A Protestant bishop and pastor’s wife will appeal to the European Court of Human Rights the Finnish Supreme Court’s recent ban on their speech affirming what the Bible says about human sexuality. The appeal could take years amid escalating Soviet-like restrictions on free speech and religious expression across the continent that extend to Americans under European internet censorship.
In its March decision, Finland’s Supreme Court tried to dodge the reality that its 3-2 conviction of Bishop Juhana Pohjola and Member of Parliament Paivi Rasanen criminalizes speech stating Christian theology about sex. It did acquit Rasanen of a charge for posting a Bible verse on X, she noted in an in-person exclusive interview with The Federalist Saturday. But then it convicted her and Pohjola under Finland’s “hate crimes” laws for writing and publishing a book discussing the central Christian teachings that men and women are different and sexually complementary. This is also the position of orthodox Muslims and Jews, and global majorities of Buddhism and Hinduism.
“It is really about the Christian view and Christianity that they are trying to prohibit and censor,” Rasanen, who is also a medical doctor, told The Federalist in English. “And now I think that many Christians and many pastors are in confusion. They do not know where’s the line. What can they teach?”
With that conviction, the court indicated Christians in Finland can quote the Bible, but not discuss, explain, or teach what it says. That threatens not only theological speech such as sermons and books, but also private conversations and the existence of any faithful Christian church or community whatsoever. It also threatens the global majority of religious adherents who acknowledge the reality that opposite-sex intimacy is physically and procreatively distinct from same-sex interactions.
Rasanen said she and Pohjola know the ECHR may be a difficult venue, but they feel compelled to appeal yet again. That’s because the other option is accepting the European erasure of Christianity and basic human rights protections Christianity has created, such as freedom of speech and toleration of lesser theological differences among orthodox Christian denominations.
Rasanen and Pohjola have now been prosecuted in Finland for more than seven years for talking and writing about the Bible. The two were acquitted at two lower courts, but prosecutors kept exercising the unusual Finnish option to re-prosecute after acquittal until they achieved a conviction. Even if the two are ultimately again acquitted at the ECHR, they and their lawyers have noted their years of legal battles have already strongly discouraged free speech.
Hostility to free speech and Christianity is growing dramatically across Europe, slowly shifting restrictions on these fundamental human rights closer to those of repressive regimes such as Russia and China. A former U.S. ambassador estimated England alone now jails more citizens over speech crimes than Vladimir Putin’s Russia, including numerous prosecutions of people for admitting to silent prayer on public property. The systemic repression of speech has fueled citizen unrest, massive recent opposition party wins in local U.K. elections, and calls for Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s resignation.
Other European countries are trending in a similar direction. The most recent U.S. State Department report on human rights says that in Germany in 2024, “Law enforcement, including the Federal Criminal Police Office, routinely raided homes, confiscated electronic devices, interrogated suspects and prosecuted individuals for the exercise of freedom of speech, including online.”
Police in Belgium arrested two individuals last June for standing on a public sidewalk with signs objecting to transgender child mutilation. In France, the U.S. State Department says acts of anti-Christian and anti-Jewish violence, typically by Muslims, have increased exponentially.
Most European countries, and many U.S. jurisdictions, maintain laws that could enable authorities to prosecute a wide range of speech simply by labeling it “hate speech,” as occurred in the Finnish case. In addition, through its 2022 Digital Services Act and other mechanisms, the European Union is now a top enforcer of internet censorship rules and algorithms that prohibit not just Europeans but also Americans from freely discussing and seeing information on topics the government dislikes.
EU-required internet censorship, like U.S. censorship under the Biden presidency, punishes even true and non-hateful speech, according to a February U.S. House report. Topics the EU bans the whole world from freely discussing online include LGBT activism, mass migration, Islamism, anti-energy environmentalist policies, wars, criticism of the EU, and memes, the report says. The Federalist is a known specific target of European censorship. All this means European authorities are not only banning Rasanen and Pohjola from writing about the Bible, but trying to keep the entire world unaware they have done so.
“The DSA has faced criticism from European and global free speech experts, European NGOs, the US Administration, and the House Judiciary Committee for imposing an online censorship regime around the world,” notes Alliance Defending Freedom International. ADFI is legally assisting Rasanen and Pohjola and the U.S. social media company X, which was given a 120 million Euro fine in December under the DSA for allowing free speech for European users.
