The Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland is a national church of Finland. It is part of the Lutheran branch of Christianity. The church has a legal position as a national church in the country, along with the Orthodox Church of Finland.
The Finns Party, formerly known as the True Finns, is a right-wing populist political party in Finland. It was founded in 1995 following the dissolution of the Finnish Rural Party.
Same-sex marriage has been legal in Finland since 1 March 2017. A bill for the legalisation of same-sex marriages was approved by the Finnish Parliament in a vote of 101–90 on 12 December 2014 and signed into law by President Sauli Niinistö on 20 February 2015. Further legislation to harmonise other laws with the legalisation of same-sex marriage was passed in 2016. The law took effect on 1 March 2017. Finland was the last Nordic sovereign state to legalise same-sex marriage, the 13th country in Europe overall, and the 21st worldwide.
Timo Juhani Soini is a Finnish politician who is the co-founder and former leader of the Finns Party. He served as Deputy Prime Minister of Finland from 2015 to 2017 and Minister of Foreign Affairs from 2015 to 2019.
Finland is a predominantly Christian nation where 65.2% of the Finnish population of 5.6 million are members of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland (Protestant), 32.0% are unaffiliated, 1.1% are Orthodox Christians, 0.9% are other Christians and 0.8% follow other religions like Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, folk religion etc. These statistics do not include, for example, asylum seekers who have not been granted a permanent residence permit.
Päivi Maria Räsänen, née Kuvaja, is a Finnish politician. The chairwoman of the Christian Democrats from 2004 to 2015, she was the Minister of the Interior of Finland between 2011 and 2015.
The Evangelical Lutheran Church in Namibia (ELCIN) is a Lutheran denomination based in Namibia. It has a total membership of over 853,522 in 2023, mainly in Northern Namibia. Formerly known as the Evangelical Lutheran Ovambo-Kavango Church (ELOC), it played a significant role in opposition to Apartheid in Namibia and was part of the Namibian independence struggle.
Jussi Kristian Halla-aho is a Finnish politician, serving as the Speaker of the Parliament of Finland since 2023. Halla-aho has served as a member of the Parliament of Finland from 2011 to 2014 and again since 2019, and as the leader of the Finns Party from 10 June 2017 to 14 August 2021. Previously, between 2014 and 2019, he was a member of the European Parliament, where he was part of the Identity and Democracy group.
Raimo Viljam Vistbacka is a Finnish politician and former member of the Finnish Parliament. Vistbacka has a master's degree in law (varatuomari) and he was the rural police chief (nimismies) in Alajärvi in 1982–1996. He was first elected to the parliament in 1987, representing the Finns Party's predecessor, the Finnish Rural Party. When the Finns Party was founded in 1995, Vistbacka became the party's first MP. He retired from the parliament in April 2011.
Parliamentary elections were held in Finland on 17 April 2011 after the termination of the previous parliamentary term. Advance voting, which included voting by Finnish expatriates, was held between 6 and 12 April with a turnout of 31.2%.
Kari Mäkinen is the former archbishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland. He was elected the 14th Archbishop of Turku and Finland on 11 March 2010, he was installed on 6 June 2010, and he retired on 1 June 2018. His successor, the 15th Archbishop Tapio Luoma was installed on 3 June 2018. His predecessor was Jukka Paarma. Previously Mäkinen served as vicar of Ulvila and since 2006 as Bishop of Turku.
The Finnish Rural Party was an agrarian and populist political party in Finland. Starting as a breakaway faction of the Agrarian League in 1959 as the Small Peasants' Party of Finland, the party was identified with the person of Veikko Vennamo, a former Agrarian League Member of Parliament known for his opposition to the politics of President Urho Kekkonen. Vennamo was chairman of the Finnish Rural Party between 1959 and 1979.
James Hirvisaari is a Finnish politician. He was elected to the Finnish Parliament in the 2011 general election held on 17 April on the electoral list of the Finns Party, but since 2013 he has represented Change 2011.
Teuvo Hakkarainen is a Finnish politician and member of the European Parliament, representing the Finns Party. Before being elected to the European Parliament in the 2019 election, he had been a member of the Finnish Parliament since 2011.
Maria Tuulia Lohela is a Finnish politician. She has served as a Member of the Parliament of Finland from 2011 to 2019. After having maintained her seat in the 2015 election, Lohela was Speaker of the Parliament of Finland from 2015 to 2018. 36 years old when elected Speaker, she was one of the youngest MPs to hold that office in the parliament's history. Before her parliamentary career, she took her bachelor's degree at the University of Turku, majoring in English language. She has also served as a member of the Turku City Council from 2009 to 2012 and again from 2017 to 2019.
Parliamentary elections were held in Finland on 14 April 2019. For the first time, no party received more than 20% of the vote. The Centre Party, which had been the largest party following the 2015 elections, dropped to fourth place, losing 18 seats and recording its lowest vote share since 1917. The Social Democratic Party saw the biggest gains, winning six more seats and narrowly becoming the largest party for the first time since 1999. The Green League and the Left Alliance also gained five and four seats respectively.
Sir Bob Bofeng Dadae is a Papua New Guinean politician who serves as the tenth and current Governor-General of Papua New Guinea. He assumed office as the tenth governor-general on 28 February 2017, succeeding Michael Ogio.
The Finnish Reform Movement, previously known as Blue Reform, was a Finnish conservative political party.
Ano Veli Samuel Turtiainen is a Finnish former powerlifter and politician who served in the Parliament of Finland for the South-Eastern Finland constituency from 2019 to 2023. He is also founder and leader of Power Belongs to the People party. He lives in Juva. Turtiainen was elected to the parliament in the 2019 parliamentary election. Turtiainen was expelled from the Finns Party due to him posting a tweet perceived as mocking the murder of George Floyd in February 2021.
Carl Olof Tallgren is a Finnish politician who served as the minister of finance between 1970 and 1971. He is one of the former heads of the Swedish People's Party of Finland.
