Finland’s highest court sat on Thursday to hear the troubling, headline-grabbing prosecution of Päivi Räsänen, the veteran Christian MP who faces criminal charges after quoting a Bible passage and defending traditional marriage. The hearing in Helsinki marks a dramatic escalation in a case that should have been closed after two unanimous acquittals, and Americans who value free speech should be alarmed that prosecutors keep reaching to criminalize conscience.
The origin of this absurd legal saga is straightforward: in June 2019 Räsänen posted a social-media message questioning why her own church would endorse a Pride event and included verses from Romans 1, and prosecutors have also targeted a 2004 pamphlet and a 2019 radio debate. What began as a faith-based critique inside a confessional community has been recast by the state as a criminal offense, a conversion of moral disagreement into a prosecutable act.
Two lower courts already examined the facts and found no crime; both the Helsinki District Court in 2022 and the Court of Appeal in 2023 rejected the prosecution and emphasized that judges are not there to interpret biblical doctrine. Yet the state prosecutor, seemingly driven by ideology rather than justice, has appealed repeatedly — turning acquittal into punishment by process and weaponizing the courts against a lawmaker for expressing widely held religious convictions.
Make no mistake: this is not about legal nuance alone but about a campaign to chill Christian speech. The Prosecutor General appealed the earlier acquittals and secured leave to bring the case to the Supreme Court, forcing Räsänen and her supporters to defend basic freedoms for years on end instead of letting democracy move on. The fact that this dispute has been carried all the way to the top of Finland’s judiciary only proves how determined some in government are to police belief rather than protect liberty.
Under Finnish law the charge at issue is agitation against a group, a provision that can carry fines or imprisonment for up to two years — a draconian possible punishment for citing scripture or stating a theological position. Prosecutors have even sought financial penalties and orders that would amount to censorship, demands that would threaten every pulpit, classroom, and conscience in Europe if left standing.
Conservatives should see this as a watershed moment: either free expression includes the right to speak from biblical conviction, or Western societies will slowly permit the state to decide which religious truths may be voiced. Räsänen’s case is a wake-up call to patriots who still cherish liberty — we must defend the simple principle that disagreeing about morals is not a crime, and that Christians need not live in fear of being hauled into court for quoting their Bible.
