{"id":85835,"date":"2023-11-21T04:00:46","date_gmt":"2023-11-21T09:00:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=85835"},"modified":"2023-11-20T14:53:13","modified_gmt":"2023-11-20T19:53:13","slug":"i-couldnt-believe-i-was-sitting-in-a-court-room-where-the-prosecution-discussed-the-interpretation-of-bible-verses","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2023\/11\/21\/i-couldnt-believe-i-was-sitting-in-a-court-room-where-the-prosecution-discussed-the-interpretation-of-bible-verses\/","title":{"rendered":"“I couldn’t believe I was sitting in a court room where the prosecution discussed the interpretation of Bible verses”"},"content":{"rendered":"

In First Things<\/em>, Sean Nelson<\/a> recounts the trials of P\u00e4ivi R\u00e4s\u00e4nen, a Finnish parliamentarian who has been through several years of legal tribulation for expressing her religious views publicly:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

P\u00e4ivi R\u00e4s\u00e4nen, Finnish parliamentarian
Finnish government photo via Wikimedia Commons.<\/p><\/div>\n

“Blessed is the man who perseveres in the trial,” declares the Epistle of James. Finnish Member of Parliament P\u00e4ivi R\u00e4s\u00e4nen should count herself doubly blessed this week. She has now persevered through two trials over more than four years of legal troubles brought on merely for expressing her Christian faith. Following both trials, she has not only been acquitted, but also has been a shining example of a modern Christian life fearlessly lived.<\/p>\n

On Tuesday, a Finnish Court of Appeal unanimously<\/a> found MP R\u00e4s\u00e4nen not guilty under Finland’s “hate speech” laws. If the decision stands \u2014 there is still a possibility<\/a> of appeal to Finland’s Supreme Court \u2014 it will represent a bulwark for Christians and all people of good will wishing to live out their faith and contribute to social conversations over contentious issues.<\/p>\n

R\u00e4s\u00e4nen’s legal saga began on June 17, 2019. On that day, she tweeted<\/a> a criticism of her church’s participation in a Helsinki Pride parade. She also included a picture of verses from her home Bible. Her case has come to be known as the “Bible Trial”.<\/p>\n

Because she is a long-serving member of Parliament and a former Minister of the Interior, her tweet drew the ire of Finnish officials. While an initial police investigation found nothing criminal in her tweet \u2014 even writing that sounds absurd \u2014 the prosecutor’s office re-opened the matter to comb through her entire history of public utterances. The Helsinki prosecutor came back with an allegedly offensive pamphlet published in 2004 and a live radio interview from 2019. R\u00e4s\u00e4nen was then charged with three counts of “hate speech” under a criminal code provision originally related to war crimes.<\/p>\n

During her first trial in January 2022, the Helsinki prosecutor probed R\u00e4s\u00e4nen with theological questions. Was it really possible to separate sin from the sinner, and condemn the former while loving the latter? Basic Christian belief rests on the distinction, as R\u00e4s\u00e4nen explained, but the prosecutor was not convinced. R\u00e4s\u00e4nen reflected at the time, “I couldn’t believe I was sitting in a court room where the prosecution discussed the interpretation of Bible verses”.<\/p>\n

In March 2022, the trial court delivered a resounding victory for R\u00e4s\u00e4nen, unanimously finding her not guilty. “It is not for the district court to interpret biblical concepts,” it said. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In First Things, Sean Nelson recounts the trials of P\u00e4ivi R\u00e4s\u00e4nen, a Finnish parliamentarian who has been through several years of legal tribulation for expressing her religious views publicly: “Blessed is the man who perseveres in the trial,” declares the Epistle of James. Finnish Member of Parliament P\u00e4ivi R\u00e4s\u00e4nen should count herself doubly blessed this […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[62,9,10,53,11],"tags":[360,603,186],"class_list":["post-85835","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-europe","category-law","category-liberty","category-politics","category-religion","tag-christianity","tag-finland","tag-freedomofspeech"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-mkr","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85835","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=85835"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85835\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":85837,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85835\/revisions\/85837"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=85835"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=85835"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=85835"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}