‘Appalled’: Finnish Supreme Court acquits politician on Bible tweet but criminally convicts her over church pamphlet

The Finnish Supreme Court this week acquitted Member of Parliament Päivi Räsänen for a 2019 tweet in which she expressed her views on marriage. The high court criminally convicted her, however, for co-publishing 20 years ago a pamphlet about her church’s teachings.

In the 3-2 conviction, the court found her guilty of “hate speech” on one charge relating to the expression of her beliefs on marriage and sexual ethics, according to a March 26 press release from Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) International, which coordinated Räsänen’s legal defense. 

The “hate speech” conviction is within a section of Finland’s criminal code titled “war crimes and crimes against humanity,” the release noted. 

Kristen Waggoner, president of ADF International, said in a statement that she is “appalled” that while Räsänen was acquitted for the Bible verse tweet, the Finnish Supreme Court “convicted her of criminal ‘hate speech’ for a church pamphlet she wrote in 2004, long before the law in question was passed.”

“This is a dark day for freedom in Europe and across the Western world,” Waggoner said in a March 26 X post. “Punishing peaceful expression undermines the very foundation of free societies.” 

Zeale News previously reported that Finnish prosecutors filed a complaint against Räsänen after she made a post on X citing a Bible verse and questioning the Evangelical Lutheran Church’s sponsorship of an LGBT event. Police later found that Räsänen authored a pamphlet for her church titled “As Man and Woman He Created Them,” published in 2004. Lutheran Bishop Juhana Pohjola, who published it, was also charged. 

According to ADF International, two lower courts had previously unanimously acquitted Räsänen. Her prosecutor appealed for a third time and the case escalated to the Supreme Court, which heard the case in October 2025. 

Anu Mantila, the Finnish State prosecutor, argued before the Court of Appeal that Räsänen’s opinion of the Scripture verse was criminal. 

“You can cite the Bible, but it is Räsänen’s interpretation and opinion about the Bible verses that are criminal,” Mantila said at the time, according to the release. 

The court found Räsänen and Pohjola guilty for having “made available to the public and kept available to the public opinions that insult homosexuals as a group on the basis of their sexual orientation,” the release states. Räsänen was convicted on the basis that after the preliminary investigation began she continued to share the pamphlet on personal social media pages in 2019 and 2020. 

The release states that the courts imposing a criminal fine of several thousand of Euros and requiring that the statements “be ‘removed from public access and destroyed.’”  

However, the court unanimously acquitted Räsänen regarding the tweet, agreeing that the post “did not meet the criteria for the offence of incitement as she ‘justified her opinion by citing a biblical text’ among other things,” according to the release. 

Räsänen and Pohjola will consider appealing to the European Court of Human Rights, according to Waggoner, who emphasized that “the right to speak freely, including on matters of faith and morality, is firmly protected under international law.”

Commenting on a possible appeal to the European Court of Human Rights, Räsänen said, “This is not about my free speech alone, but that of every person in Finland.” 

“A positive ruling would help to prevent other innocent people from experiencing the same ordeal for simply sharing their beliefs,” she added in the release. 

Waggoner called for unjust “hate speech laws” to be struck down. 

“The Western world has aggressively adopted more and more restrictions on speech,” she said. “This case makes clear beyond doubt that now is the time for the governments of Europe to repeal unjust ‘hate speech laws’ and commit to a free speech reset.”