Maine Supreme Court Rules Dad Can Forbid Mom From Taking Teen Christian to Church

A teenage Christian may not go to church with her mother unless her father permits it, according to a Sept. 1 ruling by the Maine Supreme Judicial Court. The 13-year-old girl has not been allowed to gather with any church since December 2024, when Cumberland County Judge Jennifer Nofsinger, a lesbian, gave her father “final authority” over his daughter’s religious activity.

David Closson, director of Family Research Council’s Center for Biblical Worldview, described the ruling as “a serious threat to religious liberty,” in addition to threatening parental rights.

“This opinion rejects the First Amendment right of a fit parent to raise her child consistent with her Christian faith,” argued Liberty Counsel Founder and Chairman Mat Staver. “This opinion goes against other state court decisions involving custody in the context of religious free exercise rights and ignores precedent from the U.S. Supreme Court. We will ask the High Court to take this case and overrule the decision.”

In a unanimous ruling, Maine’s highest court upheld Nofsinger’s decision, arguing that “allocating authority between two parents does not ‘intru[de]’ on the parents’ shared right to direct the upbringing of their child,” but that “allocation of religious authority” to the father alone “was in the child’s best interest” in this case. Furthermore, the court ruled that a lower court had “erred by applying strict scrutiny” to the question of parental rights.

Family Context

It may be helpful, at this point, to back up for context. Emily Bickford and Matthew Bradeen had a child together in January 2013, even though they were never married. Before the year was out, the child’s mother and father had split, and a family law magistrate had already entered an order, agreed to by both parties, that set out “shared parental rights and responsibilities,” including a commitment to “reach jointly, whenever possible,” any “major decision concerning their child.”

Sometime after this, Bickford professed faith in Christ, and she began attending Calvary Chapel Greater Portland in May 2021. The Maine Supreme Court noted with alarm that Bickford brought the child “to multiple services per week”—as American Christians customarily do.

“Bickford did not inform Bradeen about the child’s attendance at the church,” the court noted reprovingly. “After Bradeen learned about the child’s participation in a church event, he asked Bickford for more information about the church and its teachings. Bickford told Bradeen that she and the child were attending Calvary Chapel, but she did not provide any other information.”

This last clause shows either great ignorance or great bias, as if Bickford needed to provide “any other information” about a Calvary Chapel’s teaching. “Calvary Chapel is mainstream, we believe in the Old and New Testament,” protested Travis Carey, pastor of Calvary Chapel Greater Portland, in an interview with The Washington Stand.

Every Calvary Chapel teaches the same things, and their shared Statement of Faith can be found online in a minute or less. Among other things, every Calvary Chapel believes:

• “The Word of God is the foundation upon which the church operates and is the basis for which the church is governed. We believe that the Word of God supersedes any earthly law that is contrary to the Holy Scriptures.”
• “That the Lord, Jesus Christ instituted two ordinances for the church: the full-immersion water baptism of believers and the Lord’s Supper.”
• “In a literal Heaven and a literal Hell and that all those who place their faith, hope and trust in Jesus Christ will spend eternity in Heaven with the Lord. Those who reject Jesus’ free gift of salvation will spend eternity separated from the Lord.”
• “In the Second Coming of Jesus Christ, which is His personal, visible return to Earth and the establishment of His millennial kingdom, in the resurrection of the body, the final judgment and eternal blessing of the righteous and endless separation of the wicked.”
• “In the Pre-Tribulation Rapture of the Church where all believers will meet the Lord in the air and be taken out of this world prior to the Tribulation that will come upon the earth.”

These points are selected for their relevance to what follows.

Months later, in September 2021, Bradeen “asked the court to allocate to him sole responsibility for the child’s religious upbringing,” according to the state supreme court. For the next three years, Bickford and Bradeen “participated in a series of mediation sessions, and they eventually resolved all their disagreements except for those pertaining to religion and healthcare.” (Bickford also objected to her daughter receiving COVID-19 and flu shots and the HPV vaccine.)

Mistaken Baptism

The court record then erred by mistaking believers’ baptism for infant baptism. “Bickford made other unilateral decisions about the child’s participation in church activities,” its opinion stated. “For example, Bradeen learned that the child was scheduled to be baptized only when he was informed by a third party. Bradeen then called Bickford to ask about the baptism, and she placed him on speakerphone in front of the child.”

As noted above, Calvary Chapel practices believers’ baptism, which is only performed on individuals who believe the Christian gospel. The court omits the conversation that ensued after Bickford placed Bradeen on speakerphone, but the purpose was probably so that her daughter could describe her conversion to her father in her own words.

