Christian Witness on Trial: Finland and the United Kingdom

Christian Witness on Trial: Finland and the United Kingdom

Helsinki and London, September 2025 — The past decade has witnessed an alarming phenomenon in Europe: the prosecution of Christians for no more than living their faith in public. Nowhere is this clearer than in Finland, where a parliamentarian has faced six years of legal battles for quoting Scripture, and in the United Kingdom, where silent prayers and casual conversations about faith have resulted in arrests. The comparison between the Finnish and British examples reveals two different modes of repression — attrition and intimidation — both converging on the same end: the chilling of Christian witness.

The Finnish Ordeal
Dr. Päivi Räsänen, a physician, parliamentarian since 1995, and former Minister of the Interior, became the focus of state prosecution in 2019 after criticising her church’s sponsorship of Helsinki Pride. Her now-famous tweet included an image of Romans 1:24–27 and a question about how such endorsement could be squared with biblical teaching¹.

Prosecutors not only investigated that post but dredged up a 2004 booklet she authored — Male and Female He Created Them² — and comments she made in a 2019 radio interview³. In 2021, she was indicted on three counts of “ethnic agitation,” Finland’s hate-speech offence under Chapter 11, Section 10 of the Finnish Criminal Code⁴, each carrying up to two years’ imprisonment.

In March 2022, the Helsinki District Court unanimously acquitted her, declaring that quoting the Bible could not be criminalised⁵. The court ordered the state to pay her legal costs. Yet the Prosecutor General appealed. In November 2023, the Court of Appeal again acquitted her on every charge, affirming her right to free expression and religion under Finland’s constitution⁶. Once again, the state appealed. Now, in 2025, the case awaits hearing before the Supreme Court of Finland⁷.

The longevity of the process is what makes it remarkable. The state has lost twice, yet persists. Here the punishment is not conviction but process: six years of litigation, mounting costs, public scrutiny, and professional strain. It is attrition — an attempt to grind down Christian witness through harassment, even after courts have ruled in her favour.

Britain’s Intimidation
Across the North Sea, Britain’s approach is different but no less troubling. Cases come swiftly, and punishments, though often lighter, are designed to intimidate.

• Adam Smith-Connor, a former army medic and veteran, was fined for silently praying outside an abortion facility in Bournemouth in 2023. His prayer was for his own child, lost years earlier to abortion. Police charged him under “buffer zone” legislation surrounding clinics, treating silent prayer as a violation⁸.
• Rose Doherty, a 74-year-old grandmother in Scotland, was arrested in 2022 for offering to converse with passers-by about faith⁹. She faced formal charges under Scottish “hate crime” provisions, though no threats or disturbances were alleged.
• The arrest of Graeme Linehan, while not a Christian case, illustrates the broader climate. Linehan, an Irish citizen best known for co-creating Father Ted, was arrested at Heathrow in September 2025 by armed police for tweets made months earlier while in the United States¹⁰. Farage, testifying before Congress, highlighted this to show that even foreign nationals can be detained for speech outside the UK.

Unlike Finland’s slow grind, Britain’s model is immediacy: arrest, charge, fine, or imprisonment. The signal is unmistakable — dissent from prevailing orthodoxies will be met with police action.

Two Systems, One Drift
The comparison is stark. Finland uses attrition, dragging Christians through years of courts in an attempt to create precedent against biblical teaching. Britain uses intimidation, swiftly prosecuting ordinary believers for prayer, conversation, or conscience.

Yet the logic is identical: both systems presume to decide which expressions of Christian belief are acceptable in public life. In Finland, the prosecutor argued that citing Romans 1 could be criminal “hate.” In Britain, police have treated inner prayer as unlawful protest. Both paths reveal a trajectory towards the criminalisation of Christianity itself.

The Wider Implications
These cases illustrate why vague “harm” and “hate” provisions are dangerous. They do not define wrongdoing clearly but leave discretion to authorities. Law becomes weaponised: not a shield of liberty but a tool of control.

The Christian tradition has long warned against such positivism. St. Augustine wrote: lex iniusta non est lex — an unjust law is no law at all¹¹. Pope Leo XIII taught that if civil law contradicts divine law, “to resist becomes a duty, to obey, a crime”¹². John Paul II cautioned that freedom detached from truth leads to destruction¹³. Benedict XVI warned that democracy without truth degenerates into tyranny by consensus¹⁴.

A Warning for the West
What unites Finland and Britain is not identical statutes but identical drift: towards treating Christian faith as an offence. Attrition in Finland, intimidation in Britain — two tactics, one end.

For believers, these are not distant cases but signs of what may soon confront all Christians in Europe. Räsänen’s ordeal, Smith-Connor’s fine, and Doherty’s arrest reveal that the liberty to obey God rather than men is no longer secure.

The words of Acts resound: “We must obey God rather than men” (Acts 5:29). The martyrs of old bore witness by blood. Today’s Christians must be prepared to witness in courtrooms, police stations, and public squares. The challenge is not hypothetical — it is here. The question is whether Christians will meet it with silence, or with faithful confession of Christ. 🔝

1. Päivi Räsänen, Twitter/X post, June 2019.
2. Päivi Räsänen, Mies ja nainen hän loi heidät [Male and Female He Created Them] (Luther Foundation Finland, 2004).
3. Yle Radio Program, June 2019 interview with Päivi Räsänen.
4. Finnish Criminal Code, Chapter 11, Section 10 (“Ethnic agitation”).
5. Helsinki District Court, Case R 20/2022, Judgment of March 30, 2022 (Acquittal).
6. Helsinki Court of Appeal, Case R 23/2023, Judgment of November 14, 2023 (Acquittal).
7. Supreme Court of Finland, Case KKO 2024: Appeal admitted, proceedings ongoing (2025).
8. Crown Prosecution Service v. Adam Smith-Connor, Bournemouth Magistrates’ Court, 2023.
9. Glasgow Sheriff Court, Police Scotland v. Rose Doherty, 2022.
10. “Father Ted writer Graham Linehan arrested at Heathrow Airport,” The Times, September 2, 2025.
11. St. Augustine, De libero arbitrio, I.5.
12. Pope Leo XIII, Immortale Dei (1885), §10.
13. Pope John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor (1993), §84.
14. Pope Benedict XVI, Caritas in Veritate (2009), §3.