Two Finns have recently been subjected to lengthy police interrogations over a 24-page booklet that sets out the Biblical position on homosexuality and describes it as abnormal. One of those interrogated was a member of the country’s parliament and a former cabinet minister.
On Wednesday, February 11, 2020, the Reverend Dr. Juhana Pohjola, Dean of the Evangelical Lutheran Mission Diocese of Finland, was interrogated at the Helsinki Police Department. The police interrogation lasted five hours.
The Finnish Prosecutor General, Ms. Raija Toiviainen, is investigating the legal entity that sponsors the Evangelical Lutheran Mission Diocese of Finland, on suspicion of “ethnic agitation,” i.e., making comments critical or insulting to minority groups formally protected under Finnish law, including homosexuals. (The Evangelical Lutheran Mission is a conservative Lutheran offshoot, not the established Lutheran Church of Finland.)
Rev. Dr. Juhana Pohjola
The five-hour-long interrogation was focused on the publication of a 24-page booklet entitled “Male and female He created them – Homosexual relationships challenge the Christian concept of humanity.” Päivi Räsänen, the former Minister of the Interior and a current member of the Finnish Parliament, wrote the booklet in 2004.
“At the tactful and thorough interrogation, I said that, as the editor-in-chief, I am responsible for the publication and distribution of the booklet. I denied, however, being guilty of the crime of ethnic agitation. In my view, Mrs. Räsänen’s text is not defamatory or insulting to homosexuals. In my answers, I showed that the booklet teaches in line with Christian anthropology that every person is precious as [being created in] the image of God, regardless of sexual orientation. This does not mean, however, that people are not responsible before God for their way of life or moral choices. The homosexual lifestyle is contrary to God’s order of creation and a transgression against His will. If one is not allowed to teach this publicly, the message of sin and grace will be left without a foundation, and freedom of religion will decline.
This investigation began Last November, but the origins go back further, to a tweet last June in which Mrs. Räsänen publicly questioned whether the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland (the established church of Finland) should join the Helsinki Pride Parade. Mrs. Räsänen, whose husband is a pastor in the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland, tweeted:
“How can the Church’s doctrinal foundation, the Bible, be compatible with the lifting up of shame and sin as a subject of pride? #LGBT #HelsinkiPride2019 #Romans1:24-27,”.
Mrs. Päivi Räsänen, MP and former Minister of the Interior who wrote the offending booklet
She also shared a photograph of the Finnish translation of Romans 1:24-27 with her tweet. Reportedly, at least 500 members of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland dropped their affiliation over the matter.
"The Pride event’s ideological goal is to take pride in the type of relations that are described as being against God’s will,” wrote Räsänen. “Homosexual relationships, like those relationships outside of marriage, are described in the Bible as sinful and shameful.”
The Helsinki police started a criminal investigation of Mrs. Räsänen’s tweet in August, 2019. Mrs. Räsänen was then summoned to a Helsinki police station and interrogated for almost four hours:
“I was interrogated for almost four hours concerning this tweet. The police asked me if I would agree to remove the tweet within two weeks. I answered no. I was asked about the contents of the Letter to the Romans and what I meant by saying that practicing homosexuality is a sin and a shame. I answered that all of us are sinners, but the sinfulness of practicing homosexuality is nowadays denied.”
During a 2013 seminar, Mrs. Räsänen made the following statement, which now appears prophetic:
Truth usually comes with a price. One often has to pay for following truth, confessing truth and speaking it. . . . people are tempted to sell the truth, to acquire advantage by yielding to popular, false ideas and by distorting the truth. Yet the Bible exhorts, ‘Buy the truth, and do not sell it!”
Martin Luther handled the issue of ‘consequences of faith’ aptly: “If you believe, you speak. If you speak, you must suffer. For faith, confession and cross belong together and are the part of a true Christian.”
The consequences of placing homosexuals in a protected category in Finnish law—biblical teaching about sex has been criminalized—ought to chasten our own religious liberty establishment, which seeks to place gay and transgendered persons in a protected category under U.S. law, as part of a logrolling scheme to get extra statutory protections for religious believers.