Finland’s “Bible Trial” – Religion & Liberty Online

Their conviction came just a few months ago, but Finnish Member of Parliament Päivi Räsänen and Bishop Juhana Pohjola have already endured more than six years of punishment for religious speech. It’s a case, Bishop Pohjola says, that should be seen as important “not only as a legal precedent concerning religious speech, but also for the message it sends to every Christian who holds to the biblical understanding of grace and sin, marriage and human sexuality.”

On March 26, the Supreme Court of Finland found Dr. Räsänen (Finland’s former minister of the interior) and Bishop Pohjola guilty of hate speech in a split 3–2 decision. It was the latest twist in what has been called Finland’s “Bible Trial,” a multiyear saga that has featured tweets, police interrogations, and the litigation of religious beliefs in court. The story isn’t over, either. On May 7, Bishop Pohjola and Dr. Räsänen announced they would appeal their conviction to the European Court of Human Rights. (Preparations for that appeal remain in process.)

The outcome of the legal battle could have consequences for freedom of speech and religion across Europe, and it began with, of all things, a tweet. On June 17, 2019, Dr. Räsänen posted a photo of Romans 1:24-27 on Twitter, criticizing the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland—of which she is a member—for its participation in Helsinki Pride. “How does the church’s doctrinal foundation, the Bible,” she asked, “align with the elevation of sin and shame as a source of pride?”

Not long after, police began an investigation into Dr. Räsänen on the grounds that her tweet might constitute incitement to hatred against homosexual people. That led to additional investigations into comments she later made in a December 2019 radio program, as well as into a 2004 religious booklet she had written entitled “Male and Female He Created Them—Homosexual Relationships Challenge the Christian Concept of Humanity.” For context, the legalization of same-sex marriage took place in Finland in 2017.

In total, Dr. Räsänen would be subjected to 13 hours of interrogation over 18 months. Nor was she alone in this regard. Rev. Dr. Juhana Pohjola also endured interrogation for his involvement in the publication of the 2004 booklet written by Dr. Räsänen. Dr. Pohjola—who was subsequently made bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Mission Diocese of Finland in late 2021—was investigated as the editor of the series of theological works that included Dr. Räsänen’s booklet.

While Helsinki police initially concluded that no laws had been broken, Finland’s prosecutor general disagreed. In April 2021, she laid three charges against Dr. Räsänen (one each for the tweet, radio interview, and booklet) and one also against then-Bishop-elect Pohjola (for the booklet).

The first court to hear the case was the Helsinki District Court in January 2022. There the prosecutor general repeatedly grilled the pair on their religious beliefs, surprising viewers with her fixation on questions of the nature of Scripture, hermeneutics, and the defendants’ understanding of sin. “I assumed the Prosecutor would not go into this matter of the Bible and theology,” Bishop Pohjola noted at the time. “I thought that this would be a cold juridical handling of these matters. In that, I was truly surprised.”

So, it seems, were the judges. The panel of three judges unanimously ruled that the two be acquitted on all charges. In an apparent rebuke to the prosecution, they added: “It is not for the district court to interpret biblical concepts.”

The prosecution appealed the decision, and the Helsinki Court of Appeals held new hearings in August and September 2023. The prosecution presented little new evidence, instead suggesting that the lower court had failed to apply the law correctly. Again, the prosecution focused on the religious beliefs of their defendants. And again, the Helsinki Court of Appeals found in favor of the defendants, upholding the lower court’s ruling.

The prosecution subsequently appealed in 2024 to the Supreme Court of Finland, this time leaving off the charge related to the radio interview. So, when hearings at the Supreme Court of Finland were held in October 2025, the focus was now solely on Dr. Räsänen’s tweet and the 2004 booklet. With a new prosecutor in charge of the case, the prosecution restricted itself to a much narrower focus on legal matters during the hearing, abandoning the interrogation of the defendants’ religious views that had characterized the previous prosecutor’s approach.

“It is difficult to overstate how surreal [it has been]—to see my faith, my conscience, and even the Bible itself placed on trial in a democratic nation,” said Dr. Räsänen at the time. “Whatever the outcome of this trial is, my conscience is clear and my faith is firm. My hope is that this ruling will affirm the right of every person to express their beliefs freely, without fear and without punishment.”

The Supreme Court’s ruling did not go the way she hoped. On March 26, she and Bishop Pohjola were narrowly convicted of hate speech over the 2004 booklet in a split 3–2 decision. At the same time, the court acquitted Dr. Räsänen in regard to the 2019 tweet that first set Finland’s “Bible Trial” in motion.

“While I am happy that the Court unanimously confirmed my acquittal regarding the Bible-tweet, I am deeply concerned that it has nonetheless found me guilty in relation to the church booklet I authored twenty years ago,” Dr. Räsänen said after the verdict was announced. “This outcome sends a troubling and contradictory message about the state of fundamental freedoms in Finland.”

