• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to footer
  • HOME
  • ABOUT CHINA
    • NEWS
    • TESTIMONIES
    • OP-EDS
    • FEATURED
    • GLOSSARY
    • CHINA PERSECUTION MAP
  • FROM THE WORLD
    • NEWS
    • OP-EDS
    • FEATURED
    • TESTIMONIES
  • INTERVIEWS
  • DOCUMENTS AND TRANSLATIONS
    • DOCUMENTS
    • THE TAI JI MEN CASE
    • TRANSLATIONS
  • EVENTS
  • ABOUT
  • EDITORIAL BOARD
  • TOPICS

Bitter Winter

A magazine on religious liberty and human rights

three friends of winter
Home / International / Op-eds Global

The Päivi Räsänen Case in Finland: Another View

01/27/2022Massimo Introvigne |

The trial of the former Minister of the Interior for homophobia is presented as a clash between Christians and secularists. But it is also an inter-Christian conflict.

by Massimo Introvigne

Päivi Räsänen.
Päivi Räsänen. Credits.

The criminal trial against Finnish MP and former Minister of Interior Päivi Räsänen and Lutheran Bishop Juhana Pohjola opened in Finland on January 24 and will continue on February 14. It has generated widespread emotion in Finland and throughout the world, with hundreds of media accounts and heated Facebook and Twitter confrontations.

Räsänen is accused of hate speech, a crime that may lead to a jail penalty in Finland, although prosecutors are only seeking a heavy fine in her case. According to the prosecutors, Räsänen showed intolerance of the LGBT community in three separate occasions: in a radio interview, in a booklet (published by Bishop Pohjola’s publishing house), and in a tweet. Räsänen quoted inter alia the Biblical text of Romans 1:27, where we read that “men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error.” She also called homosexual acts “sinful” and the results of a “negative developmental disorder.”

Christian media have presented the trial as one where prosecutors try to convict the Bible, and a consequence of Finland’s secularism. Other churches have expressed concern, too. In fact, the Catechism of the Catholic Church calls the homosexual inclination “objectively disordered.” While it does not declare the inclination itself as sinful, it states that “Basing itself on Sacred Scripture, which presents homosexual acts as acts of grave depravity, [Catholic] tradition has always declared that homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered. They are contrary to the natural law. They close the sexual act to the gift of life. They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity. Under no circumstances can they be approved” (no. 2357).

While Pope Francis has supplemented this teaching with consistent expressions of love and care for homosexual persons, and calls to tolerance and understanding, the Catechism so far has not been amended (something the Pope could, but did not, do) and remains the normative text of reference for Catholic doctrine. Understandably, some Catholics worry whether reprinting or presenting no. 2357 of their Catechism would be regarded as a criminal act in Finland.

Those who are concerned about religious liberty in the Räsänen case have their good reasons to be concerned. Yet, there is another angle in what is the Räsänen and Pohjola case, one rarely discussed in international media.

Bishop Juhana Pohjola. Source: International Lutheran Council.
Bishop Juhana Pohjola. Source: International Lutheran Council.

The clash between conservative Christianity and the liberal, secular culture prevailing in Finland, which introduced same-sex marriage in 2014, is certainly part of the story. However, another clash also plays a part in the trial. It is a clash between two different versions of Lutheran Christianity. Historically, the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland (ELCF) is the church associated with Finnish identity. It is officially recognized as the national church, together with the much smaller Orthodox Church of Finland.

In the late 20th and 21st centuries, the ELCF aligned itself with the liberal positions prevalent in other Protestant mainline churches in Europe: it condones abortion, does not consider homosexual acts as a sin, ordains women, homosexuals, and transgenders as pastors, and while not celebrating same-sex marriages it gives a public blessing to same-sex couplies who have entered a civil marriage.

Again as it happened elsewhere, the most conservative Lutherans were dissatisfied with these changes. In 2013, they walked away of the ELCF and founded a separate denomination called Evangelical Lutheran Mission Diocese of Finland (ELMDC). Although the ELMDC has remained a small organization, the schism was unprecedented. The ELCF reacted by defrocking the bishops and pastors who joined the ELMDC, including Dean Pohjola (later Bishop Pohjola) in 2014, and publicly accusing them of having “broken their ordination vows.”

At stakes are different views of Christianity but also the unique relationship that, although disestablished, the ELCF maintains with the Finnish state. By filing criminal charges against Räsänen and Bishop Pohjola for their conservative view of homosexuality, the prosecutors are protecting a national consensus that, according to polls, strongly supports LGBT rights and same-sex marriage. But they are also protecting the national church against what it perceives as dangerous heresy and schism.

