Ysterday, Europe’s biggest religious freedom case went to trial.

A Finnish member of parliament, Päivi Räsänen, has been charged by the Finnish prosecutor general with three counts of “ethnic agitation,” a hate speech provision in Finland’s criminal code. Each count relates to Räsänen’s respectful expression of widely held Christian beliefs.

The first charge concerns a 2019 tweet in which Räsänen questioned the decision of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland (her own denomination) to partner with Helsinki’s gay pride parade; this tweet also featured an image of Romans 1:24-27. Räsänen had moved on and forgotten about this tweet — until she learned that the police were investigating her over it....