A Christian persecuted for daring to have an opinion
by Dr Campbell Campbell-Jack, The Conservative Woman:
AFTER an investigation which began in 2019, Finland’s prosecutor general has charged Dr Päivi Räsänen, a Member of Parliament and former Minister of the Interior, with three counts of ‘ethnic agitation’ for peacefully expressing her Christian views on marriage and sexuality. Each charge carries a two-year sentence.
The first charge arises from Dr Räsänen’s 2004 authorship of a booklet entitled Male and Female He Created Them: Homosexual Relationships Challenge the Christian Concept of Humanity, published by the Luther Foundation. In the booklet, Dr Räsänen argues that homosexual activity should be recognised by the church as sinful, based on the teachings of the Bible. She further argues that a failure to recognise sin as sin undermines the very need for a Saviour.
As well as being prosecuted for writing the pamphlet, Dr Räsänen has been charged with two other ‘hate crimes’: tweeting a Bible verse in 2019, and supposedly derogatory comments she made on a 2018 TV programme entitled What would Jesus think about homosexuals?
In 2019, Räsänen shared a picture of her Bible open at Romans 1:24-27 (‘Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another’) in response to the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Finland’s decision to sponsor an LGBT pride event. Below the picture she asked: ‘How can the church’s doctrinal foundation, the Bible, be compatible with the lifting up of shame and sin as a subject of pride?’
Please right-click links to open in a new window.
Related Posts
Tags
Share This
