As this edition of Evangelicals Now went to press, the trials of Finnish Christians Päivi Räsänen MP and Bishop Juhana Pohjola, of the Evangelical Lutheran Mission Diocese of Finland, had started.
Both are accused of agitation against an ethnic group, specifically Räsänen’s ‘insulting’ of homosexuals on a radio programme and in a booklet published in 2004 by Pohjola.
Räsänen gave this exclusive interview to Evangelicals Now:
en: How have you found this time since you first knew you would be going on trial?
PR: Being criminally charged for voicing my deeply held beliefs in a country that has such deep roots in freedom of speech and religion feels unreal. I was very surprised at the Prosecutor General’s decision to file charges against me. That was preceded by 18 months of police investigation and several long interrogations.
One of the most frustrating things was that the prosecution made a number of false allegations about my Christian views. I believe the court has, for the first time, to decide whether or not it is legal to quote the Bible, with approval. The judges must weigh the relations between the foundational rights and the criminal law – and different foundational laws.
en: What is the situation among Finnish Christians? Are many standing with you?
PR: Many Christians in Finland have woken up to defend faith and religious freedom. In July, over 1,000 people gathered in front of our Parliament building and raised their Bibles collectively, showing strong support for the freedom of God’s word. The Finnish Association for Freedom of Speech and Religion was founded to support this case, and possibly others in future.
Many churches and leading figures from different Christian organisations from Finland and abroad have shown their strong support. When cases like mine arise, the international community should be concerned over such attacks on free speech.
en: Spiritually, what has kept you going?
PR: My motivation to speak up comes from the Bible and from my desire to impact society. A conviction based on the Christian faith is more than a superficial opinion. The early Christians did not renounce their faith when facing lions, so why should I renounce my faith in a court room?
en: How do you think things will unfold in the future for Christian freedom in Finland – and Europe more widely?
PR: Already the police investigations have made Christians in Finland more afraid to express their convictions based on the Bible, for example on marriage or sexual ethics. The investigation, and pressing charges, has created self-censorship and undermined our freedom of expression. But I hope the case opens up opportunities to spread the gospel and that Christians would not stop speaking out in public.
It is a grave violation of freedom of religion if the right to agree with Biblical teaching is contravened. I am ready to defend freedom of speech and religion in all necessary courts.
•The court was due to discuss the final statements on 14 February. The judges then have about a month to decide their verdict. The outcome should be clear by the middle of March.
Analysis from Andrew Marsay: The charges against Päivi Räsänen include reference to a paper she wrote in 2004 for the Finnish Lutheran Church, entitled Male and Female he made them. The charges mention her statement that homosexuality represents a degraded form of human behaviour. In contemporary discourse the word ‘degraded’ has seriously negative moral overtones.
Yet, in her paper, Dr. Räsänen’s uses the word not primarily for its moral impact but, rather, in anticipation of and as a response to the question, how can homosexuality be regarded as degraded when, statistically speaking, it is present in all human populations and has been in all historical periods of which we have written records?
Dr Räsänen’s answer is simply to say very plainly that society as we know it today is not what it has been in all recorded history. Her view that homosexuality represents degraded behaviour is based on her previous assertion that the world as we know it today is only a very pale reflection of an original template. Objectively speaking, degradation implies a qualitative departure from a previous state. Her detractors are challenging her statement as though it were an intrinsically moral assertion. But, while her statement has moral implications, which her paper goes on to spell out, it is essentially a logical premise. It is an assertion that original sin, far from being an outdated religious dogma, is a radically true diagnosis of the essential human predicament.
Many years ago, I heard a sermon by Professor Donald Macleod in which he opined that the truth most relevant in engaging with contemporary society is the doctrine of original sin. The greatest value of Dr Räsänen’s paper is that she understands this truth and has deployed it, first to underpin a Biblical morality, and then to craft a carefully worded social policy warning to both her fellow church members and, more widely, her fellow Finns.
