Päivi Räsänen is a Christian, and a member of Finland’s parliament. Currently she also holds the post of parliamentarian. Additionally, she is a former government minister.
Back in 2019, she was charged by a federal prosecutor with hate speech. It seems that way back in 2004, she wrote a pamphlet called Man and Woman: He Created Them which described homosexuality as “a disorder of psychosexual development.” The pamphlet was published by Bishop Juhana Pohjola of the Finnish Evangelical Lutheran Mission. At that time, there were no issues.
However, fast forward to 2019. In that year, the state Lutheran Church (Finland still has an official state church) entered into a collaboration with an LGBTQ pride event, and Räsänen tweeted a criticism of their participation. In the tweet, she posted a picture of a Bible passage (Rom. 1:24-27) that speaks of homosexuality as a perversion.
It was only then that the government prosecutor charged Räsänen with hate speech. In making the charge, she used the pamphlet as evidence to bolster her case. And since Bishop Pohjola had been the one to publish it, he was swept up and charged, as well. Those charges were finally dropped when the court ruled that as long as the intention was to speak about her religious beliefs, and not to “disparage homosexuals,” it could not be considered hate speech.
But the prosecutor’s office was not deterred and, in 2022, appealed the decision to a higher court. In the appeals court, Räsänen and Pohjola were once again exonerated.
But the prosecutor still won’t let it go and has now appealed the case to the Finnish Supreme Court. This will be the third time Räsänen and Pohjola will have to face down this charge.
This particular case in Finland is rather dramatic, especially since it is being brought in a western court, in a country that still claims to be Christian and actually has an official state church. This is more the kind of thing you would expect to see in countries dominated by Islam with their anti-blasphemy laws, or North Korea with its personality cult, but it goes against one of the very core values of western societies – that of freedom of expression.
The example above is in Finland, but these days that kind of hatred and intolerance toward Christians is happening in America, as well. For instance, last year, the Austin Fire Department fired its longtime volunteer lead chaplain for posting articles on his own theology website opposing boys participating in girls’ sports. Recently two young Christian men in Wisconsin were arrested for publicly sharing the gospel at an outdoor drag show. Even though what they did was legal, and Wisconsin state law prohibits exposing minors to sexually explicit conduct, it was the boys who were arrested and not the drag show exhibitionists. On another front, several people have actually been charged with a crime and sentenced to long prison terms for praying in front of an abortion clinic. And we could go on and on with more examples of Christians being cancelled, arrested, charged, and jailed just for expressing and living out their faith. It is not that unusual.
So just what is going on? What is going on is that radical Naturalists are so intolerant of Christians competing against their atheistic religion in the public square, that they are willing to do nearly anything to shut them down – even if what they are doing is illegal.
What many people don’t realize is that naturalistic Atheism is not, as adherents like to claim, religiously neutral. It is a religious point of view. In order to justify the tenets of Atheism, believers have to use arguments based on faith to make their case. There is no empirical foundation for atheistic beliefs. And while there certainly are Atheists who are willing to live and let live, there are also a large number of people who are intolerant zealots – people who will do almost anything to shut Christians down. And when these intolerant people get into positions of power and authority, they have no qualms about using the power of the state to work their will.
Christians can, and should, fight against this. There are Christian organizations that are fighting these kinds of travesties in court, but the real fight must be in the culture – in every day life. This is not the kind of thing that can be left up to Christian legal organizations. It has to be done by everyday Christians. And for that to happen, Christians desperately need to get up to speed in ways that have not been common in recent times. We need to know the core beliefs of our own faith and the practical societal implications of those beliefs. We need to know the problems associated with other faiths, and how to share Christ in ways that make sense to those people. And, we need to know “why” Christian beliefs correspond to reality, and why non-Christian beliefs don’t.
Christian discipleship training is no longer optional in our current societal environment. If we have any intention of standing strong against the onslaught of non-Christian beliefs that are attacking us, this must become a priority.