Finland’s Supreme Court convicted Päivi Räsänen and Bishop Juhana Pohjola for publishing a church pamphlet on biblical marriage and ordered it destroyed, a chilling sign that biblical truth itself is being recast as criminal in secular Europe.
Finland has long been viewed as shining beacon of Christianity, fierce independence, democracy, and free speech. It first won its freedom from Russia in a brutal war with the Bolsheviks in the immediate aftermath of World War I, and although it would later lose part of its territory to the Soviet Union during World War II, its government and people managed to remain free of hard-core communist oppression.
Until last week. That’s when Soviet-style book burning officially entered the fray.
In a stunning 3-2 decision, Finland’s Supreme Court found Finnish Member of Parliament Päivi Räsänen and Lutheran Bishop Juhana Pohjola guilty of “hate speech” crimes for co-authoring a church pamphlet about sexual ethics and biblical marriage and ordered it “removed from public access and destroyed.”
The justices convicted the two evangelical Christians under a 2011 section of the Finnish criminal code titled “war crimes and crimes against humanity” because they had “made available and kept available to the public opinions that insult homosexuals as a group on the basis of their sexual orientation.”
As punishment, the court sentenced Räsänen and Pohjola to pay criminal fines of several thousand Euros and ordered the 2004 pamphlet destroyed and all “impugned statements” removed from public access.
On hearing the verdict, Räsänen stated,
“I am shocked and profoundly disappointed that the court has failed to recognize my basic human right to freedom of expression. I stand by the teachings of my Christian faith and will continue to defend my and every person’s right to share their convictions in the public square.”
The Seven-Year War
This legal battle over the free speech and religious liberty rights of Christians in Finland and the right of LGBTQ groups to not be offended has been ongoing for the past seven years.
The two people at the center of the case are not exactly street-preaching firebrands. Räsänen, a medical doctor and grandmother of 10, has served in various government roles since the 1990s and is a long-time member of the Finnish Evangelical Lutheran Mission. Pohjola is a father of four, a long-time Lutheran priest and bishop, and current chairman of the Association of Confessional Lutheran Churches within the International Lutheran Council, which has member churches in five continents.
Finnish officials first began investigating Räsänen when they were alerted to a 2019 tweet she posted calling out the Evangelical Lutheran Church of England, one of Finland’s two national churches, for sponsoring an LGBTQ pride event. In it, she cited the biblical warning against homosexuality in Romans 1:24-27.
Prosecutors then began digging into her communications history and also discovered a 2019 radio debate in which she discussed her biblical views, along with the 2004 church pamphlet she co-authored with Bishop Pohjola, entitled “Male and Female He Created Them,” which outlines the Bible’s teachings on biblical marriage and sexual ethics and argues against gay marriage. Their writings, which also detailed the reasons for why gay marriage goes against biblical doctrine, were published nearly a decade before gay marriage was legalized in Finland.
Likening her interrogation to a heresy trial, Räsänen was asked by police to read the Bible for hours and interpret it, including explaining what she meant by the words “sin” and “shame.”
Both Räsänen and Pohjola were then charged under the aforementioned section of Finland’s criminal code known as “war crimes and crimes against humanity” for supposedly insulting members of the LGBTQ community and committing hate speech crimes by retaining and sharing the pamphlet.
It seemed like a case of prosecutorial overreach when in March 2022, a lower court unanimously dismissed all charges, ruling that “it is not the district court’s job to interpret biblical concepts.”
While the United States provides its citizens with constitutional rights against “double jeopardy,” meaning an acquitted defendant cannot be retried for the same crime, Finland has no such protections. Thus, the prosecution appealed the district court’s decision, arguing this time that it wasn’t the actual Bible verses but the defendants’ interpretation of those Bible verses that was criminal, insisting that referring to a specific group’s behavior as a “sin” is “harmful” to that group.
In November 2023, the Helsinki Court of Appeals also unanimously acquitted Räsänen and Pohjola of all charges, explaining that “there must be an overriding social reason for interfering with and restricting freedom of expression.”
The prosecution tried again, but its appeal to Finland’s highest court only included the charges for the 2019 “Bible tweet” and the church pamphlet to Finland’s highest court, not Räsänen’s radio debate. The case was heard in October 2025.
Initially, it seemed like it would end well. Räsänen was unanimously acquitted for her 2019 social media post, with the justices finding that it did not meet the threshold for a criminal offense.