In its decision, the majority declared criminal several of Dr. Räsänen’s statements that characterized homosexuality as a developmental disorder and sexual deviation. The court declared these claims untrue, and that the author and publisher were therefore punishable for keeping the text online (the booklet has been available online since 2007). Dr. Räsänen’s actions in sharing the document online in 2019 after news broke that she was being investigated for the booklet was also ruled illegal. (The majority stated that the two were not being convicted for having first published the booklet in 2004 but rather for continuing to make the text available online.)

By contrast, the two dissenting judges accepted the opinion of the court rapporteur assigned to the case, stating that the defendants ought to be acquitted on charges for the booklet as well as the tweet. The rapporteur argued that Dr. Räsänen’s statements must be understood in their wider context, both in terms of the booklet itself as well as its date of publication. The dissent also argued that public interest in the booklet following the announcement of an investigation in 2019 legitimated continuing to make the text available online. They concluded: “Restriction of freedom of expression and religion is therefore not necessary in this case.”

Following their conviction, Dr. Räsänen was fined €1,800, Bishop Pohjola was fined €1,100, and the Evangelical Lutheran Mission Diocese of Finland’s corporate agency (which published the document) was fined €5,000. But the group’s punishment extends well beyond monetary fines: They have already endured more than six years of interrogations, trials, and public vilification. Even if they had been acquitted for a third time, that damage would not have been undone.

“My basic rights of freedom of religion as a Lutheran bishop to teach biblical faith according to the confession of our church and my conscience have now been deeply violated,” Bishop Pohjola said following the trial. “It is not a matter of the sum of euros of the fine but of principle and basic rights.”

“I pay the sentence with euros; others pay with fear,” he continued. “This verdict has a chilling effect on society.”

The court also ordered the defendants to remove from the web the text the majority had ruled to be offensive. In line with that decision, the Evangelical Lutheran Mission Diocese of Finland has edited the online version of the booklet, replacing the text in question with black bars. In each case, a notice appears alongside the bars, stating the “text has been censored according” to the ruling of the Supreme Court, along with a link back to the ruling itself.

Despite being convicted of hate speech, Bishop Pohjola and Dr. Räsänen have been clear that they do not hate anyone. In her booklet, Dr. Räsänen affirms that it is love—not hate—that motivates Christian teaching on sin. “God loves all sinners,” she writes. “But this does not negate God’s desire to save people from sin.”

A failure by the church to call sin what Scripture calls sin would be tantamount to depriving people of the good news of forgiveness through Christ, she explains. “If we deny people the right to feel guilt for their sin, we also deprive them of the joy and assurance of the Gospel,” she says. “The certainty of heaven rests on Christ’s assured atonement for our very real sins and on His resurrection from the dead.”

“The love of God calls upon Christians to carry all their sins, including the sins of their sexual lives, in faith to Christ to be healed,” she says.

Bishop Pohjola concurs. “We continue boldly to teach the intrinsic value of every human being, and also God’s will and design for human sexuality and family,” he said in 2024. “This is not the time to step back and be silent but in love and truth to confess the good created order and God’s institution of marriage between a man and a woman, and to share from the empty tomb Christ’s wonderful gift of forgiveness of sins for all people.”

The prosecution of Dr. Räsänen and Bishop Pohjola for their articulation of historic Christian teaching on sexuality has drawn global concern. The International Lutheran Council (ILC), for example, issued a letter of support in 2021 signed by the heads of 45 Lutheran church bodies and international associations from around the world. An additional show of support came when the ILC elected Bishop Pohjola to serve as chairman of the International Lutheran Council during their 2022 World Conference in Kenya. He was reelected to a second term during the 2025 World Conference in the Philippines.

In the United States, Bishop Pohjola was invited on a speaking tour in 2021 to discuss the case as well as freedom of speech and religion more generally. He and Dr. Räsänen jointly addressed the synodical convention of The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod in 2023. And both have received honorary doctorates from Concordia Theological Seminary in Fort Wayne, Indiana—Bishop Pohjola in 2022 and Dr. Räsänen in 2026—in part for their public witness to the Gospel in the face of persecution. The pair have received support from American senators, media, and more.

The reason for the widespread expression of support is clear: Freedom of religion and freedom of speech affect us all. Failure to defend these fundamental rights in one nation—and a European democracy, at that!—creates an environment in which they can be eroded in other countries, too. The decision of the European Court of Human Rights to hear or not hear an appeal on this matter could fundamentally alter how freedoms of speech and religion are interpreted in all 46 nations of the Council of Europe.

And decisions there will be felt even further afield. In Canada, for example, the federal government is pushing through legislation that will strip the religious exemption from Canada’s hate speech legislation. Despite protestations from government leaders that such a change will not lead to the criminalization of religious teaching, Finland reminds us just how easy it is to weaponize hate speech legislation against those with unpopular beliefs.

The conviction of Dr. Räsänen and Bishop Pohjola, then, is not an isolated event; it may be the harbinger of many more such cases in the future. Let us hope, therefore, and pray that the European Court of Human Rights sees fit to hear their appeal and acquit them of these charges once and for all.