A politician in Finland who previously oversaw police as Minister of Interior recently told a conference in Berlin how officers later opposed her faith while interrogating her on “hate speech” charges for supporting biblical marriage.
After serving as Finland’s Minister of Interior, Member of Parliament Päivi Räsänen found herself undergoing various interrogations starting in 2019 as she faced hate speech charges, she said in a public interview with Cissie Graham Lynch, granddaughter of late evangelist Billy Graham, at the European Congress on Evangelism in Berlin, Germany in late May.
“I have to tell you that each time I was interrogated in the police station, the police asked me to [consider] the possibility of giving up and renouncing what I believe,” Räsänen told Graham Lynch in front of the audience at the Berlin Congress.
Pressure from the police included giving Räsänen two weeks to delete her social media posts on the biblical understanding of sexual relationships; she refused.
“I said, ‘I do not need that time. I will not. I will stand on these right things, because I will not apologize for what the Apostle Paul has stated. And it is the Word of God. It is not only my opinion. It is the Word of God, what He teaches,’” Räsänen said. “It was very absurd, and it even felt unreal to sit there in a small room in the police station. In fact, I had just before, some years before that, been a Minister of Interior in charge of the police, and then I was sitting there being interrogated about my Christian beliefs.”
Now awaiting a third trial after twice being acquitted of hate speech charges, Räsänen shared her surprise at the legal attacks directed at her since then, saying she believed it was “some kind of battle against Christian values in Finland.”
She said she detected an ideological undercurrent in the office of the Prosecutor General, as officials had “released many years ago very progressive liberal articles where they, for example, demanded that churches marry same sex couples and so on.”
Her court battles began when she was stunned to learn in June 2019 that leadership of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland decided to support the Helsinki Gay Pride event.
“And I was worried that if the leadership of the church takes that kind of stand, it will undermine people’s trust, especially young people,” Räsänen said. “And then it is not anymore about gender or marriage, but it is also about salvation.”
Praying for direction on how to respond, she received a “very clear vision” that, as a public political figure in the country, “now it is my time to speak” against the Lutheran church’s position, she said.
Räsänen took a photograph of Romans 1:24-27 on the Apostle Paul’s statements about the practice of homosexuality being an outcome of “sinful desires.” She updated her Twitter account with the photo from her Bible and used it to ask Lutheran leaders how their decision accorded with Scripture.
Someone filed a criminal complaint about the social media post, and police began investigating. The issue quickly became public since Räsänen was a well-known MP, and unnamed opponents filed further criminal complaints about her writing, including a previously published pamphlet about Genesis.
“And then there were police interrogations, and the prosecutor general ordered the police to continue the investigations even though the police didn’t find any crime from my booklet,” Räsänen said. “And I have been in court, in the Helsinki District Court and Court of Appeal, and I won there. I got acquittals.”
Though three judges from two courts found no crime in any of her writings, the prosecutor general appealed to the Supreme Court of Finland, which ruled on April 19 to allow a third trial.
“And now I’m waiting for the decision [of the] Supreme Court,” she said.
The two previous trials at Helsinki District Court and the Court of Appeal found Räsänen, a grandmother of 11, not guilty of the hate speech charges. She was criminally charged for sharing her Christian views on marriage and sexual ethics in a tweet on Twitter (now X) in 2019.
She was also charged in relation to a 2004 pamphlet for her church she wrote about the Book of Genesis, stating, “male and female He created them.”
“The prosecutor has not appealed a third charge based on her appearance on a radio show, making her Court of Appeal acquittal on that charge final,” legal advocacy group Alliance Defending Freedom International stated in April. “Only the two remaining charges are subject to this latest appeal.”
The legal battles have given Räsänen ample opportunities to share her faith. Initial police interrogation involved 13 hours of questioning that involved officers asking her to take them through the Bible and share her interpretations, she said.
One police officer asked very theological questions, she said.
“He asked, ‘What is the message of these verses? And what is the message of the chapter of Romans? And what is the message of the book of Romans?’” she said. “I asked the police, ‘Do you really want to hear it?’”
Räsänen took the opportunity to share the gospel with the policeman.
“I’m grateful, because he was a very nice policeman, and we had very good conversations,” she said. “We had the Bible, and we started from Genesis and went through the Bible.”
Räsänen added that her ongoing court battles have drawn wider coverage in Finnish media – with Bible verses from Romans, the problem of sin and the gospel becoming topics of discussion on TV and radio programs.
“There have been dark moments, but what has given me a lot of joy is that this resistance has opened up such opportunities to tell about the gospel – for example, in courtrooms, in the police station, in live broadcasts from the courthouse and in press conferences,” Räsänen said. “And I have been so encouraged from many messages that I have got from many, especially young people who have told me that when they were listening, for example, to me speaking on the radio and telling about this story and also telling the invitation to follow Jesus, they prayed after this, and then they became Christians.”
Graham Lynch thanked Räsänen for standing firm for God’s word.
“Watching you over these last few years, there’s no doubt that God has chosen you to fight this fight for all of us, for free speech and religious liberty here in Europe,” Graham Lynch said.
Räsänen said Christians are living at time when they must defend freedom of speech and freedom of faith.
“They are not self-evident anymore, even though we have these freedoms in our constitutions,” Räsänen said. “But, we can see that, for example, the hate crime laws in Finland are used against Christians.”
As a result, legislators and other must defend freedom of speech, she said.
“But also, I want to encourage all Christians that now is the time to use these rights, because the more we are silent, the more restricted and narrower becomes the space to use these rights,” she said.
The largest threat is “self-censorship” regarding biblical norms of marriage and gender, she said.
“And that’s why when we have these contradictory, painful issues of today about the value of life or marriage or gender,” she said. “I think now it is time to teach what is a man and woman, and what the Bible teaches about this, to the confused generation that we have today.”
Räsänen encouraged Berlin Congress delegates facing any future persecution to remember that “God is so good.”
“He is so abundant in His goodness that He will give you a hundred times more joy and blessing than possible suffering in these ordeals. And I want to encourage everyone also to be bold in teaching the Bible about these painful topical issues,” she said. “It is especially important for young people that they can trust fully to the Bible, to the message of the Bible, because it is the way that they can also trust in Jesus, who is the salvation, who is the only way to heaven.”
