Persecution Update:

'Europe Is Persecuting Christians'

 TYLER DURDEN

Free speech is under serious attack all across Europe. To criticise the sacred cows of the progressive worldview – from transgenderism to immigration and even Islam – is to invite a knock on the door from the thought police. The recent, harrowing trial of a Finnish parliamentarian reveals how it is often Christians who find themselves in the firing line. Päivi Räsänen has spent the past six years fighting a ‘hate speech’ prosecution, simply for quoting passages from the Bible and defending traditional marriage.

Paul Coleman – executive director of Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) International – joined Brendan O’Neill on his podcast, The Brendan O’Neill Show, to discuss Räsänen’s case as well as the broader assault on free expression in Europe. What follows is an edited version of that conversation. You can watch the whole thing here.

Brendan O’Neill: Tell us about the case of Finnish MP Päivi Räsänen. Why is it so important to the cause of free speech?

Paul Coleman: It’s always hard for me to convince people that this case really happened as it did. They say ‘come on, Paul, there must be something more to it’, because it really does sound so far-fetched.

Päivi Räsänen is Finland’s former minister of interior, the equivalent of the British home secretary. She’s the longest serving female member of parliament. Things took a turn for her in 2019, when the Lutheran Church in Finland became an official sponsor of the Helsinki Pride parade. As a member of the church (and wife of a pastor), Päivi was highly critical of the decision, and considered it to be out of line with her understanding of the Bible. For saying as much, she was investigated by the police.

The police dug up almost three decades worth of material. They found a booklet that she wrote in 2004 – a little church pamphlet on the Christian view of marriage and sexuality – as well as one minute of an hour-long radio debate she once took part in. They used these to file three criminal charges against her for hate speech. The bishop who published her pamphlet in 2004 was also charged. One of the most significant things to note here is that the law Päivi was being charged under didn’t even exist until 2011 – she was essentially prosecuted back in time.

What they put her through was, essentially, a modern-day heresy trial. I sat there in court while a prosecutor asked an MP and a bishop about their interpretations of the Bible. We won a unanimous victory for Päivi in a district court back in 2022. But in Finland, a prosecutor can appeal not-guilty verdicts, and that’s what happened in this case. So it went to the Court of Appeal in 2023, where we won another unanimous victory. The prosecutor then filed an appeal to the Supreme Court of Finland, which is, at the time we’re speaking, where the case currently sits.

In total, it has been a six-and-a-half year process, involving 13 hours of police interrogation, 12 judges, four criminal charges and three courts. In hate-speech cases, the process is the punishment – and that’s exactly what Päivi’s case exemplifies.

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