Here’s What’s Coming to America and the West Unless . . .
This May, we humbly ask for your prayers and support for the Lutheran Center for Religious Liberty’s efforts to contend for the freedom to proclaim the faith. Your partnership helps ensure that the Gospel may be spoken clearly, faithfully, and without fear in our communities and across our nation.
By the time a society realizes it has created what I like to call “secular blasphemy laws,” it is usually too late to admit that’s what they are.
They won’t be identified that way, of course. They will arrive dressed in the language of “dignity,” “inclusion,” and “harm prevention.” They will be framed as modest legal guardrails against “dangerous speech.” But functionally, they will do what blasphemy laws have always done: punish issues of conscience, punish people for expressing beliefs that contradict the reigning moral orthodoxy of the ruling elite.
And that statement is not hypothetical. There is already a test case that is happening right now in a modern, democratic, European nation.
In Finland, Member of Parliament Päivi Räsänen and Lutheran Bishop Johanna Pohjol have been prosecuted for years for the crime of quoting the Bible’s teaching on sexuality and authoring a church pamphlet in 2004 defending the Christian understanding of marriage. Their ordeal should chill anyone who still believes the West is immune to ideological censorship.
More than 14,000 people signed a prayer pledge in support of Räsänen as she stood trial. The letter was delivered by Andrew Brunson, the American pastor once imprisoned in Turkey, on behalf of the Family Research Council. The letter encouraged her for “obeying God rather than man,” quoting Acts 5:29.
What was her alleged crime? A tweet criticizing her church’s participation in Pride Month. A radio appearance discussing biblical teaching.
And their crime? A pamphlet, written decades ago, explaining Christian doctrine on marriage.
The prosecutor general in Finland argued, chillingly, that “The Bible cannot overrule Finnish law,” and that calling homosexuality a “sin” can have a “harmful” effect. That statement should ring alarms far beyond Scandinavia. Because it is not merely a legal claim; it is a theological one and it is one that the State of Finland is asserting is theirs, not the Church’s, to enforce. It asserts that the state, not Scripture, is the final authority over what Christians may publicly think, believe, and say.
Her case, defended by Alliance Defending Freedom International, has already produced a surreal legal spectacle: courts debating which Christian beliefs are permissible to express in public. Martin Luther, in his bold “Here I stand” moment in Scripture is surely rolling in his grave.
As ADF attorney Lorcan Price put it, “This prosecution for hate speech has turned into a theological trial of what Christian beliefs can and cannot be expressed.” That is the definition of a blasphemy court and it is a secular “pietistic” one at that.
The most disturbing development came recently, when Finland’s Supreme Court, in a narrow ruling, convicted both Pohjola and Räsänen over the 2004 pamphlet for allegedly “insulting homosexuals as a group.” The court ordered the pamphlet removed from public access and destroyed. A pamphlet . . . destroyed . . . in a Western democracy . . . in 2026.
Even more astonishing: the pamphlet was written before the law by which they were convicted even existed. If that does not signal a shift from rule of law to rule of ideology, what does?
A remarkable editorial in The Washington Post called the case “a free-speech farce,” observing that if Finland can do this to a sitting legislator (and the bishop of a Bible confessing Church!), “no less notable person can feel comfortable expressing similar views in public.”
Coverage from Fox News highlighted another key point: Räsänen was unanimously acquitted for simply posting a Bible passage on social media. That acquittal, oddly, underscores the danger. It signals that quoting Scripture is not yet illegal, but interpreting it in a way that contradicts state-approved ideology might be.
That is how secular blasphemy laws evolve: not by banning holy books, but by criminalizing traditional interpretations of them. And here is where Americans should pay attention.
We already see the moral framework forming here in our country. The rainbow, once a symbol rooted in the biblical story of Noah as a sign of God’s covenant with humanity, has been redefined into a political and sexual practice emblem. That transformation did not happen through open debate; it happened through cultural force. Those who decline to affirm the new meaning are increasingly described not merely as wrong, but as dangerous.
In the emerging worldview, disagreement is not disagreement. It is harm. And once speech is defined as harm, law and punishment are never far behind as Finland already demonstrates. Europe is simply ahead of America on the timeline. Hate speech statutes there are now being used to prosecute theological claims. The logic is straightforward: if certain identities are sacred, then contradicting them becomes a form of desecration. That is blasphemy logic, applied to secular ideology.
You may not say what Scripture says if it contradicts these new creeds. You may not describe certain behaviors as sinful. You may not question the moral status of state-sanctioned identity categories. And you may not appeal to religious authority as justification, even if its truths can be defended physiologically, sociologically, historically, and of course, theologically.
That is precisely what Räsänen and Pohjola did. And for that, they have faced years of investigation, trial, public shaming, and now conviction.
Americans should not comfort themselves by saying, “That could never happen here.” We already have social penalties for similar speech: job loss, deplatforming, blacklisting, public denunciation. Legal penalties are simply the next logical step once the cultural groundwork is complete. Once a society decides that certain ideas are too harmful to be spoken, the only remaining question is who decides. In Finland, it is now prosecutors and judges.
In America, we still have the First Amendment. But the moral consensus that supports it is eroding. Increasingly, free speech is defended only when it protects fashionable viewpoints. Unfashionable ones are treated as regrettable loopholes in the system.
Räsänen and Pohjola’s case is a warning shot across the bow of the entire Western world: the shift from freedom of conscience to state-managed morality is not theoretical. It is operational. And in this 250th year celebration, it should make us even more bold in defending the truths of the Bible, and the “limited role of the State in our lives,” which have given America and the whole Western world, foundational truths which have birthed liberty like never before.
Take note also that these secular blasphemy law all come wrapped in the language of compassion. No one in Finland claimed to be attacking Christianity. They claimed to be protecting people from offense and harm. That is how blasphemy laws always justify themselves. Not by saying, “You must believe this,” but by saying, “You may not say that.”
The difference is semantic. The effect is the same.
When the state can order religious literature destroyed because its doctrine conflicts with current secular ideology, you no longer live in a society of free belief. You live in a society where belief is tolerated only if it stays silent.
That is what’s coming to America and the West if we fail to recognize it in time. Not the banning of Bibles. Not the closing of churches. But the quiet criminalization of what those Bibles say and what those churches teach when it contradicts the new orthodoxy. That is the modern form of blasphemy law; it’s secular blasphemy laws of a pietistic statism. Finland has shown us the future, unless we “put our liberties to work” and stop it in its tracks.
Rev. Dr. Gregory P. Seltz is the executive director of the Lutheran Center for Religious Liberty.
Be Informed
Satan is a pro at lying about the value of life. Stephanie Neugebauer of LCMS Life Ministry explains.
Be Equipped
Who could have imagined that a country built on life and freedom now has a political party that boasts about killing innocent life as a mark of freedom and “healthcare”? Dr. Seltz and his guest, Victoria Cobb, President of The Family Foundation of Virginia, talk about the need to combat the growing shameless efforts to enshrine unlimited abortion as a norm in our society.
Be Encouraged
“When Jesus returns, all who believe in Him will be raised up from death to live in His presence forever. That is the promise of His enduring, steadfast love: ‘I am sure of this, that He who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ’ (Philippians 1:6). The purpose of God for us will be fulfilled!” –Dr. Carol Geisler, Lutheran Hour Ministries