But then came the decision to override the two prior courts on the church pamphlet. Kristen Waggoner, CEO of Alliance Defending Freedom, stated in a post on Twitter:
“This is a dark day for freedom in Europe and across the Western world. Punishing peaceful expression undermines the very foundation of free societies. The right to speak freely, including on matters of faith and morality, is firmly protected under international law. We will continue to stand with Dr. Räsänen and Bishop Pohjola as they consider an appeal to the European Court of Human Rights. The Western world has aggressively adopted more and more restrictions on speech. This case makes clear beyond doubt that now is the time for the governments of Europe to repeal unjust ‘hate speech laws’ and commit to a free speech reset.”
Räsänen said that she may appeal the conviction to the European Court of Human Rights, her only real legal recourse at this point.
The New Book Burners
Unfortunately, this isn’t a rarity anymore for Christians willing to stick to their biblical principles. Secular Europe has been silencing the voices of Christians for some time now. In England, pro-lifers are being arrested and tried for silently praying or holding up a sign with a Bible verse outside of abortion clinics, while Sweden took two children away from their “religious extremist” parents for attending church in the middle of the week and setting rules on makeup and cell phones. And in Iceland, Monsignor Jakob Rolland, chancellor of the Catholic Diocese of Reykjavík, is being investigated by police for violating the country’s 2023 “conversion ban” after he spoke on a radio broadcast outlining Catholic teachings on homosexuality and noted that spiritual guidance is voluntarily available to those with same-sex attraction.
Finland, a Christian country, was supposed to be different. Päivi Räsänen certainly thought so. It’s why she so willingly went through a seven-year-long legal persecution without complaint. She truly believed that the case was the perfect opportunity for Finland’s Supreme Court to reaffirm its free speech and religious liberty traditions and set a precedent ensuring the rights of all people to speak their deeply held beliefs without fear of persecution or punishment.
Unfortunately, with this verdict, Finland’s Supreme Court has only set new and truly dangerous precedents.
In trying to somehow “balance” free speech, the Supreme Court has effectively killed it. The result is that even a long-serving, powerful politician and an actual ordained man of God do not have a right to share biblical truths if it offends a minority group.
Even worse, to ensure that no one is ever offended in the future, the Supreme Court has ordered that a 22-year-old church pamphlet must be physically destroyed. Read that again: A church pamphlet, citing Bible verses and long-held biblical doctrine, must be extinguished from existence.
It’s easy to justify that it’s just one church pamphlet, but given that the source material for the pamphlet were Bible verses like Romans 1 itself, how long before the Bible itself is targeted by censors? It is, after all, the root of the offending stem.
The answer, of course, is probably not long. You might not see state officials throwing Bibles onto bonfires in Finland, but based on this verdict, it’s likely that Romans 1:24-27 and other “problematic” verses will eventually be redacted from future print runs or completely deleted from Bible apps. Or in the manner of the Chinese Communist Party, the Bible will be rewritten to align it with worldly sensibilities.
And it won’t stop there. As ADF attorney Paul Coleman noted in a press conference, the verdict essentially gives a greenlight for judges to go through books, sermons, social media, online journals, speeches, interviews, and anything else written or spoken “on a line-by-line level and decide based on their opinion whether it’s allowed to be said or not.”
Pastors and other Christians in Finland are already wondering if they are next in having their sermons, social media posts, prayer journals, and mission statements investigated for “wrongly” exegeting certain Bible verses and offending certain groups.
Keep Calm and Prepare for What’s Coming
Finland will, no doubt, use a more velvet-gloved approach than the Soviet hardliners did in their efforts. They’ll say they are merely imposing “tolerance” and “safety,” not censoring anyone. They’ll use shame and smears to try to get Christians to compromise their beliefs. And instead of bonfires, the state will use redaction, misinformation warnings, and explainers to snuff out “problematic” verses like Romans 1:24-27 from future print runs or Bible apps. It’s also possible that the Bible will be rewritten to align with the acceptable societal orthodoxy, not unlike what the Chinese Communist Party has done.
For Christians, the way forward is to respond exactly how Christians persecuted under hardline communist rule did: Don’t give in to fear. Refuse to bow. Continue speaking truth. Keep a Bible handy. Memorize as many verses as you can. Never stop trusting and obeying Jesus. Glory in tribulation (Romans 5:3). And “rejoice as you share Christ’s sufferings, that you may also rejoice and be glad when his glory is revealed” (1 Peter 4:13).
For his part, Bishop Pohjola says he will simply carry on teaching God’s truths and preaching the Gospel. “My conscience is clear, and in any case, the work for freedom of speech and religion will continue,” he stated. “We accept this calmly from God’s hand.”
He also noted that he finds solace in one reality that hasn’t changed since the days of the early Church and was front and center in even the most brutal communist countries: “Every time the state attacks, the Church grows.”
May we all remember that in the days and years to come.
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