Finland’s ‘Bible Trial’ is entering the final stage after six years—and the religious liberty of Christians in Finland, and perhaps all of Europe, is riding on the final verdict.
On October 30, 2025, Finnish parliamentarian Päivi Räsänen will appear before the Supreme Court in Finland. Her alleged crime? Quoting the Bible in her writings and in TV and radio interviews in defense of the Christian sexual ethic. It is the latest—and likely the last—step in a years-long process that has riveted the nation and the continent.
“I have been in politics for thirty years in the parliament of Finland,” Räsänen told me in an interview. “I have also been Minister of Interior, and I could never believe that something like this could happen in Finland.”
Räsänen began her career as a staunchly pro-life medical professional and ran for parliament at the urging of her husband, a Lutheran pastor, in 1991. She was elected in 1995 and served as Minister of the Interior from 2011 to 2015 and as leader of the Christian Democrats for over a decade. Over the past thirty years, she has become one of the most respected politicians in the country.
In 2019, Räsänen posted a tweet asking the leadership of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland—her church—how it could square a post in support for a Pride event with Romans 1:24-27 and included a photo of the Bible verses. The Finnish police launched an investigation into the tweet as “agitation against a minority group” under Finland’s criminal code, which falls under the “war crimes and crimes against humanity” section and carries fines or up to two years in prison.
The investigators also investigated a 2004 pamphlet defending biblical marriage by Räsänen titled Male and Female He Created Them: Homosexual Relationships Challenge the Christian Concept of Humanity. In 2020, Räsänen faced 13 hours of police interrogation in which she defended the biblical sexual ethic. The Finnish prosecutor general filed charges against her on April 29 for three counts of “agitation against a minority group” despite the police recommending no charges.
On March 30, 2022, the Helsinki District Court unanimously acquitted Räsänen of all charges; on April 30, the prosecutor appealed, asking the Helsinki Court of Appeal for both fines and censorship of Räsänen. On November 14, 2023, the Helsinki Court of Appeal upheld the acquittal—again, unanimously. The state prosecutor, Anu Mantila, refused to give up and appealed to the Finnish Supreme Court. Next month, the LAST stage in the prosecution of Päivi Räsänen will finally be underway.
The prosecutor is clearly malicious. “He claimed that I had said that God has not even created homosexual people,” Räsänen told me. “Of course, I have not said anything like that. But the prosecutor claimed that even though I have not said it, I have thought it, I have meant it, and people understand it, that I think some people are inferior to other people. Of course, I do not think that because it would be against my Christian conviction to say that some people are inferior to me. I said that we are the same in front of God and the constitution.”
“This is a trial about the Bible,” Räsänen emphasized. “It is a trial to determine if we are still allowed to agree in public with the Bible. The prosecutor said it very clearly in our main newspaper, that if I would be finally convicted at the Supreme Court that our Bibles are still allowed to exist, for example, in libraries, and you can refer to the Bible, but the red line is if you agree in public with the Bible.”
“If the prosecutor wins at the Supreme Court, it would mean the persecution of Christians in Finland.”
Räsänen suspects that the seven-year process may be an attempt to cow others into silence. After all, if this can be done to a prominent politician, what can be done to others? “They are trying to show what could happen if you use your right to speak,” she said. “I’m afraid for some people this has already worked as a kind of self-censorship. When the case became public, I was contacted by some pastors who sent me their sermon drafts and asked: Can I say this in public, or could I also end up in court?”
I have tried to encourage people that now is the time to speak. It is not the time to be silent, because the more we are silent, the narrower the space becomes for our important freedoms. I think that one reason we have this kind of case is that the church and Christians have been too shy, too silent, to speak about these teachings that are in some way in contradiction with mainstream ideology in our society.
