Family · Portland, ME Metro · September 2, 2026
Maine top court backs order barring mom from taking daughter to church
The Maine Supreme Judicial Court has upheld a family court order prohibiting Emily Bickford, a custodial mother, from taking her 12-year-old daughter Ava to Calvary Chapel, an evangelical church in Portland, Maine, or allowing the girl contact with church members, literature, or media — because the child's non-custodial father, Matthew Bradeen, objects to the church's biblical teaching, according to WND. The order, in place since December 2024, followed Bradeen's court testimony, including from a witness he flew in, characterizing the church as a harmful "cult." The Maine court ruled that granting one parent exclusive authority over religious upbringing does not necessarily "infringe" the other parent's constitutional rights. Liberty Counsel, representing Bickford, says the ruling rejects her First Amendment free-exercise rights as a fit parent and plans to petition the U.S. Supreme Court to review and overturn the decision. As of this report, the case (Bickford v. Bradeen) is headed to the U.S. Supreme Court on appeal; no ruling from that Court has occurred.
Source: wnd.com
Why Bible-Believing Christians Should Care
This case tests whether a fit Christian parent retains any constitutional right to raise her own child in the faith once a family court intervenes. A state supreme court has now said restricting a mother's ability to bring her daughter to church, read her Scripture, or let her associate with fellow believers does not meaningfully violate her religious liberty. If that reasoning stands, custody law becomes a tool by which one parent's hostility to biblical Christianity can override the other parent's constitutional right to disciple her own child. Christians should watch this appeal closely — the precedent set here could extend well beyond Maine into how courts nationwide balance parental religious rights in custody disputes.
Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it. — Proverbs 22:6
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From the book
The family is a pre-political institution. It existed before the state, and it holds authority the state did not grant and cannot lawfully take. When Christians defend the family they are defending the first institution of God against the encroachment of Caesar.
— Chapter 18, “The Jurisdictional Mandate”
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