming. Rooted in a commitment to wonder and the dignity of all bodies, his work invites readers and listeners into deeper attentiveness to the mysteries unfolding at the edges of who we are and where we find ourselves in our society.

 

Erik enjoys spending time with his wife, Bonnie, working out in his basement gym while listening to his expanding record collection, wheeling the park pathways around his city home, reading in-depth literature, and watching creative movies.

This episode of the Biggest Table is brought to you in part by Wild Goose Coffee. Since 2008, Wild Goose has sought to build better communities through coffee. For our listeners, Wild Goose is offering a special promotion of 20% off a one time order using the code TABLE at checkout. To learn more and to order coffee, please visit wildgoosecoffee.com.