The Christian Right is Putting Europe's Online Speech Laws to the Test

On Thursday, Oct. 30, Finnish politician Päivi Räsänen had her day in court. Again.

Räsänen, a former interior minister, and Lutheran Bishop Juhana Pohjola, are being adjudicated for alleged hate speech after Räsänen tweeted a Bible verse questioning her church’s participation in a Pride event and co-authored a booklet with Pohjola outlining her beliefs on marriage and sexuality. Prosecutors claimed both constituted hate speech. Though Räsänen was twice acquitted in lower courts in Helsinki, the case will now be decided by the Finnish Supreme Court.

Beyond Finland, the case is just one moving part in an evolving, broadening battle over free speech that is escalating across the Atlantic.

Räsänen has become a rallying point for conservatives and religious groups who argue that European courts and laws like the Digital Services Act risk unduly restricting free expression and religious belief online under the guise of combating “hate speech.”

A key player in these debates is ADF International, the global arm of the Alliance Defending Freedom, a Christian legal organization based in Arizona, that is coordinating Räsänen’s legal defense. In the U.S., ADF is known for its efforts to help overturn Roe v. Wade as well as more recently bringing a case seeking to overturn laws banning conversion therapy for minors.

In Europe, ADF International has joined conservative politicians and allied religious organizations in arguing the DSA’s broad requirements for removing “harmful” or “illegal” content give tech platforms and regulators excessive power to silence dissenting views. Supporters of the European Union law counter that it includes reasonable safeguards to curb hate speech and disinformation, aiming to make digital spaces safer without undermining legitimate debate or religious expression.

Christians in Europe Building their War Chests

The Billy Graham Evangelistic Association (BGEA) is calling it the “war chest.”

The evangelistic association headed by Franklin Graham started a legal fund with the damages it won in lawsuits against seven venues in the United Kingdom that cancelled BGEA events in 2020. That fund has now grown to $1.25 million, partly due to an influx of cash from Samaritan’s Purse, the humanitarian organization also run by Franklin Graham. The money will go to help conservative Christians in Europe going to court in freedom of speech and freedom of religion cases.

“Considering what is happening in wider Europe,” BGEA general counsel Jonathan Arnot told Christianity Today, “it seemed appropriate to make this assistance available to Christians across the continent.”

Without a war chest and a smart legal strategy, Arnot said Christians are in danger of losing the right to share the gospel in Europe. The BGEA and other conservative groups are afraid that widespread cultural opposition, especially on issues of sexuality and ethics, and new regulation on speech deemed hateful, harmful, or misleading, will erode people’s ability to condemn sin and preach Scripture.

To date, Christians have won a remarkable series of legal victories in Europe.

Christian Politician Awaits Finnish Court’s Verdict on Hate Speech Charges—Again

The facts are the same. The arguments, the same. But for two days in an appeals court in Helsinki, prosecution and defense rehashed the arguments that previously cleared Finnish politician Päivi Räsänen and Evangelical Lutheran Mission bishop Juhana Pohjola of charges of criminal incitement against a minority group.

State prosecutors argued there was a mistake last March. They say the district court weighed the evidence incorrectly, setting the threshold for “incitement” too high. According to them, a pamphlet the former minister of the interior published with a conservative Lutheran press in 2004, and comments she made about homosexuality on Twitter and on a national radio show in 2019, should be judged as hate speech.

State prosecutor Anu Mantila says Räsänen’s comments are not only disagreeable and offensive, but harmful.

“Offensive speech has a damaging effect on people,” she said.

Persecution or Proper Protection? In Finland, a case looks set to probe where religious freedom ends and other human rights begin

In August 2021, church leaders, families, and politicians gathered for Juhana Pohjola’s consecration as Bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Mission Diocese of Finland (ELMDF). 

Under tents protecting them from the late summer sun, participants celebrated Pohjola’s investiture. They also shared concerns about the heat he and others faced outside the tents’ sheltering canvas. 

That’s because Finland’s Prosecutor General Raija Toiviainen is charging Pohjola, 49, along with Päivi Räsänen, 61, a member of the Finnish parliament in attendance at the consecration, with criminal incitement against a minority group. 

According to the prosecutor, Räsänen has fueled intolerance and contempt of LGBT people three times: in comments she made on a nationally syndicated talk show on Finnish state-supported radio; in a 2019 tweet where she quoted Romans 1:24–27 to criticize the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland (ELCF)—one of Finland’s two national churches—for its affiliation with Helsinki Pride; and in a 23-page booklet that Räsänen wrote titled Male and Female He Created Them. 

Juhana Pohjola.

Pohjola is being charged for publishing Räsänen’s booklet, which argues against same-sex marriage, contrasts LGBT identities with the Christian notion of what it means to be human, and describes same-sex attraction possibly as being inherently sinful and possibly the result of a “negative developmental disorder.” It was released in 2004 by Luther Foundation Finland, the legal entity behind the ELMDF.

For the Prosecutor General, Räsänen’s comments violate the equality and dignity of homosexuals, potentially fueling intolerance and contempt toward the LGBTQI community and thus transcend the limits of free speech and religion. 

Some of Pohjola’s and Räsänen’s allies, however, frame the trial as persecution, an attack on the proclamation of the “pure Gospel.”

Although human rights organizations and religious communities often share common cause, there are issues of moral conviction that can become points of divergence, said legal scholar Farrah Raza. The debate over “normative clarity” around conditions placed on religious freedom when beliefs or practices are deemed to be at variance with other fundamental human rights — such as LGBTQI rights — is one such instance, she said. 

The question becomes whether the specter of persecution becomes a rhetorical tool used to exclude and suppress other groups’ basic rights. The friction, said Raza, is not between “religion” and “human rights” per se, but how the two are respectively interpreted and applied, she reasoned. 

Beyond Finland’s particular politics — or the question of whether or not it rises to the level of “persecution” — this case, due to begin on January 24, 2022, has caught international attention and is being viewed as a precedent-setting example of how secular states might draw the fault lines between religious freedom and the protection of human rights.