The girl “made an outward profession of faith,” Carey told The Washington Stand, and she “wanted to invite her dad to the baptism.” This is the most normal thing in the world, and it happens in churches across America every week. Somehow, the Maine Supreme Court twisted this into something sinister.

The ‘Cult’ Smear

In fact, Bradeen undertook legal proceedings to prove just that. At a two-day hearing in August 2024, he produced an expert witness on cults, Janja Lalich, who flew in from California for the purpose. She described cults as “closed social systems” and suggested that Calvary Chapel Greater Portland had some identifying marks.

The Maine Supreme Court denied “Bickford’s claim that the court evinced hostility toward her religion by describing her church in offensive terms, including referring to it as a ‘cult,’” arguing that “cult” was merely the word chosen by the expert witness. However, the very fact that such an expert witness was allowed to testify implies the judge deemed her testimony relevant to the proceedings.

Jesus warned his followers to expect no better treatment. “It is enough for the disciple to be like his teacher, and the servant like his master. If they have called the master of the house Beelzebul, how much more will they malign those of his household” (Matthew 10:25).

Hell and Fear

The state Supreme Court further maligned Calvary Chapel Greater Portland for faithful, expositional preaching. “As described by the pastor, Travis Carey, Calvary Chapel teaches the Bible ‘verse by verse, chapter by chapter,’” it recorded, with scare quotes. “This entails sermons that include, in Carey’s words, ‘quite vivid description[s]’ of Hell.” How vivid? It sounds like Carey simply quotes Jesus: “There’s wailing and gnashing of teeth. There is burning and torment. The worm dieth not. Shame, eternal perpetual pain, and regret.”

The court was not finished. “Carey also testified that he preaches about the ‘Second Coming of Christ,’ which will involve ‘seven years of … pure hell on earth under the persecution of … the Antichrist’ for those who have not ‘accept[ed] the terms of God.’”

If any member of the Maine Supreme Court even bothered to check the Calvary Chapel statement of faith, this simple recitation of pre-tribulation dispensationalism would not come as a surprise. Yet the court found it appropriate to put all these teachings in scare quotes as something foreign and strange. It acts as if some sabretooth cat had just jumped out of a paleontology textbook and was roaming through the courtroom.

These documents become relevant for the case because the court claimed, “The child has experienced fear and anxiety associated with these teachings.”

However, the evidence does not fully match that characterization. “The child has asked Bradeen a lot of questions about Heaven and Hell and about why Bradeen and his other child would not be in Heaven with her,” the court recited. “The child has left notes around Bradeen’s house because she fears that the Second Coming is approaching and that Bradeen will be left behind.”

“It is harmful for a child to hear negative and frightening messages about one parent from the other parent or the other parent’s authority figures,” the court declared.

On the contrary, the evidence suggests that, rather than fearing hell for herself, the child feared what her father might face and sought to bring him to repentance. This is what Paul writes to the church in Corinth: “For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ. … Therefore, knowing the fear of the Lord, we persuade others” (2 Corinthians 5:10-11). If anything, her embrace of evangelism is evidence that the girl genuinely believes the word of God.

Religious Discrimination

In relegating parental rights to the sidelines, the Maine Supreme Court had to choose its ground carefully to avoid the appearance of discriminating against Bickford’s religion. “The Constitution does not require the displacement of the best-interest standard and imposition of strict scrutiny any time a parental rights order implicates a parent’s religion,” the court stated. “It does, however, ‘mandate governmental neutrality between religion and religion, and between religion and nonreligion.’”

The court claimed that the resulting situation—where final authority for all religious decision-making rests with Bradeen—avoids religious discrimination, when in fact it does no such thing. “The court’s allocation of religious decision-making to Bradeen ultimately rested on no more than its findings that the parties are unable to coparent on matters of religion, such that it was therefore necessary to allocate decision-making to one or the other, and that Bradeen is better suited to determine whether certain religious activities are in the child’s best interest,” it alleged.

Why is Bradeen the better parent? The opinion emits the unspoken reason with a deafening roar of silence: because he doesn’t go to a kooky church where folks actually, like, believe stuff. “Bickford believes that the child’s relationship with God is more important than anything on earth, including the child’s relationship with Bradeen,” the court sneered.

To it, this was evidence that “Bickford has essentially abdicated her independent decision-making to the church. Bradeen, meanwhile, has taken a ‘measured approach’ and ‘acted in a manner designed to protect [the child] from additional anxiety.’”

