A Maine judge decided that a little girl attending a church faced a "serious risk of psychological harm."
Now that mother has been waiting five months for the state's highest court to decide whether she gets her daughter – and her faith – back.
And what this judge put in writing should terrify every Christian parent in America.
The Custody Order That Stripped a Christian Mom of Her Parental Rights
Mat Staver is the founder of Liberty Counsel, one of the most aggressive religious freedom legal organizations in the country, and he has argued cases from state courts all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.
In thirty years of courtrooms, Staver said, he had never read anything like Maine District Court Judge Jennifer Nofsinger's December 2024 order.
The order didn't just block Emily Bickford from taking her 12-year-old daughter Ava to Calvary Chapel in Portland.
It handed Ava's father, Matthew Bradeen – a man Liberty Counsel described as "demonstrably and openly hostile" to the Bible – sole authority over every religious decision in that child's life.
Under Nofsinger's order, Ava cannot attend Christmas or Easter services unless her father approves.
She cannot read the Bible, attend a wedding or funeral connected to anyone from the congregation, or have contact with a single church member – including her own friends.
Staver called it a "nuclear option."
"You give total authority to one parent to make decisions regarding religion over the other parent who's a fit parent," he told reporters after arguing before the Maine Supreme Court in November.
Bickford is not an abusive mother.
Nofsinger acknowledged in the ruling itself that there is "nothing to suggest that Bickford intends to harm Ava."
The court found her to be a fit parent – except for the fact that she is a Christian.
They Flew in a Marxist Professor to Call the Bible Dangerous
Bradeen watched over 50 hours of Calvary Chapel's Facebook sermons and didn't like what he heard.
So he flew in Janja Lalich – a California sociology professor who built her career studying "closed social systems," which is academic language for cults – to testify against a mainstream evangelical church in Maine.
The judge who accepted that testimony, Jennifer Nofsinger, is a former president of the Maine ACLU.
A Marxist academic from California told a Maine court that believing in heaven is psychologically dangerous.
Lalich declared the church's sermons "filled with hateful rhetoric" and claimed the whole congregation was "based on fear."
What Calvary Chapel actually does is teach the Bible verse by verse, chapter by chapter.
The pastor believes in God, Jesus, heaven, and hell.
He preaches on warfare, fallen angels, and eternal suffering – because those things are in the Bible.
Nofsinger accepted every word of it.
She then wrote her ruling – and every single time God appeared in the document, she spelled it with a lowercase "g."
Staver called the hostility "obvious and unconstitutional."
The evidence Nofsinger used to justify the order: one unsupported allegation that Ava felt distress after looking at a book about angels and demons, and a prayer.
Pastor Travis Carey prayed over Bickford and her daughter during a church service – asking God to "bring to nothing the plans and the snares and the tricks of the enemy" and noting that Ava is "dealing with a level of persecution."
Nofsinger ruled that the pastor was demonizing Ava's father.
She omitted the part where Carey also prayed for Bradeen's salvation.
Every Christian in this country knows what that prayer language means.
The "enemy" is Satan – not Ava's father.
The "persecution" is spiritual warfare – not a custody dispute.
Nofsinger either didn't know that or decided it didn't matter.
A First Amendment Case the Maine Supreme Court Has Not Decided
The Maine Supreme Judicial Court heard oral arguments on November 13, 2025.
Chief Justice Valerie Stanfill and her colleagues pushed back on both sides – and Justice Catherine Connors pressed Bradeen's attorney directly: "Doesn't it kind of reference the mother's religion as a cult?"
The attorney claimed the judge made no such finding – only that the expert found it to be one.
That is lawyering, not an answer.
As of today, Chief Justice Stanfill has not issued a ruling.
That means Emily Bickford has been living under this order for sixteen months.
Ava spent Christmas without her church. She spent Easter the same way. Her church friends are gone too.
"She misses her friends at church terribly," Bickford said after the November hearing. "My heart breaks for her spiritual growth being stifled like this."
If the Maine Supreme Court sides with the lower court, Bickford has said she will take the case to federal court on First Amendment grounds.
The U.S. Supreme Court affirmed in Troxel v. Granville that fit parents have a fundamental right to direct their children's upbringing.
Courts are forbidden from treating one religion's mainstream doctrines as legally harmful.
Heaven, hell, salvation, and spiritual warfare are not fringe beliefs invented by a cult in Maine.
They are the foundational teachings of Christianity – the faith your grandparents practiced, the faith nearly two-thirds of this country still claims.
Nofsinger took a secular psychological framework, imported an activist professor to validate it, and used the power of the state to override a fit Christian mother's parental rights.
Maine just handed every court in America the template.
Sources:
- Tyler O'Neil, "Christian Doctrine Threatens 'Psychological Harm' to Child, According to Maine Judge's Ruling," The Daily Signal, April 21, 2026.
- Mat Staver, oral arguments, Maine Supreme Judicial Court, Bickford v. Bradeen, November 13, 2025.
- Liberty Counsel, Press Release, "Maine Supreme Court to Hear Religious Freedom Case," November 12, 2025.
- Paul J. Batura, "Parents Should Be Allowed to Take Children to Church," Daily Citizen, Focus on the Family, November 18, 2025.
- Appellant Brief, Emily A. Bickford v. Matthew A. Bradeen, Maine Supreme Judicial Court, CUM-25-29.
