A Maine judge banned a Christian mother from reading the Bible to her own daughter.
Now the state's highest court just made that ban permanent.
And the word a Maine court used to end her rights is one most American pastors said from the pulpit last Sunday.
Maine Supreme Court Strips Christian Parental Rights in Calvary Chapel Ruling
Emily Bickford had been raising her daughter Ava in the Christian faith since 2017.
Ava became a Christian in 2021 and had attended Calvary Chapel Greater Portland – an evangelical church in Westbrook, Maine – for three and a half years.
Then Ava told her father she wanted to be baptized.
Matthew Bradeen – who never married Bickford and held only visitation rights – went to court.
He claimed Calvary Chapel was a "dangerous and harmful environment" and hired Dr. Janja Lalich, a sociologist known for identifying cults, to testify against it.
Lalich told the court Calvary Chapel fit her definition of a "cultic" organization – a pastor who claims biblical authority and teaches Scripture as objective truth.
Under that definition, virtually every Christian congregation in America qualifies as a cult.
The church's specific offense, according to Bradeen's legal filings?
It teaches the Bible "verse by verse, chapter by chapter."
That's it.
That systematic method – the same approach used in thousands of evangelical, Baptist, and non-denominational churches across the country – was presented in a Maine courtroom as evidence of psychological danger.
Cumberland County District Court Judge Jennifer Nofsinger agreed, stripping Bickford of all authority over Ava's religious upbringing and handing Bradeen the power to veto any church attendance.
The ruling barred Bickford from taking her daughter to Christmas services, Easter services, Bible studies, or any Calvary Chapel event – and from reading Scripture to her at home.
Bradeen also pointed to an incident during the dispute when Calvary Chapel's pastor led a six-and-a-half-minute prayer focused on the custody case, naming the parents and the child nearly 30 times – with both Bickford and her daughter present in the pew.
A pastor praying for a family in a legal fight is called a church service.
Maine's court called it evidence of psychological abuse.
The Maine Supreme Judicial Court upheld every word of the lower court's order in a unanimous decision authored by Chief Justice Valeria Stanfill.
Liberty Counsel Petitions US Supreme Court to Overturn Bickford v. Bradeen on Religious Freedom
Liberty Counsel founder Mat Staver argued Bickford's case before the Maine Supreme Court and lost.
"This opinion rejects the First Amendment right of a fit parent to raise her child consistent with her Christian faith," Staver said after the ruling. "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."
Liberty Counsel will petition the United States Supreme Court to take the case.
Staver said Maine's ruling places the state Supreme Court in direct conflict with courts in other states – and with U.S. Supreme Court precedent.
In Troxel v. Granville, the nation's highest court held that parental rights over the care, custody, and upbringing of children are "perhaps the oldest of the fundamental liberty interests" it has ever recognized.
Maine just overrode that.
This ruling is not about one family in Westbrook.
Any non-believing father with the money to hire an expert can now attempt this in any family court in the country.
Present a sociologist willing to call verse-by-verse Bible teaching a cultic practice, point to a church prayer that made an absent parent uncomfortable, and a judge can hand one parent total veto power over a child's entire spiritual life.
The state just handed every divorce lawyer in America a new weapon.
This is a blueprint for stripping Christian parental rights, and Maine's highest court just laminated it.
The case now heads to a Supreme Court with a six-justice conservative majority that has spent the last several terms rebuilding the wall between government hostility and religious exercise – from Kennedy v. Bremerton to 303 Creative.
Mat Staver is betting those justices will not look kindly on a state court that used the word "cult" to end a Christian mother's First Amendment rights.
Maine should not be confident.
Sources:
- Virginia Kruta, "Christian Mother Loses Appeal Over Taking Daughter To Her Church," Daily Wire, September 2, 2026.
- "Maine High Court Upholds Restrictions on Mother Taking Daughter to Church; Case Headed to U.S. Supreme Court," The Maine Wire, September 2, 2026.
- Brandon Showalter, "Dad can forbid child from attending church with mother, Maine high court rules," Christian Post, September 2, 2026.
- Bob Unruh, "'No Christian church' order for couple's daughter gets appealed to U.S. Supreme Court," WorldNetDaily, September 2, 2026.
- Mat Staver, "This Court's Decision Left Us With No Choice," Liberty Counsel, June 24, 2026.