This gets the facts more twisted than a Twizzler. According to the court’s logic, if one parent wants to take a child to church and the other one doesn’t, courts should err on the side of less religious education—a bizarre conclusion incongruous with American history.

What About the Child?

The court never mentions the 13-year-old child’s own preferences. According to Carey, the pastor, she wanted to keep attending his church, where she came to believe the gospel and was baptized.

Without asking her opinion, the court projects onto the child its own judgment that her anxiety is due to hearing messages about hell, so preventing her from hearing about hell would ease her anxiety. Thus, the court paints itself into the role of Felix, the Roman governor in Acts 24:25; as Paul “reasoned about righteousness and self-control and the coming judgment, Felix was alarmed and said, ‘Go away for the present. When I get an opportunity I will summon you.’”

But messages about hell are not easy to unhear, nor can Christian faith be easily quenched by suppressing it. Had she been consulted, the girl would likely have told the court that she was anxious for the salvation of her father. By banning the girl from attending church without the permission of her father, who does not want to go, the court has only ensured that her anxiety will likely continue.

In fact, Bradeen has forbidden his daughter to attend church—not just Calvary Chapel, but any church—since he won final authority in 2024.

Ironically, the court admitted that “the child has enjoyed a strong, loving relationship with each of the parties.” Despite this, it declared that “Bickford’s decisions regarding religion have endangered the child’s relationship with Bradeen” by exposing her “to messaging ‘that her father is going to burn and suffer for eternity, that he is persecuting her, that he seeks to “dismantle” her faith.’”

The court never confronts the incongruence between these claims. If such Christian teachings have not ruined the relationship between the girl and her father, one likely conclusion is that Christian teachings about hell do not necessarily ruin family relationships.

Christian belief can lead to family tensions, but only because of the persecution of the unconverted family members who hate the Christians for their beliefs. “Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword,” Jesus warned. “For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. And a person’s enemies will be those of his own household. Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me” (Matthew 10:34-37).

One hears of stories where Christian converts from Muslim families overseas risk their family relationships to publicly identify with Christ. But one rarely considers that a girl in Maine may have as much to risk.

Christian Perspective

The tragic circumstances of this case show the difficulties that can arise when Christians are “unequally yoked” with unbelievers in marriage and childrearing (2 Corinthians 6:14). This is a matter of increasing relevance as American culture becomes post-Christian. In Bickford’s case, she was not converted until after she bore a child, and after her relationship with Bradeen appeared to have come to an end. But for Christians who find themselves in this unenviable situation, Paul offers wise counsel in 1 Corinthians 7:12-16, with a particular focus on what it means for children.

“From a Christian perspective, parents have a God-given responsibility to raise their children in the faith, to teach them Scripture, and to bring them into the life of the church,” Closson told The Washington Stand. Paul exhorts fathers, “Do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord” (Ephesians 6:4).

“Unmarried parents obviously complicate how those responsibilities are exercised, and courts sometimes have to resolve genuine disputes between two parents who possess equal legal rights,” Closson allowed. “But that does not give judges a blank check to treat historic Christian doctrines as evidence of psychological harm or to rely on an expert’s characterization of an otherwise mainstream evangelical congregation as a ‘cult’ or ‘closed social system.’”

“The state certainly has a legitimate interest in protecting children from actual abuse or neglect,” Closson continued. But “exposure to traditional Christian teaching is not evidence of parental unfitness. Religious liberty means very little if it protects only beliefs that judges, experts, or cultural elites consider benign or fashionable. … The government should not be in the business of deciding that the ordinary beliefs and practices of a theologically conservative Christian church are somehow so dangerous that a fit parent may be prohibited from taking her child there.”

Next Steps

“This is why I think the U.S. Supreme Court should take a close look at this case,” Closson added. “The principle at stake is much larger than one custody dispute: whether the government may effectively penalize a fit parent because her religious convictions are deemed too conservative or too unsettling by the court.”

“As tragic as this case is,” Carey lamented, “it should be eye-opening for not just Christians, but for every U.S. citizen, that this type of constitutional violation is happening.”

“Teachings about heaven and hell, spiritual warfare, biblical sexual ethics, or the authority of Scripture are not fringe beliefs invented by Calvary Chapel,” Closson said. “They are part of historic Christianity. Once courts begin treating orthodox Christian doctrine itself as a basis for restricting a parent’s relationship with her child, the First Amendment concerns become unavoidable.”

Originally published by The Washington Stand

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