Family · Portland, ME Metro · September 9, 2026
Maine's Top Court Grants Father Final Say Over Daughter's Church Attendance
The Maine Supreme Judicial Court upheld a lower court ruling granting divorced father Matthew Bradeen final decision-making authority over his daughter's religious upbringing and medical care, according to Good Faith Media. The mother, Emily Bickford, had brought the child to Calvary Chapel Greater Portland, an evangelical congregation. Court documents cited messages the girl heard suggesting her father would suffer eternally in hell, and noted that during the custody dispute, pastor Travis Carey delivered a six-and-a-half-minute prayer focused on Bradeen while the mother declined to remove the child from the service. Bickford also opposed vaccination and antibiotic treatment for the child. The court said its ruling rested on the 'best interest of the child' standard and did not address 'the substance of Bickford's beliefs.' Bickford's attorneys, from Liberty Counsel, plan to petition the U.S. Supreme Court, warning the ruling could let courts strip parents of the right to raise children in their own faith. Bradeen's attorney framed the case as a practical decision-making dispute rather than a religious freedom question. Neither Carey nor the church were parties to the suit.
Source: Good Faith Media
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Why Bible-Believing Christians Should Care
This case matters because a state court, however carefully worded, effectively weighed the content of a church's biblical teaching — including a warning about hell — as evidence against a parent's fitness to direct her child's religious upbringing. Bible-believing Christians should recognize that courts adjudicating custody disputes can become forums for judging which doctrines are acceptable to teach a child, even while disclaiming that intent. Parents who raise children in churches teaching the reality of sin, judgment, and hell are not unusual or extreme — they are being biblically faithful. If appellate courts treat sound biblical teaching as a factor disqualifying a parent's authority, the implications extend far beyond one Maine family.
And, ye fathers, provoke not your children to wrath: but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. — Ephesians 6:4
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From the book
Legitimate expertise is technical competence exercised under moral authority, like a mathematics teacher explaining algebra. False expertise is ideology wearing the costume of science in order to usurp moral authority, like a counselor telling a child that his parents are unsafe because they hold biblical views on gender.
— Chapter 18, “The Expert Against the Parent”
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