Tagged With: Finland

Massimo Introvigne
Massimo Introvigne

Massimo Introvigne (born June 14, 1955 in Rome) is an Italian sociologist of religions. He is the founder and managing director of the Center for Studies on New Religions (CESNUR), an international network of scholars who study new religious movements. Introvigne is the author of some 70 books and more than 100 articles in the field of sociology of religion. He was the main author of the Enciclopedia delle religioni in Italia (Encyclopedia of Religions in Italy). He is a member of the editorial board for the Interdisciplinary Journal of Research on Religion and of the executive board of University of California Press’ Nova Religio.  From January 5 to December 31, 2011, he has served as the “Representative on combating racism, xenophobia and discrimination, with a special focus on discrimination against Christians and members of other religions” of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE). From 2012 to 2015 he served as chairperson of the Observatory of Religious Liberty, instituted by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs in order to monitor problems of religious liberty on a worldwide scale.

www.cesnur.org/

Related articles

  • Ukraine: Why the Moscow Patriarch Supports Putin’s War

    Ukraine: Why the Moscow Patriarch Supports Putin’s War

  • MP Räsänen and Bishop Pohjola: What Their Legal Victory Really Means

    MP Räsänen and Bishop Pohjola: What Their Legal Victory Really Means

  • The Jeongeup Murder Case: A Hate Crime Against Shincheonji

    The Jeongeup Murder Case: A Hate Crime Against Shincheonji

  • For Christmas, Remember Religious Liberty

    For Christmas, Remember Religious Liberty

Keep Reading

  • Spain: A Hate Speech Campaign Against the Jehovah’s Witnesses
    Spain: A Hate Speech Campaign Against the Jehovah’s Witnesses

    An association calls for a Russian-style ban of the JWs in Spain. The Witnesses have sued for defamation, but the association is supported by most local media.

  • Religious Intolerance in Brazil: Will Lula Protect the Minorities?
    Religious Intolerance in Brazil: Will Lula Protect the Minorities?

    Violence against Afro-Brazilian religions continued during the electoral campaign. The new President promised to act. It may be more difficult than some believe.

  • Why Media Hate “Cults”
    Why Media Hate “Cults”

    Or perhaps they don’t hate anybody. They simply know that lurid tales connecting religion with money, power, and illicit sex always sell.

  • Abdul Rehman Makki: Why Are China and Pakistan Protecting a Terrorist?
    Abdul Rehman Makki: Why Are China and Pakistan Protecting a Terrorist?

    The designation of the deputy chief of Lashkar-e-Taiba as a global terrorist has been blocked by China at the United Nations.

Primary Sidebar

Support Bitter Winter

Learn More

Follow us

Newsletter

Most Read

  • Pro-Chinese Propaganda by The World Muslim Communities Council: Uyghurs Strike Back by Gulfiye Y
  • Zhanargul Zhumatai: “Help Me, I Just Want to Leave China” by Ruth Ingram
  • L. Ron Hubbard, Scientology, and the Visual Arts. 1. The Aesthetic Mind by Massimo Introvigne
  • Stricter Rules on Private Tutoring Protect Ideology Rather than Parents by Wang Zhipeng
  • Japan Religious Donations Law. 4. The Return of Brainwashing by Massimo Introvigne
  • Hong Kong: Christian Scholar Peng Manyuan Released but Not Rehabilitated by Gladys Kwok
  • The Weaponization of the CCP’s “Zero COVID” Against Tibet by Marco Respinti
  • L. Ron Hubbard, Scientology, and the Visual Arts. 3. Art as Communication by Massimo Introvigne
  • L. Ron Hubbard, Scientology, and the Visual Arts. 4. Art and Illustration by Massimo Introvigne
  • L. Ron Hubbard, Scientology, and the Visual Arts. 5. Professionals vs. Amateurs by Massimo Introvigne

CHINA PERSECUTION MAP -SEARCH NEWS BY REGION

clickable geographical map of china, with regions

Footer

Instant Exclusive News
Instant Exclusive News

EDITORIAL BOARD

Editor-in-Chief

MASSIMO INTROVIGNE

Director-in-Charge

MARCO RESPINTI

ADDRESS

CESNUR

Via Confienza 19,

10121 Turin, Italy,

Phone: 39-011-541950

E-MAIL

We welcome submission of unpublished contributions, news, and photographs. Each submission implies the authorization for us to edit and publish texts and photographs. We reserve the right to decide which submissions are suitable for publication. Please, write to INFO@BITTERWINTER.ORG Thank you.

Newsletter

Follow us

LINKS

orlir-logo hrwf-logo cesnur-logo

Copyright © 2023 · Bitter Winter · PRIVACY POLICY· COOKIE POLICY