ADFI also notes the commission that adjudicates disputes over the DSA also prosecutes alleged violators and regulates the social media monopolies subject to its provisions, which include Google and Meta (Facebook/Instagram). This means the commission is an involved party in the disputes it judges, a massive and transparent conflict of interest. Most administrative agencies in the United States and in Europe function similarly.
Numerous U.S. officials and international religious and human rights organizations have condemned both the DSA’s speech abuses and Finland’s prosecution of Rasanen and Pohjola. The U.S. ambassador to the EU, Andrew Puzder, said of the DSA in September, “No president of either party, and I can tell you President Trump in particular, is going to tolerate a foreign government restricting the First Amendment fundamental free speech, free expression rights of American citizens, to an extent that the United States government can’t even regulate those rights.”
In November, the U.S. Department of State told The Federalist it had repeatedly raised concerns about Rasanen’s case with the Finnish government, a North Atlantic Treaty Organization member U.S. taxpayers provide billions. Assistant Secretary of State Riley Barnes in September called “the case against Finnish MP Päivi Räsänen … baseless.” In 2021, members of Congress, including Rep. Chip Roy, who is now running for Texas attorney general, sent a letter calling on the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom to take action against Finland for prosecuting the two Christians.
The ECHR is known for often prioritizing sexual politics over human rights. In November, the European court ruled that Poland must allow people to kill unborn children whom doctors think may be disabled. In March, the ECHR refused an appeal from Swedish parents after the government took their children because the parents didn’t think their daughters should wear makeup or own a cell phone due to Christian convictions.
The Finnish Christians’ punishments include significant fines and the startling erasure of their speech about the Bible from both print and the internet. The booklet Rasanen wrote and Pohjola published in a catechetical series, titled “Male and Female He [God] Created Them,” is now banned in Finland. This has prompted an international movement to share the booklet, both online and in print.
At Concordia Theological Seminary in Indiana on Saturday, attendees lined up at the exit to have Rasanen autograph their copies of her banned book. The seminary on Friday awarded Rasanen an honorary doctorate in gratitude for her “faithful defense of biblical truths and religious freedom, and the bold witness in the face of persecution.” Rasanen’s husband, Niilo, is a pastor with his own doctorate, and he travels with her for support and protection.
Theology professor Peter Scaer introduced Rasanen, noting her book is now like “smuggling Bibles into the Soviet Union.” He encouraged attendees to share her book far and wide, and post pictures of themselves holding it with the caption “I stand with Paivi.”
U.S. Sen. Jim Banks, R-Indiana, told The Federalist via a spokeswoman, “Paivi Rasanen never should’ve been prosecuted for writing about her Christian faith. Concordia awarding her with an honorary doctorate is well deserved.”
Joy Pullmann / The Federalist
In a moving speech, Rasanen told her story and thanked God for all the good He has worked through her trials. In response to a question about how to prevent prosecutions like hers in the United States, Rasanen encouraged opposition to hate speech laws and for Christians to thoroughly teach children the Bible and theology.
She was in Parliament in 2010 when it passed the law used years later to convict her and Bishop Pohjola, she said, and at the time “nobody could understand where it would lead.”
“These [hate speech] laws are so vague and unpredictable they can be used against almost anyone,” she noted. “It depends who is in power.”
The audience tittered with happiness when the mother of five and grandmother of 12 mentioned she currently has three grandbabies on the way. Rasanen said experiences in her youth of serious doubt about God’s mercy on her sins helped prepare her to proclaim the gospel across the world due to her suffering at the hands of her government. Rasanen told of a young man who emailed when her prosecution began, angry that she agreed with the Bible about homosexual relationships. Years later, he emailed again to say he had become a Christian, and thanked her for responding to his anger in love.
“Without this prosecution I would not be able to testify about Jesus to police, courts, into homes all around the world,” she said. “It is not in vain to defend in public the Word of God, the teachings of the Bible. You intended to harm me, but God intended for this to accomplish the saving of many lives. Our God is amazing at turning evil into good. Jesus is alive, and He stands by His Word.”
